Their Adoption Joy

Pat Wingert
NEWSWEEK

From the magazine issue dated Oct 13, 2008

If Brangelina is any indication, American interest in adopting foreign children is stronger than ever. So why is the United States adopting fewer of them? According to early projections by the State Department, foreign adoptions have dropped an estimated 10 percent from last year-the fourth straight year of decline since the high-water mark of 22,884 in 2004. Experts say the downward trend is likely to continue as countries such as Russia, Guatemala and China, which in recent years had been among the largest providers of orphans for adoption, have either dialed back their programs or ended them entirely. “It’s not that American interest has diminished at all, or that there are fewer kids who need homes,” says Chuck Johnson of the National Council for Adoption. “The declines are directly the result of bureaucratic or political issues.”

In China, a process that used to take a year-and was lauded for being efficient, transparent and affordable-now takes 31 months and is expected to get longer. China says increased prosperity in the country means fewer abandoned children. Russia, Ukraine and South Korea, all facing declining birthrates, are encouraging domestic adoption and making fewer children available to foreigners. Agencies say Russian adoptions have become particularly difficult, and the children available are sicker and older. The average cost has also soared to $40,000, the most expensive in the world. Kazakhstan’s system has slowed while it is being overhauled. Adoptions from India dropped in the wake of news stories about human trafficking of orphans in other countries.

The U.S. government stopped new adoptions from Guatemala early this year because the country failed to comply with the Hague Adoption Convention’s standards. And Vietnam shuttered its program last year following allegations of fraud and corruption. As a result, at least 600 approved adoption applications submitted by Americans have been returned to their agencies without matches, Johnson says.

Advocates hope the tide will turn back soon. Guatemala has signaled that it plans to overhaul its program when all the adoptions currently in the pipeline are completed. In Vietnam, negotiations are underway to restart adoptions following the arrest of 24 police officers as part of a crackdown on abuse. “We want enforceable safeguards and a transparent process that protects everyone from exploitation,” said Gerry Fuller, of the State Department’s Office of Children’s Issues. “Both sides agree there are deficiencies, and the process is going forward.”

Meanwhile, Mexico, which has long restricted adoptions to Americans to less than 100 children a year, says it may expand those numbers since the United States implemented the Hague Treaty in 2008. “There’s more trust now that you have Hague accreditation,” said Monica Rios Tarin, general legal director for the Mexican government’s family and children’s welfare system. There are also encouraging signs that adoptions from Ethiopia and Colombia will soon increase, proving that as some doors close, others are bound to open wider.

URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/162326

SYDNEY, Australia - Oscar-winning actress Nicole Kidman said swimming in Australian Outback waterfalls may promote fertility and might have contributed to her unexpected pregnancy over the past year.

The 41-year-old Aussie, who gave birth to daughter Sunday Rose in July, said she and six other women who swam in the waters of a small Outback town during production of the epic romance “Australia” became pregnant.

“I never thought that I would get pregnant and give birth to a child, but it happened on this movie,” Kidman told The Australian Women’s Weekly in an exclusive interview for the magazine’s 75th anniversary edition, released Wednesday.

“Seven babies were conceived out of this film and only one was a boy. There is something up there in the Kununurra water because we all went swimming in the waterfalls, so we can call it the fertility waters now.”

“Australia,” directed by Baz Luhrmann, was filmed in Kununurra, a small town in far northern Western Australia state. The film, which follows the story of a noblewoman on a cattle drive in Australia during World War II, is due for release in November.

The actress also commented on the relatively diminutive size of her baby bump throughout her pregnancy.

“I’m so lucky I’m so tall, so I carried small and also, I have to say, I had a birth that I was blessed with, a labor that was very good and a baby that was very good to me in that regard,” said Kidman, who is married to country music crooner Keith Urban and has two adopted children with ex-husband Tom Cruise.

“To be given this again is a beautiful thing. To have raised Bella and Connor since I was 25 and now to be able to do it again at 41 … wow!”

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

TORONTO: Internationally adopted children can undergo early puberty, facing later in life health risks like obesity, hypertension, diabetes and heart disease, a study has found.

“It depends on their country of origin and on their living conditions up until their adoption,” said Hélène Delisle, a professor at the Montreal University department of nutrition and the study’s author.

“Many factors are at play, but a low birth weight that isn’t recuperated between ages zero and two, combined with an accelerated weight gain during childhood, would increase the risk of early puberty and chronic disease in adulthood.”

In Quebec, half the 900 children adopted every year are from China. Some girls begin puberty as early as eight and boys as early as 10-years-old, reports Eurekalert.

The beginning of puberty is greatly correlated to weight. Weight gain provokes the secretion of leptin, a hormone that plays a key role in regulating appetite.

When calorie intake increases, leptin levels also increase which in turn provokes the secretion of GnRH (Gonadotropin Releasing Hormone). This hormone regulates the development of ovulation and the menstrual cycle in women.

Therefore, a radical change in diet, as is often observed in children migrating to an industrialised country, can trigger puberty.

