We knew we would love the baby adopted by us with all our hearts
She generalises to a frightening degree, picking and choosing carefully the information she provides. She writes about the corrupt regimes that encourage adoption of their children and claims “Irish adopters do not want to face the truth that foreign parents have the same feelings of loss that we have.”
This is a very sweeping statement, and a very naive one at that. My wife and I spent years worrying about what was best for these children, before finally deciding to adopt from abroad.
We did not rush into it and, unlike the woman Ms McElhinney quotes in her article, we didn’t do it because we were “selfish” or because it was our “need” for a child.
Of course we wanted a baby, but wanting and needing are too very different things. Our minds were not clouded by our emotions and our decision was very carefully arrived at. We knew this was an enormous and life-long responsibility, and a decision that should never be taken lightly.
We knew we would love the baby adopted by us with all our hearts and hopefully do good by her.
Globally there are many thousands of children in orphanages for many different reasons. They are not all there as a money spinner for governments, as Ms McElhinney would like us to believe. Orphanages don’t exist solely as a result of corruption, and how dare she try to blacken the countries where it does not exist on the epidemic scale that she implies. She has not even been to all of these countries.
My wife and I adopted our daughter over three years ago in Vietnam.
We have many friends who have also adopted children from Vietnam and other countries. In Vietnam many adoptive parents get to meet the child’s birth mother at the time of the adoption and she gets to see and speak with the people who are adopting her baby.
This is not the barbaric ceremony that Ms McElhinney would like everyone to believe is practised.
We can ask the child’s birth mother if she wants us to keep in contact with her as her child grows up. This can be of enormous help to her and can help ease her pain and loss to a certain degree.
In later years it will also be a huge help to the child to be in contact with his or her birth mother and family and to learn of his or her identity, history and culture. We also get to know what the birth mother’s feelings are as time moves on. We have had nothing but positive words from our daughter’s birth mother since her adoption.
The Vietnamese authorities insist we report annually to them on the adopted child’s wellbeing and progress until the child reaches the age of 18. We send health, educational and personal achievement reports until that time. As we are in communication with our child’s birth mother, it is possible for them to meet again in the future if that is what they both want. It is not fair or even factual to imply that corruption controls the destiny of all the children in orphanages around the world. Of course there are countries where corruption is involved.
I would congratulate Ms McElhinney in highlighting this when and where ever it occurs. Corruption exists in every country and in every profession, as we all know. We are intelligent enough to do all we can not to support corruption in any shape or form.
Her recommendation that Irish people send money abroad to an orphanage may be well-intentioned, but this can also easily lead to corruption. I would have thought this would be very obvious to all, especially someone of her expertise on these matters.
I hope her forthcoming book on inter-country adoption will be a little more balanced and a little more humane, but somehow I won’t hold my breath.
Neil Vaughan
White Oaks
Summerhill
Mallow
Co Cork
