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Meera Atkinson  While international adoption has always been controversial, its profile has been boosted in recent times by celebrity adoptive parents such as Angelina Jolie-Pitt and Madonna.
International or intercountry adoption is a highly complex business on many levels, not least of which is the fact that the different laws of different countries have to be negotiated and countries vary in their willingness to allow it. Some countries, such as China, have well-established procedures for intercountry adoption, while others strictly forbid it. Some, such as certain African countries, allow international adoption but only with extensive residency requirements, which effectively rule such countries out for many prospective parents. Chinatops the list of “sending countries”, with many female children made available for adoption due to the country’s population control policy and the preference placed on boys. Russia is a close second, with Guatemala and Romania also ranking highly. On the “receiving” end, requirements vary from country to country. In the US, adoptions are often co-ordinated by a private agency. This has lead to accusations that international adoption has become a profit-driven industry built to service the desires of a wealthy clientele rather than focussing on protecting the needs of the child. In New South Wales, where Lizzy D’avigdor-Slater and her husband, Michael Slater, live, the Department of Community Services (DoCS) is the only agency that can arrange an intercountry adoption and it only works with accredited overseas government adoption agencies. Prospective intercountry parents must pass an 11-stage process and all intercountry adoptions are governed by the Hague Convention on the Protection of Children and Co-operation in respect of Intercountry Adoption, which safeguards the rights, welfare and interests of adopted children. Director of adoptions and permanent care at the NSW Department of Community Services, Mary Griffin, says the role of DoCS or any state welfare department in intercountry adoption is to prepare families for what to expect and to assess the family for suitability. "The adoption process is therefore not just a process — it is a process with a purpose: to ensure children are only placed with families who are well prepared and are suitable to adopt," she says. Lizzy and Michael were drawn to the intercountry adoption journey through other members of their family who adopted two siblings, aged three and five, from Ethiopia. It was only during the visit to collect the children that they discovered the existence of an older brother, aged nine, called Alemayehu. Convinced all three children should continue to grow up in the same family, Lizzy and Michael determined to adopt him and, with the support of the DoCS, they initiated the laborious process of an intercountry adoption. Lizzy says the bond with the child begins the minute adoptive parents embark on the process and it’s a bond she says grows rapidly once the child arrives in the country and begins to absorb into the family. “Alemayehu arrived when he was 11 years old,” says Lizzy. “My daughter May is three and a half years older than him and Adelaide is nine months older than him, so in terms of relationships it was an interesting dynamic because he came from being the elder brother to being the youngest, which is tricky for a proud Ethiopian lad.” Nevertheless, Alemayehu adjusted well. The first hurdle he had to overcome was learning English and, with a history of interrupted schooling, he had some catching up to do.
These challenges come with the territory of adopting an older child from another culture. “It’s more problematic and fraught with difficulty when you’ve got an older child. Alemayehu was used to running his own show in Ethiopia. He’s a survivor and he’d had to survive under very difficult circumstances,” says Lizzy. “I’m looking back on it now — it’s been ten years — and we were given a formula by DoCS where they said when you adopt an older child you double their age and that’s how long it will take for them to fully integrate into the family and adjust to as normal as it’s going to get. I think it’s probably a fair assessment.” Lizzy believes the outcry against intercountry adoption is a bit of a beat up. “I think most of the negative views about it come from pure ignorance of what really goes on and what the benefits are for everybody involved: the children, the family they are coming to, the community they’ve left behind,” she says. “I don’t think there’s one person I know that hasn’t done something to support the community their child came from. And in terms of education within the community that the child comes into, I know a lot of people have learnt an awful lot that they may not have been exposed to from the fact that the kids are here. Those are the benefits that may not be thought of by someone who criticises the cultural adoption situation.” Of primary concern to critics is that the extraction of a child from his or her culture may have unintended and unfortunate consequences in terms of his or her identity and connection to their culture and extended family. Lizzy points out that, in many cases, the children learn a lot more about their culture once they’ve left than they ever would have done under the circumstances in which they were living while there. “The bottom line is those kids may not have had the luxury of survival first of all, and the luxury of having time to think about their culture when they’re trying to survive,” she says. “In an ideal world those kids are supported and looked after and kept safe within their own community, but it’s not an ideal world and this is the next best thing.” She stresses that adoptive parents universally feel a responsibility to support the child in having an active relationship with their culture, that this is not only encouraged by most agencies that oversee the process but is virtually a requirement. For many families this means learning the language of the child’s country and taking regular trips back to their homeland. Lizzy and Michael are planning to return to Ethiopia in December to pick up Alemayehu’s big sister, now 30, who has just had her visa approved. “We want her safe. She’s part of the family. She was the one left looking after the kids when the parents died and she never had an opportunity to have an education. We figure it’s her turn now and she wants to come.” And what about Alemayehu, how has the intercountry adoption experience turned out for him? “He’s a really cool dude,” says Lizzy. “He’s a very popular kid. He’s got a huge community of friends, a great support network and he’s a pretty happy kid these days. We’ve had tough times and you expect tough times, some of them just normal parenting issues and others with that added extra.” The pride in her voice is evident: “He’s our boy”.
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