Here's a graph from the New York Times on source countries for adoptions by American parents. The usual pattern appears to be that American agencies discover a country where orphans are poorly cared for, kind-hearted Americans looking to adopt offer to take unwanted children off their hands, the frequency builds, but then generates a nationalist backlash of shame and anti-Americanism that encourages the source countries to crack down on adoptions by Americans and (hopefully) start being more civilized toward their own kids.
As tumultuous as these cycles must feel to all concerned, I would say the process generally represents progress.
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Or maybe, no one wanted to adopt NAM kids until Jolie and her ilk made it a "cool thing" for SWPLs to do....
Russia became wealthier under Putin, at least compared to the Yeltsin years. China became wealthier too during the period shown on that graph. I'm sure that those were factors.
This is directly related to the recent Yakovlev Act Russian retaliation for the US Magnitsky Act. In brief, Magnitsky died in Russia and his supporters in the US pushed through a law that threatens many Russian govt officials with criminal penalties if they arrive or park money in the US. In retaliation, Yakovlev was a Russian adoptee who died in the US.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/russia-magnitsky-retaliation-bill-approved-164036237.html
The recent press conference by Putin is really worth reading and he covers Magnitsky:
http://eng.kremlin.ru/transcripts/4779
Steve, you're the only one that could get to the bottom of this. What did Magnitsky actually do? I have a feeling he was trying to screw the Russians in some way.
Steve, I guess I'm more cynical than you. My guess is that a particular new source of babies becomes hip, and everyone wants one because they're new. After a few years, your old friends have Romanian (or whatever) children that aren't cute babies anymore, and that seems so last year, so you find some new, cool source no one else has heard of, and the trend shifts there.
"My guess is that a particular new source of babies becomes hip, and everyone wants one because they're new."
No, I think it's more driven by squeezing down of old sources of supply, as you can see in this graph here. South Korea, for example, was long a source of unwanted babies, but South Korea is increasingly rich and anti-American, and the combination has driven them toward more American standards of caring for orphans so that they don't feel shame.
One thing that sticks out from the chart is that the actual numbers are very small. Foreign adoption sounds like the sort of phenomenon that gets much more attention that its actual prevalence would merit.
Peter
Good move by the Russians. They realize their white children are their future, and a precious resource. They don't want them going to waste by being raised in America.
There's a bit of demand-side wising-up in there too, especially with respect to Russia which tricked a bunch of Americans into adopting crack whores' psycho offspring in the early 2000's.
The girls from China averaged a lot more reasonable as they matured, but as you say, the Chinese themselves began to feel guilt and regret at allowing those orphans to leave the country.
Getting to join the EU was the cause of Romania shutting down foreign adoptions, so the sense of shame was forced on them externally. I do give them some credit that more people did recognise that it was a national shame, which was part of the entire process for gearing up for EU membership.
My two were among the last to get out of Romania before the doors closed in June 2001. There was a blip again later, as some children were still in the queue, with American parents wanting desperately to complete the process they had begun. Condi Rice was a major factor in finessing that.
@ Cail Corishev: Walk a mile in our shoes before you make such an accusation. You have no fucking clue what you are talking about, and it is obvious that you draw your data from headlines and imagination rather than actual people that you know.
Perhaps related: The foreign-adoption and special-needs adoption communities overlap with the evangelical community quite a bit, and some of the countries noted - Guatemala, Ukraine, Russia are also countries that had a lot of short-term missionaries of medical and building-help teams. Adoptions followed that rather than led that. Note the graph as compared to the collapse of the Iron Curtain.
Can Russia ever do anything wrong? The way paleocons shill for an odious gangster state like Russia reminds me of nothing so much as the lefts refusal to criticize minorities. Poland is a pretty anti-liberal state not run by sociopaths why don't you make that your pet country. AIPAC has nothing on the paleocon Russophiles.
Re: Magnitsky--the Hermitage investment firm he represented has offices in the Cayman Islands. Is that a red flag?
"Poland is a pretty anti-liberal state..."
I don't think that's true. And if it really were anti-liberal, the Western press would be against it. Judging by your tone, you'd probably be against it too.
