Reflections on an international tragedy

The New York Times yesterday published an article describing an "international adoption" of a Russian child by an American family which went horribly wrong, "World of Grief and Doubt after an Adoptee's Death," and the paper asked families with their own international adoption stories to comment.

As an adoptive parent, the article hit hard, and I have mixed feelings about the article and, more broadly, about the process.

Don't get me wrong: adopting my daughter was the best decision of my life, and I have never regretted bringing her into my life, not even during those darker moments of adolescence which bring angst to nearly every parent. She has enriched and enlarged my life in ways I could never have imagined; the journey has been - and continues to be - a wonderful journey.

When I met her twenty years ago she was 18 months of age, living in an orphanage in northeast Moscow; she's now starting her senior year at a good, small liberal arts college in the mid-Atlantic region. It's been a long road with more than a few potholes along the way, but it's been a good journey. There were thirteen years of ballet and several years of softball - oddly, the love of baseball endures the more. There was an assortment of the other sorts of activities typical of a bourgeois American child, too, from gymnastics to scouting to horses; you name it. She was a high school cheerleader who earned praiseworthy academic awards. Her social life was probably a little cloistered but not terribly unusual for her day and age. All in all, a childhood seemingly typical of her community. Through it all, she's always known - and been proud - that she is Russian.

Some of those potholes along the way were my fault. There really is no school or standard text for parenting; for such an essential task one is remarkably dependent on extemporized, seat-of-the-pants learning, and I certainly made my mistakes along the way. Still, I think the worst of the potholes stemmed from those first eighteen months. The staff at the orphanage were clearly loving care-givers, but they were overwhelmed by the numbers and she naturally didn't get the sort of parental care and nurturing that every infant deserves, and that has echoed down through the years as she's dealt with feelings of rejection, abandonment and loneliness, as well as delayed intellectual, emotional and even physical development. Her road has been the harder for that, and she has had to work hard and continues to work diligently to overcome those shortcomings. Perhaps she never ill, although I am optimistic that she's been developing the coping skills to manage the problems she can't overcome. Still, by this point in her life, I do believe that she's on a par with her "biological" peers, and she (rightfully!) feels loved by her parents.

For her, I think the "bottom line," such as it can be stated now, is that her future looks good, and she'll be ready to face what it brings. Moreover, it can safely be said that her life to date and her future are immeasurably better than the prospect faced by the scores of children she left behind at that orphanage.

But her and my very positive outcomes should not blind prospective parents to the dangers involved in international adoption, and probably in adoption generally.

Let's face it: babies born into loving families capable and willing to raise them as they should be raised simply are not placed for adoption. No, they become available because their birth parents cannot or will not care for them (think: the pernicious effects of poverty, or nonexistent prenatal care, or simple abandonment), or because their own shortcomings, habits and failings carry consequences that reach far into the children's futures (think: fetal alcohol syndrome or physical abuse).

So the children who do become available for adoption come with onerous baggage that will impede them all along their journey, and their parents will need to reach deeper into themselves - and to develop a larger repertoire of parenting skills, and require greater emotional reserves - than they will ever have imagined. Quite probably, more than most "biological" parents ever need.

That is most definitely not to say that the rewards aren't there, for they are - more than I ever imagined. But would-be parents who in their naivete or ignorance never bother to learn these realties and honestly assess their own ability and willingness to deal with them will do themselves and their children real and lasting harm. The parents will face disappointment, frustration and failure, and their children will suffer for it through the rest of their lives.