From the Library: The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking, and the New Gospel of Adoption, by Kathryn Joyce

Last updated on: October 27, 2013 at 11:54 pm by Jane the Actuary

From the Library: The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking, and the New Gospel of Adoption, by Kathryn Joyce 2013-10-27T23:54:00-06:00 Jane the Actuary

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

So I’m going to summarize this book by memory rather than paging through it for details. Here goes:

When we think of adoption, we think of infertile couples, waiting to welcome a newborn home from a years-long waiting list for American children, or going abroad to a dingy, desparate orphanage. But there’s a new kind of adopting family: evangelical Christians, for whom adopting as many Third-World (generally African) children as possible has become a sort of Biblical mandate. The great demand, and the vast profits to be made from the adoption fees, have corrupted the process, with parents being deceived into believing that their children are being temporarily taken to America to be educated, rather than permanently being lost to them, and other children being taken without the knowledge of parents who have brought them to an orphange only temporarily during a time of financial hardships, or in any case, without efforts to find extended family. Often, the adoption agencies are more than willing to bribe officials to get the children out of the country and to their intended adoptive parents.

And when those children arrive in the United States, they mourn the loss of their African families, and struggle to adapt even when the adoptive family is well-intentioned. Even worse, the adoptive families are far from appropriate parents, either in over their heads or just bad people, using the children as unpaid labor, “homeschooling” them without ever providing a proper education, and sometimes being just plain abusive. And they’re adopting far more children than they could ever reasonably parent. One outcome of this is the practice of “re-homing” in which the adoptive parent hands a child over to another party, as a new, unofficial adoptive parent, often repeatedly. In extreme cases, children have been returned to their home countries and dumped — and the adoptive parents have often not even taken the steps of getting the children American citizenship, so they truly have no recourse.

There are churches which have been aggressively promoting adoption. Church members fundraise among themselves to be able to afford the adoption fees. Recently, however, some churches have begun to recognize that they can more effectively help “orphans” in their own countries, essentially providing aid for dozens in-country for the cost of a single adoption. And various countries are clamping down on foreign adoptions — but this produces a cycle, as one country shuts down its foreign adoptions, another experiences a war or natural disaster and becomes the next destination for foreign adoptions.

South Korea is an except to the above — they’ve been a substantial sending country for international adoptions ever since the Korean War, because the country is so hostile to single mothers (but not premarital sex) and there is little practice of adoption in the country. What’s more, single women are heavily pressured to give the child up for adoption, and international adoption is seen as preferable because there is the potential for continued contact with the adoptive family, where, for domestic adoptions, everything is very secretive, with the adoptive family doing everything they can (even moving to another city) to hide the fact that their new child is adopted.

She discusses the situation among American women, too: about 1% of white single mothers surrender their children for adoption, and the percentage of black women is, basically, zero. But for those women who do head down that path, either because they’ve been receiving help from a Crisis Pregnancy Center or for another reason, the adoption agency deploys fraud and deception to pressure the woman to make her decision, and lead her to believe that an initial decision is irrevokable. Fathers, too, are deceived, and, here, the state of Utah is the worst, with a father’s right to claim his child blocked in multiple ways. And despite the growth of “open adoption” in most cases, the adoptive parents are under no legal requirement to maintain contact, and this is generally not disclosed to the birth mothers.

So that’s what she says. What do I think of it?

Of course, she’s highlighted many abuses. Bringing over large numbers of African children, with a goal of converting them to (born-again) Christianity, taking them away from their own families, and placing them into inappropriate family situations, is clearly wrong. No one should take on a child who’s experienced the trauma of war without having the ability to help that child. But it seems improbable that a fringe group of extremist evangelicals are actually more than a minority of adoptive parents. Does the infertile couple longing for a child really not exist?

And it seems like at some point we go too far in how high we elevate the mother-child bond, and the goal of keeping children with genetic relations. Where in the past, having a child while unmarried was shameful, now American women perceive surrending a child for adoption as shameful, with abortion being somehow more moral than adoption.

And at the same time, there’s another form of “child trafficking” that’s been growing due to our American belief in the primacy of genetic relationships and, let’s face it, the low supply of adoptable children: surrogacy. It’s not legal to buy a child, but in most states it’s A-OK to buy a vial of sperm, buy some eggs, and buy the services of a gestational surrogate. And if the $100,000 cost in the U.S. is too much, an Indian surrogacy clinic will be happy to provide services at a much lower cost. And if the kid turns out to have a genetic defect, the contract gives the purchasing parents the right to demand an abortion.

Uncategorized

Previous Post

October 27, 2013

True Confessions: I Watch The Big Bang Theory

Next Post

October 29, 2013 Why I don't (or rarely) reply to reader comments

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Actuarial/Retirement Issues Politics Uncategorized

Select a Month September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 December 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 August 2021 June 2021 April 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Who rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem after the exile?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Zerubbabel Ezra Nehemiah Joshua