Is there a future for adoption? Sure, but there's a lot of work to be done

There are many abuses around foreign adoption. A look at history reveals how things could go so wrong. A National Center of Expertise can prevent many problems in the future.

The adopted Dilani Butink last year took the Dutch State to court over her adoption from Sri Lanka. According to her, the Dutch government has done too little to prevent adoption fraud. (image anp / Phil Nijhuis)

In February of this year, the Intercountry Adoption Investigation Committee led by Tjibbe Joustra published a report on abuses surrounding adoption. The report contains striking recommendations: The government must recognize that it has failed to combat adoption abuses and must temporarily suspend intercountry adoption. Only the procedures that have already started may be completed. According to the committee, intercountry adoption is very susceptible to fraud, both because of the system of private intermediaries and because of the often naive trust in foreign intermediaries. We have known for a long time what incorrect practices are involved: inaccurate background and age data of the adopted child, biological parents who did not know that their child is going abroad, so-called twins who are not twins, child trafficking, and more. Now that many adoptees have reached adulthood, complaints about the manner of departure from their homeland are coming from them. The committee was set up because of these complaints.

In addition to the critical recommendations, the Joustra Commission came up with an important positive proposal. She advocates the establishment of a National Center of Expertise. This center must ensure that knowledge in the field of identity questions, searches of adoptees and aftercare for the entire adoptive family is bundled in one large organization. This will help adoptees in their search for their files, their birth family and in finding the right psychosocial help.

originate

Whether the data was all correct was of less importance to mediators.

How could things go so wrong with these adoptions? In 1956 the first Adoption Act to protect the adoptive family was passed. It had happened too often that pedagogically unsuitable biological parents, whose child had been placed in a foster family, nevertheless demanded their child's return. Partly for this reason, some aspiring adoptive parents preferred to adopt a child from abroad almost immediately after the adoption of the Adoption Act. That is why in the sixties, in addition to Dutch children, children also came from Greece, Germany and Austria. In those years, society became more open and the taboo on adoption decreased. People who couldn't have children spoke more and more about their adoption plans. The number of aspiring adoptive parents increased sharply. At the same time, fewer and fewer Dutch children were given up for adoption. With the introduction of the General Assistance Act (1 January 1965), single mothers were able to take care of their child themselves. Intended parents had to look for other ways to adopt an adopted child. This opportunity came in the form of adopting children from non-European countries. At the end of 1969, the first children came from South Korea, totaling more than four thousand, and from Asia to date twenty-four thousand children. After 1991, China became the most important country: more than seven thousand adopted children have come from here to date. In total, in 2021 this concerns more than forty thousand foreign adopted children.

child in need

The adoptive parents of the seventies are referred to in my Children who could not stay, sixty years of adoption in pictures as the open-idealistic generation. After the traditionally closed adoption generation of the 1960s, this second group of adoptive parents was mainly motivated by the plight of children elsewhere and became enthusiastic about adopting a child in need. Many of them already had children of their own and these parents believed that they could take good care of the adopted child. This period is referred to in the adoption field as the period of the 'pink cloud'.

Stop adopting children from the United States and European countries.

In the 1970s, more and more foreign adopted children came to the Netherlands, with the peak of 1594 children placed in 1980. At the same time, however, the number of complaints about mediation increased. In addition to the large professional Interland Adoption Agency (now Wereldkinderen), twelve new adoption mediators had been added. Their main goal was to place a child in a family as soon as possible. Whether the data was all correct was of less importance.

This becomes painfully clear: In television programs, stories appear about illegal adoptions and about people who went in search of a child in one or another country, the 'do-it-yourselfers'. However, there is hardly any response from the government and it regards these adoptions as a private matter. There is hardly any response to these messages, even if they come from the most reliable organization Wereldkinderen.

parenting problems

Adopted children soon showed (sometimes very difficult) behavioral problems. The mother's divorce, neglect in the country of origin and the transition to a completely different life for the adoptive parents place great demands on these children. From the end of the last century, more and more so-called ' special needs ' children were introduced. A mediator had to explicitly ask parents whether they would accept a child with medical or behavioral problems. Most aspiring adoptive parents wanted to have as young a child as possible, but the proposed children were now on average over three years old. Adoptive parents did not receive any aftercare after the placement of, for example, a six-year-old child or even two to four children at the same time. The private mediator wished the parents good luck, but there was no question of any guidance. Official social workers were sometimes called in much too late by the adoptive parents, and social workers often did not know how to deal with the complex behavioral problems of the adopted child. All these problems prompted the organization Wereldkinderen to establish the ordinariate Adoption at the University of Utrecht, internationally the first professorship in this field.

Because the adoption procedure became more and more expensive - the costs amounted to more than twenty thousand euros - and many other problems were involved, the interest in adoption declined spectacularly in the 1980s and 1990s. In 1993 'only' 574 adopted children were placed. In the mid-1990s, however, more and more children came from China, especially girls. In 2004, eight hundred children came to the Netherlands, almost ninety percent of whom were girls. But this too passed and in 2020 the adoptions from China stopped altogether. In 2019 there were only 145 children and in 2020, partly due to travel restrictions due to corona, only seventy children from a total of eleven countries.

Foreign adoption is disappearing and helping a child in need has long ceased to be the only (important) adoption motive. That is why relatively more children come from the United States (cost: about fifty thousand euros) and from several European countries. The question is whether suitable childcare facilities in their own country could not be found for these children. My proposal is to permanently stop these kinds of adoptions.

There are still four mediators for the current small group of adopted children: the foundations Wereldkinderen, Meiling, A New Way and Nederlandse Adoptie. Years ago, in the context of improving the quality of mediation, there was a plea for more cooperation. It is better to place the still limited foreign adoption entirely with one organization affiliated with the Ministry of Security and Justice. Intended parents who organize the arrival of adopted children are too personally involved. This can be at the expense of the interest of the adopted child. In the case of a child presented in the country of origin, it must first be determined whether there is an (adoption) option in the country of birth. One Dutch official mediator, associated with the ministry, will be approached more cautiously and with more respect abroad.

I also hope that the National Center of Expertise will indeed focus on all children and adults with identity problems. In other words, in addition to adopted children, also children who were born with the help of a donor and/or a surrogate mother. There are now many tens of thousands. There is plenty of work to be done for the new center. <