If kids are 'better off,' does it matter whether they are adopted or abducted?

Jane

“But aren’t they better off”? That’s the question that’s always asked when people learn about the possibility that a child adopted illegally may be returned to his original family. The unstated hubris is that children are always better off with middle class American families than say, with a single Dad in Virginia, poor parents in rural China, or a couple in impoverished Guatemala.

A Guatemalan Court has ordered that seven year old Karen Abigail be returned to her parents, Loyda and Dayner Rodriguez. If her adoptive parents, Jennifer and Timothy Monahan of Liberty Missouri, fail to return Karen by September 29, the Court will fine them $3,000 Quetzales (about $389) and order Guatemalan authorities to work with US authorities and the International Police (INTERPOL) to find Karen and return her to her real parents.

Karen, whose real name is Anyeli Liseth Hernandez Rodriguez, was abducted from her home in 2006 and sold in the adoption market. The Monahans applied to adopt a child through Celebrate Children, a Florida-based Christian non-profit. The agency director, Sue Hedberg, offered them Karen who had been brought to the agency’s attention by a Guatemalan, Marvin Bran. However when a DNA test revealed that the woman who relinquished Karen was not her mother, Hedberg suggested to Jennifer Monahan that Bran could take the child to an orphanage and have her declared abandoned which would obviate the need for a DNA test. This plan worked and the Monahans took Karen to Missouri in 2008.

Through meticulous detective work, Loyda Rodriguez discovered what had happened to her daughter. She and her husband filed an action for Karen’s return and a DNA test revealed that Loyda was Karen’s mother. The Monahan have not talked to the media but hired Peter Mirijanian, of a Washington DC based public relations firm, who stated the Monahans “will continue to advocate for the safety and best interests of their legally adopted child.”

It’s a safe bet that with Mirijanian’s help, the Monahans will play “the better off " card (i. e. best interests of the child).” The "better off" argument in its extreme is another form of eugenics. (If society can’t keep defectives from breeding, at least it can keep them from raising their offspring.) Like eugenics, however, mass adoptions like we saw in the Baby Scoop Era (1945 to 1973) do not make a dent in social problems. Bringing twenty thousand or so children from poor countries to the US each year does nothing for the millions of children living in horrendous circumstances all over the world.

Arguably, of course, any particular child might be better off with a different set of parents. When I grew up, I thought it would be dandy if my parents were Rockefellers.

While there are clear cases of children “better of” because of adoption, there are also clear cases of “worse off” children. On September 16 Michael and Annette Craver were convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the death of their seven year old son adopted from Russia. Christopher Sutton, whom we wrote about here, is serving a life sentence for the murder of his adoptive mother and the attempted murder of his adoptive father.

For most children, however, it’s impossible to know whether they would be better off. As Jane JeongTrenka, a Korean adoptee wrote in The Language of Blood:

“Would I rather have not been adopted? I don’t know. ... How can I weigh the loss of my language and culture against the freedom that America has to offer, the opportunity to have the same rights as a man? How can a person exiled as a child, without a choice, possibly fathom how he would have ‘turned out’ had he stayed in Korea? How many educational opportunities must I mark on my tally sheet before I can say it was worth losing my mother? How can an adoptee weigh her terrible loss against the burden of gratitude she feels for her adoptive country and parents?”

What we do know, however, is that in accepting the “better off argument,” society is condoning child abduction and ultimately the mass redistribution of children from the powerless to the powerful.

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While I'm writing about corruption in adoption, we note that Armenia has joined Guatemala, China, Cambodia, Ethiopia and many other nations where illegal and unethical adoption practices abound.

For more on this story see: US Won't Return Adopted Child snatched from Guatemalan mother