'The time has come to stop intercountry adoption'

'The narrative about adoption should not be dominated by non-adoptees,' writes Renate Van Geel. 'If you as a society continue to opt for the system of intercountry adoption, you are actually saying: we are prepared to take the gigantic risks and we regard the human toll as collateral damage.'

Because I was adopted myself, I was very touched by the recently published report of the Joustra Commission in the Netherlands. As a result of the structurally proven abuses within intercountry adoption, the Netherlands immediately took an adoption pause. There was a lot of reaction to that decision. All together, these opinions form the existing narrative about adoption.

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The often emotional reactions show that the voices of adoptees have been suppressed for (too) long, that there is a need to be heard and that the narrative should not be dominated by non-adoptees.

However, I read sharp reactions from adoptive parents.

A number of them also feel the urge to make their voices sound (loud). Usually to show that there are also good and positive stories. Their own adopted child then serves as the walking proof for this.

Yet the experiences of other adoptees seem to hurt them in some way, although these experiences say nothing about their own situation. Adoptive parents often appear to feel addressed and even attacked when they learn about the perception of adoptees. Sometimes they even manage to squeeze into a victim position. The perception of adoptees is then questioned, questioned and compared to the perception of their own adopted children.

The time has come to stop intercountry adoption.

Could it be that making room for other experiences, that leaves the door ajar to have your own 'successful' adoption picture punctured? Such a defensive, minimizing attitude does injustice to the experiences of other adoptees. What added value does this have for an adoptive parent who is so sure of the adoption happiness that he experiences together with his adopted children?

Which means that these adoptive parents do not choose to simply listen to the experience of another adoptee in order to view more fully the broad, layered and complex spectrum that is adoption.

Building a socially successful life that you are satisfied with does not in any way preclude bearing loss and trauma from distance and adoption with you, with all the possible consequences and burdens that this entails.

By claiming that your adopted child is happy, coupled with distorted loyalty and separation anxiety, you leave little room for the adoptee to connect with their own feelings and desires and get to know themselves as they really are.

The discontinuation debate has several elements, and I want to address a few of them here.

As a first element, I don't think you can deal with the psychological and neurological impact of distance on children and the reinforcement of this through adoption.

Biological studies confirm the physical and neurological changes in a child, as well as the consequences of trauma on the development of separation between mother and child. These consequences are amplified and repeated by adoptive parents, counselors, therapists and the context in which adoptees grow up. Even the most responsive and balanced adoptive parents will not be able to undo or heal this trauma.

An adoptee has lost all cultural and genetic mirrors in addition to his parents and family. Adoptive parents can try to be the best possible adoptive parents, but they will never be the (only) parents. This does not alter the fact that there can be a loving, warm and sincere relationship.

However, when you try to put the position and meaning of the parents into perspective or even deny them, you simultaneously deny part of your child, then you say about your adopted child that part of him does not exist and should not be there. The (hidden) 'battle' that adoptive parents sometimes seem to have for the loyalty of 'their' child damages the child and is actually a non-issue. Unless your adopted child was actually born from the belly of the plane, your child will (also) have another mother.

In order to teach your adopted child to live with the above trauma and its consequences, it is actually necessary as a parent to have insight into their own sensitivities in terms of loss and rejection. Guidance to create awareness about the dynamics that play a role in the adoptive parents in interaction with their adopted child seems to me preventively useful and necessary, it does not need / should not be delayed until potential problems arise. The fierce plea for aftercare that is currently being made by many adoptees is in line with this.

A second element, which is often left out of the picture in the current discussion, is adoption as a form of neo-colonialism.

Deep-rooted, colonial beliefs help determine the prevailing image of adoption for many years. It is hardly questioned that rich white people buy a 'poor child'. It is automatically assumed that the 'poor child' is by definition better off here and is 'helped' because it is allowed to grow up here. Do you also feel that endless gratitude bubbling up?

Even my then six-year-old daughter could clearly articulate the link with colonial ideas, namely that certain people with money think they can irrevocably determine and change the lives of others, whereby the feelings of 'the other' are apparently less important than their own wishes. and desires.

It is absolutely true that there is still a lot of room for progress in many countries with regard to assistance, youth assistance and youth protection. Have you ever needed youth assistance of any kind in Flanders? Then you would undoubtedly run into endless waiting lists and difficult to find appropriate, accessible help. You will agree with me that Flanders has no lessons to give to any country in the organization of its aid landscape. In Flanders, too, children are placed in institutions because their parents 'cannot take care of them'. These children are just not bought by wealthy people from another continent who, out of a misguided sense of superiority, think that they can take better care of them.

As a final element, there is also the fact that adoption is a system in which abuse and deceit have smoothly found their way for decades.

I hope that no (prospective) adoptive parent is asking for a kidnapped or fraudulently adopted child. But the demand coming from European countries does contribute to a (potentially fraudulent) system, and is even an essential part of it.

If you are aware of the possible risks and misfortunes (kidnapping, falsification of documents, lies to birth parents, etc.), do you want to run this risk?

I invite people who claim that some mothers choose to give up their child voluntarily to reflect on the interpretation of voluntary and choosing. Due to pressure, coercion, if you like, of financial, social, psychological and societal influences, it seems difficult to speak of voluntary choice.

If, with the knowledge of today (and since when have we actually known about these situations?), You choose to adopt, does that choice also include the decision to ignore risks and put your individual interests first? Do not implicitly say that you want a child without being completely sure that another mother had to lose her child because of it, with the chances that you will one day have to tell that child that he or she will never know who he or she is.

Again, which (prospective) parent wants to take this risk? And that (prospective) adoptive parents were not aware? That may have been the case decades ago, but the Hague Adoption Convention dates back to the early 1990s and was created to protect against illegal, wrongful, premature and ill-prepared adoptions.

If you are aware of the misunderstandings, but choose conscious ignorance for your own peace of mind and assume that this was / will not be the case with 'your' child, are you only naive, co-responsible or also complicit?

Repeat, pause, stop?

Adoption is based on looking for a child for a (childless) couple, instead of the other way around. Many adoptees would never have grown up in their adoptive family if these people had been able to have children 'themselves'. However painful unwanted childlessness may be, the right to children is non-existent.

Adoption is part of an economic profit model that earns a lot of money from the harrowing human suffering of families of origin and adoptees.

The money that goes into the adoption system could also be used, for example, to guide and support parents in countries of origin, as well as to organize alternatives to adoption in the countries of origin.

All things considered, I am in favor of ending intercountry adoption.

If you as a society continue to opt for the system of intercountry adoption, you are actually saying: we are prepared to take the gigantic risks and we regard the human toll as collateral damage.

As long as the demand can be asked, supply will be sought.

The argument that adoption cannot be banned because people will then look for illegal ways to continue adoption does not make sense in my view. The fear that a ban will be flouted has never stopped other bans from being instituted. Moreover, adoptions are already happening illegally.

By setting limits on something, as a society you give the signal that this goes against what you as a society stand for and choose for, that you want to look for alternatives and solutions to problems that will inevitably arise.

The time has come to do this for intercountry adoption.

Renate Van Geel studied Applied Psychology and Social and Cultural Anthropology and has been working as a youth counselor for 11 years. She was adopted when she was 4 months old. After 36 years she visits Korea for the first time. You can follow her stories on her blog and on Instagram .

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