International Adoption

Waking up, she realizes what day it is and instantly feels sick to her stomach. Today is her eleventh birthday. For most children, their birthday is a day full of joy and excitement, but for anyone in the orphanage, it’s a day full of fear, a day that everyone dreads. Even though she has been allowed to stay in the orphanage one year longer than most of the children do in her country, she still hasn’t been adopted, so today is the day that she has to leave the orphanage and fend for herself on the streets. She’s witnessed it too many times already. Two years ago, she watched with tears streaming down her face as her older brother was kicked out of the orphanage. She never saw him again and she hoped that he found work in the cocoa fields, but in reality, she knows that he was probably forced to join the guerrilla army. These sorts of things happen too often and can be alleviated by allowing more children to be adopted into different countries. Because of the large amount of orphaned and homeless children in various countries, ethnic identity should not be a deciding factor in international adoptions.

Nowadays, people are becoming more aware of international adoption, but with its newfound popularity comes a lot of controversy and societal debates. Most of the debating revolves around how moving children to and from different countries “will [cause them to] suffer from a fractured sense of self and a loss of ethnic identity. Studies have shown, however, that transracial adoptees have no higher risk of psychological problems than same-race adoptees” (Interlandi). A lot of the debates also have to do with the effects that international adoption have on the countries involved, and “[c]ritics . . . argue that taking orphaned children ...

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... These studies also show that 60% of the girls become prostitutes and 70% of the boys become hardened criminals[.] An estimated 1.2 million children are trafficked every year [and] 2 million children, the majority of them girls, are sexually exploited in the multibillion-dollar commercial sex industry. (“Facts”)

Works Cited

Interlandi, Jeneen. “Ethnic Identity Should Not Be Paramount in Transracial Adoptions.” Gale.

Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Newsweek. 2012. Web. 27 Oct. 2013.

Johnson, Gordon. “Should Black Children Only Be Adopted by Black Parents? No, Above All

Else, a Child Needs a Loving, Permanent Home.” Ebony, Sept. 2008:123 Gale Biography in Context. Web. 26 Oct. 2013.

Lee-St. John, Jeninne. “Should Race Be a Factor in Adoptions?” Time. Time, 27 May 2008. Web.

27 Oct. 2013.

“Facts & Statistics.” Orphan Hope International. n.p. n.d. Web. 5 May 2014.