European countries that the NYT, etc. hate the most (besides Russia) are Belarus and Hungary. I know that the first of these really is run on conservative principles. I'm guessing that the second is too, but that's only from looking at the Western media's response.
What's interesting is that almost all of the Chinese babies were female.
I went to the local UPS store to get some papers noterized and there was a French guy, with an older French woman, getting a new-born photographed for a passport.
Later I got the rest of the story.
The French guy was part of a gay couple and the two guys had adopted an American baby. Guess the woman was the mother of the gay guy.
Funny what people will do to get an anchor baby.
It looks like USA adoptions of foreign children simply collapsed with the implosion of the financial sector in 2008 and the ensuing Obama presidency.
You've got to hand it to those devilishly clever Rooskies who have the Americans begging and then demanding to get what they themselves really don't want. Right now it's "special needs" orphans (or kids who really aren't but were ditched). Beg and plead a little harder and we might relent. Kind of how they finally let go of all their older Soviet Jews who then immediately went on welfare, medicaid and section 8 over here en masse.
...and (hopefully) start being more civilized to their own kids.
This 'hopefully' is the same type of fantasy thinking that (rightfully) is ridiculed here when other subjects come up.
At least the Reds usually imprisoned adults in its 'First Circle' of Hell.
Whatever. I'm probally more conservative than you I just think that if you are gonna whine about the USS liberty you might want to save some indignation for the country that sent nukes to Cuba.
Steve, Given the massive plunge towards ideocracy as the IQ drops in the USA, isn't the answer a diplomatic initiative to open up North Korea as a source of babies
As everyone here knows, Koreans have genetic iq that averages about 105 and due to females in the usa delaying childbirth there is an epidemic of infertility and demand for about four hundred thousand babies a year in the USA. Why not cut a deal with north korea to supply the 400 thousand unwanted newborns a year to us parents that need them
Actually, I just think it's a fad.
Ethiopia was a big fad thing, and I'm basing this off people I know in real life not my imagination.
But please let the 'Liberal Christians' feel like they aren't stealing children.
You preach to and create networks for orphans, you don't personally start a 'children of the UN' collection in your house.
Magnitsky was a Russian tax lawyer who uncovered a racket where wealthy Russians were bribing tax officials in return for looking the other way. A lot of the people he named where very close to Putin which is why he was sent to prison and while there he was murdered. The same thing that will probably happen to Kordakovsky before he gets out of the big house.
Just now noticed the HBD bibliography on your blog roll side, Steve.
Thanks. I've often suggested books to a few progressive, creationist friends. This will come in handy.
It turns out the Chinese found out about gay couples in the US adopting and turned off the spigot. Not exactly improved economic reasons.
South Korea doesn't have the same boom and bust cycle as the rest, though if you looked back to the 50s or 60s, it might. There's a drop-off, but that may be more related to economics in the U.S. than to anything happening in South Korea.
My guess is that South Korean orphanages are decent enough, and that the South Koreans have gotten over the "shame" of having babies adopted to the U.S., but they're still orphanages, and the South Korean government would rather have the babies adopted to a rich country (especially by ethnic Koreans?) than languish in an orphanage.
So does anon @ 2:51 fell pretty crappy about himself right now? Guess we could go the greater truth route, but the only problem with that is that it would be adopting the same tactics as the duke lacrosse case demagogues.
South Korea doesn't have the same boom and bust cycle as the rest, though if you looked back to the 50s or 60s, it might. There's a drop-off, but that may be more related to economics in the U.S. than to anything happening in South Korea.
My guess is that South Korean orphanages are decent enough, and that the South Koreans have gotten over the "shame" of having babies adopted to the U.S., but they're still orphanages, and the South Korean government would rather have the babies adopted to a rich country (especially by ethnic Koreans?) than languish in an orphanage.
A couple of reasons why South Korean adoption numbers are more consistent than other countries is because of the US military presence and Christian church networks. Large numbers Korean kids are adopted by US military members, especially Mormons. Also, the Christian churches in S. Korea are networked with churches worldwide.
