Selling Your Child
Adoption in the United States is on the rise. Each year, 150,000 children are adopted. The reasons for doing so are infertility, social pressure, or even religious motives,…
However, parents adopting children can legally “get rid of them” for $1500 : a practice called “rehoming,” a term ordinarily used for animals exchanges. Basically, families can return the child they adopted just like they would with faulty goods. According to the American government, 1/5 children is sent back. It can happen at any time and for any excuse: because they can’t handle the child’s difficult behaviour, or he has a unusual appearance,… Children are naturally bewildered; especially when they are being “returned” after a few years growing in a family they considered theirs, and have to be re-homed.
A second-hand market then starts. About ten private agencies made of re-adoption a real profitable business. The agency publishes online an ad of the child. The child is literally advertised like second-hand good. His qualities put forwards, he’s described as the perfect kid. Only at the end are his flaws and problems written in a few words. Reduced to small ads, their fate hangs by a thread, their future changed just by a clic. The real question is: how can one abandon/give up on a child, after making the decision and getting the right, the chance to raise him?
In this recent documentary called “Adoption in the USA — a scandalous children market” broadcast on M6 (a French TV channel) on February 11, 2018, families are being interviewed.
The first couple adopted a boy named Michael six years ago. He was just a few days old when he was taken from his biological drugged family. The couple originally adopted him because they weren’t able to have a child by themselves. Then the woman gets pregnant twice; everything is fine so far. Except she gets pregnant a third time… And there, with two biological children, Michael, the adopted one, became the superfluous child. The woman defends herself saying she “can’t afford to have four children. He has attachment disorder and has difficulties controlling his emotions.” The couple warned him three months early that he is going to be put back up for adoption, after SIX YEARS of raising him. Obviously, he wants to enjoy his last moments with the adults he calls “mum and dad.” This is how Michael is going to go through not a second, but a third abandonment. He grew up in chaos. But the sad truth is, like too many other children in his case, he doesn’t own his future.
In some cases, it’s the children that struggle to find parents, and not the opposite.
By sending back children they adopted, families hope to start a new life without problems, although it’s often the opposite happening: they feel remorse as they’re being judged by their surroundings. It’s the case in another family. A couple have two children: one is biological and the other adopted. They decide to adopted another child. But he has behavioural disorders. Yet, it’s only eight years later that the mother decides to pull away from him. Nothing is left from him in her house, except one picture. That is it. It had an impact on the mother’s life, the family and her way of educating in general. It even caused depression: “I didn’t want to get separated from him. I was devastated, I lost a son. I still love him. I still consider him as my child. I just didn’t succeed raising him.”
A third family carries hope despite those previous testimonies, showing that families are not all bad. They are a large family, entirely recomposed with adopted kids. The couple is driven by religion, and wish to offer a stable family life, teach them to be autonomous and have responsibilities. 11 year-old Sam has his face partly covered by a birthmark. He arrives in this new family, still traumatised by a succession of abandonments. He was adopted by an American couple before. They didn’t bond, as he didn’t speak a word of English, and they weren’t really interested in him either. He had several transplant surgeries on the only year he was living with them. They eventually said “we spent thousands of dollars on you, and still you’re not happy?”. They didn’t want him anymore, and warned him two days before that he’s going to have to leave. How can one trust adults after that, and start over with a new family, again? “It took me about a year to understand I wouldn’t have to leave my new family… I was prepared to leave again,” Sam declares.
The government hurts children it is supposed to protect. This phenomenon led to wayward trends like mistreatment: the dark fate of several-times-abandoned children can become tragic. When they are not being adopted again, the American government is taking over and puts them in a foster family. Yet, there are more children waiting to be adopted than there are host families. Then social assistance is not being cautious enough anymore on who is adopting children. In 2014, a video came out of a mother punishing her adoptive son by making him eat hot sauce and putting him under a cold shower.
In the American press on January, 2016, a man in Long Island (New York) is accused of abusing tens of children he adopted. Single and unemployed, he was payed to welcome disabled kids no one wanted to adopt. In New York, there are 20,000 children put up for adoption, and only 12,000 foster homes. One gets more money for adopting children in difficulties because it’s harder for them to find a home. This man made it his speciality: he earned $2,400 by child, a month. The children were trapped inside his pitiful house, without any social life. They suffered from physical and psychic pain, and intimidation. Between 2001 and 2016, social services received 18 complaints again Cesar, which were dismissed. He was acquitted, due to a lack of proves.
6/50 American states just passed a law on rehoming, penalising parents abusing the system. 5 of those states have already voted for the prohibition of parents abandoning their adopted children. If they still do so, they risk prison and a big fine.
Sadly, The US is the country adopting the most children… and the one giving up on them the most too.
