International Adoption

The image of an American family changed dramatically over the last fifty years. American families are no longer modeled after the Cleavers. International adoption has contributed to this changing family view, bringing in children who are not biologically related to their parents and often of a different race. This new American image has helped to reduce race related issues. Children are the future of a country. Consequently, if a country is losing their children to international adoption; the county is losing gifts and talents that are irreplaceable. Intercountry adoption should not be a viable adoption source because this process does not adequately benefit those involved. International adoption exploits poor children and hurts their countries
International adoption has become a growing trend; this has led to a significant number of child trafficking cases. Law Professor David Smolin defines illegal child laundering as a growing issue that involves a hierarchy of people manipulating the legal adoption system to profit (463). Children who are victims of child trafficking are sometimes severely mistreated. Child laundering is an issue globally, in fact, there have been many highly publicized cases in the past decade. China is a model illustration of the problems associated with international adoptions. Researchers Anqi Shen, Georgios Antonopoulos, and Georgios Papanicolaou point out that China reported about 10,000 kidnappings and abductions over the span of a year because the demand for Chinese children has increased (36). The growing movement of international adoption has caused a flood of fake adoption agencies that scam people, and harm children. Ethan B. Kapstein, a Professor at INSEAD in France, declares that the international market for children has boomed in the last decade, and with over 34,000 international children being adopted annually, the rise of corruption is overwhelming (123). It is important to realize that unethical adoption agencies abduct infants from their impoverished biological families, to sell the babies to enthusiastic adoptive families. Kapstein exposed a family in India
Celebrities adopting international children have piloted the growth in foreign adoption, thus leading to the disregard of American children, not to mention the false perception that there are not enough children needing to be adopted in America. According to Texas Tech Professor, Duke DeLeith Gossett, there are half a million children in the United States foster system waiting to be adopted (839). Therefore, every child adopted from another country is a child not being adopted in America. A 2006 article in the magazine People declared that after Angelina Jolie had adopted her daughter Zahara from Ethiopia, adoptions from Ethiopia increased. The report also claims that international adoption has been amplified from seven thousand to twenty-one thousand adoptions annually since Jolie adopted her Ethiopian daughter (“Adoptions from Around the World”18). Mainstream media and entertainment news outlets focus on celebrities who have adopted foreign children; this has directed an increase in funds raised for international children. Although helping international children in poverty is a noble deed, there are still children suffering from poverty in America. Professor Gossett made it clear that over 552,000 children are wasting away in the broken American foster system, and neither the government nor the media supports efforts to