After the Korean War, many orphans were adopted by surviving relatives or family friends. But many of those situations turned out negatively from a general lack of resources. It's important to remember that S Korea used to be the poorest country in the world for more than a decade. This turned into a callousness to adoption during Korea's lean years in the 50's, 60's, and 70's, as in "Why adopt, when those resources could better provide for your own children" or "I wonder what genetic/mental defects were inherited"
Any drop in adoptions of S. Koreans isn't due to a lack of interest internationally, but it has more to do with more middle-class Koreans adopting. Supply isn't what it used to be.
Also, orphanages in S Korea (I volunteered a lot, while I was stationed there) aren't your traditional orphanages. Many of the kids there actually have parents. There are two types of boarders at orphanages, with parent/without parent.
The without parent orphans are almost all adopted in infancy (usually given up by an unmarried birth mother)
The with parent orphans are usually not up for adoption, unless interest is expressed by a super well-to-do family. These are generally children of the homeless or single poor working class mother. It is supposed to be temporary, but can go for years. The parents, even the homeless, visit during weekends. The idea is like an extended daycare so that once a parent gets back on their feet, they can come and claim their child again. The reason why they have this system, is because they don't have a US styled welfare system. A US styled welfare system, keeping a family together, is only reserved for 3rd world refugees.
Gay marriage is a far bigger issue than Magnitsky in Eastern Europe. It hasn't been reported here in the US, but that's what's driving anti-adoption sentiment most of all. It's very, very contentious in the old Warsaw Pact/FSU. The common term for homosexual in most of these countries remains "pederast."
Did you say Romanian adoptions? Funny, one of those who's now all grown up has been in the news a lot in my area.
Are there really people who would trade self rule for the possibility of maybe increasing the mean IQ. In two generations Koreans are going to smell like cabbage but vote like Jews. Frankfort on the Yalu. lovely
For a moment I was worried: What if this trend should spread to Africa? And then to the Caribbean? Where would white Hollywood celebrities get black kids to adopt? Then I remembered that illegitimacy among American Blacks is sky high, and so realized that there would probably always be an adequate supply. Whew, what a relief.
"What's interesting is that almost all of the Chinese babies were female."
Even more interesting when you consider that there have to be a lot more male infants than female infants in China, thanks to their one-shild policy.. This strikes me as American parents (subconsciously) choosing the low risk-lower reward child fecundity strategy versus the high risk-higher reward child fecundity strategy. An Asian daughter in America gives you much better odds at (high quality) grandchildren than does an Asian son in America, for whom competition to attract a mate in the sexual market will be more severe, as it must be for boys, but as it is especially so for Asian men who are generally more androgynous than white or black men.
Now whether this perceived grandchild skew is true in the modern context matters not to the eons-old subconscious evolved calculations that people make about these sorts of things.
At least the Reds usually imprisoned adults in its 'First Circle' of Hell.
I thought the First Circle was only for the most useful knowledge workers.
people adopting foreign babies, especially when they are able to have their own children, is creepy.
The "Romanian" adoption racket collapsed because folks wised up that 95% of the babies being exported weren't Romanians at all--they were (very)low IQ Gypsies. As Steve quoted Krusty the Klown: "The bigger they get, the cuter they ain't".
One interesting aspect (caveat: it is very hard to break out adopting parent ethnicity in the data, so while this is anecdotal, I'm speaking--as a lawyer in East Coast SWPL communities--from a very wide gamut of anecdote) is that the great majority of the Scots-Irish parents' adopting (and there are a lot of these--late-marriage infertility is endemic in that community) internationally went with Guatemalan and Chinese agencies. Russian and Ukrainian babies were not favored--could this be residual resentment over pogroms 120 years ago?
Now that the PRC and Guatemalan spigots are closed, I think the previous commenter suggesting North Korea as the Next Big Source is spot-on. Until then, the big money is in donor eggs: a Scots-Irish lass in one of the Ivies, or even a state school, can look to finance her education from her ovaries.
"My guess is that a particular new source of babies becomes hip, and everyone wants one because they're new."
As Steve said, it's far more about supply and demand, and this is *really* misunderstood by the average American. Most people have no idea that the demand for foreign adoptions by Americans greatly exceeds the supply.
