The list of impractical impossible solutions offered by those opposed to international adoption to the world's children is short ... support for families in developing countries that would make relinquishment unnecessary, world peace, a global end to hunger and disease ... usually includes not only a confusing contradiction about money -- it's too expensive, but must remain exclusive -- but also the idea that children that are surrendered should be adopted by families in their country of birth.

Local adoption rates offer proof that the option is severely limited, and in many countries with rapidly rising orphan rates even the informal kinship placements that may have been the norm in better days no longer provide any safety net to too many.

The idea that countrymen of birth parents would be less likely to commit the misconceived concept of "cultural genocide" neglects many realities, including inter-country differences in traditions, religions and ethnicities at the same time it ignores the sad truth that in most countries discarded children have little to no value and no one wants them.

This fact is clearly presented often to adoptive families traveling for their children, and accounts of conversations with perplexed locals trying to grasp just why a couple from America or Sweden or France is adding a kid from the orphanage down the road to their family are common.

"Not my problem" is an often-heard response when those same Americans or Swedes or French turn the tables and ask the locals if they would consider taking in one of the children.

A recent article out of Nigeria offers a look at the attitude toward domestic adoption in that country that can be taken as an indicator of the perceptions of a population much wider than even just that one huge country.

The case of baby-switching in Czech is used in the story to attempt to convince readers that blood ties may not be the be-all-and-end-all to connections between parents and children. The fact that the mothers of these babies have bonded with the children in their care, assuming them to be their offspring, and that now that they have learned there is no biological relation are loathe to trade back as an example, the author cites this as "evidence that I was right all along" to insist that "some folks are capable of bestowing the highest form of love on infants to whom they are not genetically linked".

Apparently, this story is a follow to one where the writer suggested married men deciding to have children with girlfriends because of infertility issues with wives would be better off adopting. That was not well received.

Many people contacted me to grumble about my "unrealistic" attitude and to express the view that wives who have been betrayed in this fashion should forgive their husbands on the grounds that it is "impossible to love an adoptee as much as you would love your own flesh and blood."

When I insisted that some folks are capable of bestowing the highest form of love on infants to whom they are not genetically linked, I was told that I was dreaming, misunderstanding human nature and just generally talking nonsense. And I was forced to abandon the argument because I couldn't prove, at the time, that what I was saying was true or at least feasible.

Hopefully, the fact that this story saw the light of day and that a Nigerian writer is "convinced that culture is a mere façade and that there are Africans who would react [like the Czech mothers]" indicates a change in attitudes toward domestic adoption, but she does concede this:

I know that most of you will say that Africans and Europeans are totally different and that an African would never make a decision like this.

We can hope that eventually there will be more local and regional adoption options for children in countries where today other peoples' children are seen, at best, as little more than other peoples' problem.

In this world at this time, however, that is not the case, and international adoption remains one of the few hopes for children, and often for the parents who cannot care for them.