Opinion: Or should we stop adopting altogether? (Hoksbergen - no)
After an adoption stop of a year, adoptions from abroad will soon be resumed, under stricter conditions. But wouldn't it have been wiser to stop intercountry adoptions altogether?
Last week, Minister Franc Weerwind for Legal Protection presented a proposal on how to proceed with the intercountry adoption system, which had previously been fiercely criticized by the Joustra Committee, after which the then Minister Dekker promptly suspended all adoptions.
The 'polder solution' that is now before us is that adoption will continue, but that four intermediary agencies will be reduced to one foundation, which the government can monitor more closely. Weerwind itself wonders how the required substantial investment relates to the decreasing number of adoptions, sometimes under a hundred children each year. The question is: wouldn't it be wiser to stop altogether?
Inez Teurlings, on behalf of the Interlandelijk Adoptees Foundation (SIG) and self-adopted:
'There is always a cost-benefit analysis below the line, but the fundamental and moral choice is whether child protection should be allowed to bear a price? No, we don't think so. You must maintain an adoption system at all times because there are always parents who do not want, cannot or are not allowed to be a parent. And a child in a home has no future, science is clear about that.
'If I had not been taken from a home in Bangladesh at the time, I would have had no family and no opportunities; now I do have family, even a child, and plenty of opportunities. And according to CBS research, 70 percent of those adopted from abroad in the Netherlands think so positively. Many have ended up very well. Stop with the rosy Spoorloo s image with roots travel, where adopted children fall into the arms of their biological parents: that is not the whole reality, there are sometimes no parents or the situation in the home country is dramatic. And a woman who gives up her child, She decides , is also entitled to a good adoption system. In addition, we do not believe that children should pay for corruption and mistakes made in the adoption system in the past.'
Pien Bos, assistant professor at the University of Humanistics and PhD for research centered on the perspective of the biological distancing parent:
'Drop the adoption system, that's my opinion, loud and clear. The perspective of the biological parents, often a single mother, is rarely heard, but such a mother suffers a 'moral wound' all her life: she is both perpetrator and victim at the same time. Because she gave up her child, often in panic and under moral pressure from the environment, as often happens in India, and at the same time a victim, because she will always worry about her child and about her decision made at a young age.
'Can you imagine putting a child here from a home with wealthy parents in Ethiopia? And mind you, there are often no orphans in children's homes, but the children do have a parent or family. Help people raise children in the region. Our adoption system continues to have perverse incentives, such as making money from children, and is always characterized by power imbalances. Even if adoptions take place according to the legal regulations and they are completely legal, the government has no view or control over the invisible processes. You cut the legal bond between parents and child, and that is irreversible.'
Sander Vlek is chairman of the National Association of Adoptive Parents (LAVA):
'The current adoption system is expensive and susceptible to fraud and therefore abolish it? It is precisely that part of the report of the Joustra Committee that is subject to a lot of criticism, partly because the Justice itself has indicated that it has not seen any abuses since 2008. The Committee has not examined any adoption files. So the adoption system has been working carefully for at least fourteen years. It is true that there are risks of child trafficking outside the system.
'The image of naive parents who briefly take a child abroad is so far from the truth. These are very intensive processes where the costs are largely for the parents themselves. Of the EUR 7 million calculated to be involved in the adoption of 175 children, EUR 4 million was paid by the parents themselves. Foster parents receive a foster allowance, adoptive parents nothing. Adoptive parents provide care tailored to the needs of the individual child and if that child needs extra help, adoptive parents call in professional help. Children in the countries of origin do not have these options.
'Adoption is primarily a child protection measure under international treaties to which we as a country have subscribed. There is no price involved. And why can't money go to children who have no future without adoption, but – via health insurance – to expensive fertility treatments for children who are not yet there?”
Children's ombudswoman Margrite Kalverboer says in a written response to the adoption stop question:
'The Netherlands wants to make intercountry adoption possible again in individual, very exceptional cases. This is if there is really no suitable alternative in the country of origin and it is good for the development of the child. The minister has a heavy responsibility to ensure that the best interests of the child in intercountry adoptions are actually the primary interest and that procedures are conducted carefully. The Ombudsman for Children sees that the minister is taking this responsibility by setting up a public law system.'
Emeritus professor René Hoksbergen, involved in intercountry adoption since the 1970s:
'Even if I found it, stop adopting, I'm still too liberal for that. As a society, you cannot just cancel a phenomenon that has existed since the 1960s after one, and far too late, investigation into abuses. Moreover, I think the current plans with more direction for the government and a center of expertise, where the 40,000 children who have since been adopted can go with their questions, are a real improvement.
'But even more important to continue is that there will always be a few children in the world for whom adoption is the only chance of life. Think of albino children in some parts of Africa. So I'm not for dragging kids around the world, but sometimes it's a matter of life and death, and that's above all else.'
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