I'm on my way to getting IVF because of a medical problem that impedes normal conception, and you wouldn't believe the number of people who tell me "Why don't you just adopt a baby from overseas? There are so many children worldwide just waiting for a good home!" No, actually there aren't all that many, and even if there are, nobody wants to give them up.
Also, it's popular on the blogosphere to talk about how "hip" international adoption is, because it's done by all the celebrities.
This is untrue. Most non-celebrities adopting internationally are extremely untrendy Evangelicals. The reason it's so popular in Hollywood is because many female celebrities are infertile and won't say so publicly, both because infertility is still a taboo subject, and because it makes them look old. A thirtysomething actress with the flawless skin of a 23-year-old doesn't want to admit to the world that her ovaries aren't working any more, any more than a male celebrity wants to call attention to the fact that he's only 5 foot 7 and has to wear actor heels.
Well, Russians and other parts of Eastern Europe are Eastern Orthodox why should those children be adopted by Evangelicals since they have a different religous tradition. Eastern European countries are poor, Russia has a per Capita like Mexico's but if it wants the kids to be Russian or Eastern Orthodox what wrong with that. If adults in Russia want to become Evangelicals that their choice but the kids are a different story.
I suspect that most white people adopting non-white kids suffer from pathological altruism:
http://www.amren.com/features/2012/07/pathological-altruism/
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Better dead than evangelical like they say.
A thirtysomething actress with the flawless skin of a 23-year-old doesn't want to admit to the world that her ovaries aren't working any more,
Many of those actresses (and models, and corporate yuppiesses, and jockettes) never ever had working ovaries for the simple reason of being underweight. But they look and feel healthy, and everyone thinks they are healthy, so that pretty well defines their reality.
The adopt-a-Chinese-baby thing has always tickled me. EVEYTHING the couple has is Made in China. Even their baby. They don't admit to making their own genes. Oh, I know some are infertile, but you'd be surprised at how many really think they're doing the world a favor by not reproducing themselves and faclitating the reproduction and raising of non-whites, who, except of course for their own dear, adopted ones, are more like to favor their own race when they grow up, if people of their own race are anywhere around.
I used to think inter-racial adoption was a wonderful, new-age thing that would get us past war, hate and food aversions.
Now I just think it's kind of weird, in most cases. Not really good for the children or the parents. The Chinese can afford to take care of their own "orphans." They've been given our entire industrial base, very nearly.
"Even more interesting when you consider that there have to be a lot more male infants than female infants in China, thanks to their one-shild policy" - not necessarily. these could be the girls who were born but ultimately abandoned due to the policy in the 1st place.
A lot of anonymi speculating without any real data here. Foreign adoption seems to be something of a Rorschach Test.
And anecdotes are just exactly like data, eh?
Sorry reality is hard to bear for you guys. But if you take a little in small doses, you can work up to being an actual adult someday.
"I used to think inter-racial adoption was a wonderful, new-age thing that would get us past war, hate and food aversions."
The KEY THING IS it was all only ONE WAY. It was WHITES adopting NON-WHITES, almost NEVER the reverse. There was no reciprocity. The non-white races never signed on to the project. It was and is just another dumb liberal idea that has no roots in history or facts.
"and (hopefully) start being more civilized toward their own kids"
Is there evidence for that in most of those countries? South Korea I'll buy, not sure about the rest.
Ethiopia? Wtf is Ethiopia doing in the list at all? Insanity.
Can Russia ever do anything wrong? The way paleocons shill for an odious gangster state like Russia reminds me of nothing so much as the lefts refusal to criticize minorities. Poland is a pretty anti-liberal state not run by sociopaths why don't you make that your pet country. AIPAC has nothing on the paleocon Russophiles.
Not even close. When the Russians act in what they perceive to be their interests they dont pretend its for our own good. Im not aware of a huge, wealthy, powerful Russian diaspora shilling for Russia either.
the South Korean government would rather have the babies adopted to a rich country (especially by ethnic Koreans?) than languish in an orphanage.
Good point. When I think of Americans adopting Korean babies of course I picture real Americans rather than 'Americans' ie Koreans in the US. It would be interesting to know if they were the main customers for Korean babies.
Roissy - Even more interesting when you consider that there have to be a lot more male infants than female infants in China, thanks to their one-shild policy
Which means the burgeoning gender imbalance in China is just that little bit more severe than we might presume just from the births alone.
I'm sitting in a coffee shop right now watching a middle-aged white woman trying to teach her seven-year old adopted black child to read using comic books!
This woman and her husband are just the sort of liberal do-gooders (they occasionally wear matching COEXIST t-shirts) as your Hollywood crowd. They have a natural daughter, the pastiest redhead you've ever seen, who's been publicly browbeaten into overachievement by her parents. She now has to watch her parents treat her new "brother" (the Science Experiment, as the regulars call him) with such gentle, tender care. We all figure her high school yearbook will list her as "Most Likely To Cut Herself".
How could they pretend? They pretended it was in Africa and Asia's interest because that was who they were trying to convince to go along. Are you retarded? Why on earth would you try to convince your enemy that you were acting in their interest. You are right about one thing. The paleocon Russian amen chorus certainly wouldn't strike anyone as rich or powerful. Angry, old, and deluded is more like it.
We all figure her high school yearbook will list her as "Most Likely To Cut Herself".
Why don't they homeschool anyway?
Here's the prequel to Magnitsky's death, as laid out by his employer, William Browder of the Hermitage investment fund. If he's telling anywhere near the truth it doesn't look good.
http://ukcommentators.blogspot.co.uk/2009/09/vacuum-wrapped-in-nullity-inside-abyss.html
"Simply put, Russia is not a “state” as we understand it. Government institutions have been taken over as conduits for private interests, some of them criminal. Property rights no longer exist, people who are supposed to enforce the law are breaking it, innocent people are victimised and courts have turned into political tools.
Rather than a normally functioning bureaucracy, Russia’s clans fight over control of government positions and the power to use state resources to expropriate assets...
First, the Russian police raided our offices and took all our corporate documents. These were used fraudulently to re-register our investment holding companies into the names of convicted felons. The same documents were used to fabricate backdated contracts the criminals then “enforced” in Russian courts, which obligingly awarded them $974m in fake damages – helped by a guilty plea from lawyers falsely claiming to represent us. The criminals used these fake losses to claim a fraudulent refund of $230m of taxes we had paid in 2006, which was paid out to them in just two days. This despite us reporting the unfolding fraud to Russia’s top law enforcement officials 21 days before the tax money was stolen.
Foreign investors get ripped off all the time in many countries. What makes this story unique is the state officials working together to steal $230m from the Russian state itself. The sharks have started to feed on their own blood.
What makes it even more worrying is that the Russian government took no action to recover the money when we reported the crime. Rather than going after the rogue officials and criminals, the government turned the full weight of the law enforcement apparatus against us for reporting it. They arrested our lawyer, Sergey Magnitsky, who uncovered the tax rebate fraud. He has since been kept in pre-trial detention on cases I believe were fabricated. Six other lawyers who filed criminal complaints or helped discover the fraud were harassed and fled Russia for safety."
Laban
Serious Boston lefties DON'T home school! That would mean that the public schools are failures. Just because they are doesn't mean they'll admit it.
Serious Boston lefties DON'T home school! That would mean that the public schools are failures. Just because they are doesn't mean they'll admit it.
Lefties love the idea of public school so much, that they will ruin the lives of their children by dumping them into public schools they know are failures. Sounds like leftoid logic, all right.
The same applies with homosexuals. Though in their case, they rarely have children of their own, so it is other, younger queers they discourage from homeschooling or unschooling. By any reasonable analysis, HSing is the best thing they can do to protect themselves from possible persecution. I have my own theories on that.
"The KEY THING IS it was all only ONE WAY. It was WHITES adopting NON-WHITES, almost NEVER the reverse. There was no reciprocity. The non-white races never signed on to the project. It was and is just another dumb liberal idea that has no roots in history or facts." - Worse, it was about turning non-white children into status symbols, which should be inherently disgusting to everyone. reciprocity in this instance is something that I'm glad we did without.
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