Phoenix police are investigating the discovery of a newborn found alive in a trash can at a Phoenix school.Police said a school administrator discovered the baby boy screaming inside the garbage can Tuesday afternoon with his umbilical cord still attached.

The baby seemed to be in excellent condition. He also appeared to have been carried to full term, said Capt. Victor Rangel, a Phoenix Fire Department spokesman.

Emergency crews took the newborn to St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center. The baby has since been placed in custody with state Child Protective Services, said Sgt. Andy Hill, a Phoenix police spokesman.

Phoenix police said the 14-year-old mother gave birth to the child inside the administration building at Osborn Middle School.

The Phoenix Fire Department later located the mother at a nearby apartment and she was taken to a hospital in good condition, Hill said.

Due to the abandonment of the baby in a life threatening situation, investigators will do a possible child abuse report and submit it to the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office for review, Hill said.

Bridget McCain is the adopted daughter of John McCain and Cindy McCain. Bridgets adoption story is quite interesting. Cindy was visiting third world countries with Mother Teresa and other medical personnel. They happened to visit an orphanage in Bangladesh to try and help out the needy children. There were two little baby girls – one with a heart problem and the other with a severe cleft palate.

Cindy immediately decided to get both of them back to US with her. She was primarily concerned about their medical treatment and their survival. The McCains decided to adopt Bridget McCain and their close friends adopted the other little angel, Mickey.

Therefore, we see that it was primarily Cindys idea to adopt Bridget McCain. In fact John was not aware about this decision. It came as a bit of a shock to him. Cindy just returned and asked John to say hello to his new little daughter. But John is happy with the decision and a proud father. He says that Bridget has enriched their lives. She’s a wonderful child, a complete part of our family and we love her, said John. Also, the other children of McCains accepted Bridget well.

Bridget McCain had become a sort of an issue during the campaign for the Republican Presidential nomination in South Carolina during the year 2000. John was criticized and was accused of having an affair with another woman. There was lot of prejudice and the reason for accusation was because Bridgets skin was darker.

Bridget McCain was called as illegitimate black daughter of McCain born to a prostitute. This had a strong effect on the conservative South Carolina republicans. John said, a lot of phone calls were made by people who said we should be very ashamed about her, about the color of her skin. Such hurtful and vile things were said about her. But thats a nasty side of politics and one should try to ignore it.

However, the African American organizations have a policy against interracial adoption in spite of there being an awful lot of African American children who could be adopted but this objection stands in the way. But now slowly this barrier is breaking down and people seem to be making progress. The McCains had to go through an extraordinary process, rather an intrusive process by the bureaucrats to adopt Bridget McCain. The adoption agency officials came to McCains home rifled through their drawers and even asked John about his sex life.

This was an insight into a sick girls life that was destined to die in an orphanage in Bangladesh. However, Bridget McCain proved to be a miracle child – blessed by Mother Teresa.

The fight of a father against an adoption ageny: http://www.babyselling.com/

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Maria Sue Chapman, the 5-year-old daughter of Christian entertainer Steven Curtis Chapman, was killed May 21 in a tragic accident on the family’s driveway.

According to police, one of her teenage brothers accidentally hit Maria while backing out of the driveway in a SUV. Laura McPherson, a spokesman for the Tennessee Highway Patrol, told Associated Press that the teen apparently did not see his sister and will not face charges.

“It looks like a tragic accident,” she told AP.

The child, the youngest of the six Chapman children, was taken to Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital where she died of her injuries. Apparently other members of the family were outside the home, located south of Nashville, and witnessed the incident.

Maria was the youngest of three girls the Chapman’s adopted from China at the insistence of their oldest daughter. As a result of those adoptions, Chapman and his wife, Mary Beth, founded Shaohannah’s Hope, a foundation and ministry to financially assist thousands of couples in adoption. The ministry is named after their first adopted daughter.

“I don’t know of anybody who loves his children more than he does and is so committed to the adoption concept, and to lose one, no matter what the circumstances, is heartbreaking beyond all comprehension,” John Styll, president of the Nashville-based Gospel Music Association, told the Tennessean.

The Tennessean said the accident was witnessed by two other children, and the entire family of six, including oldest daughter Emily and mother Mary Beth, who was home at the time.

“Your prayers are needed for all in the Chapman family. This is a family who has so generously loved and given to so many,” Jim Houser, manager of the blog chapmanchannel.com, wrote. “Just hours before, this close-knit family was celebrating the engagement of the oldest daughter Emily Chapman and were just hours away from a graduation party marking Caleb Chapman’s completion of high school. Now, they are preparing to bury a child who blew out 5 candles on a birthday cake less than 10 days ago.”

The blog, with a page now devoted to Maria’s memory, includes a video of the girl and her father washing dishes and singing a song in the family’s kitchen two months before her death.

“The Chapman family is so grateful for the incredible outpouring of love and support at this difficult time,” a brief statement posted at stevencurtischapman.com said before linking to the blog.

“Chapman talks about his kids all the time. That’s his life. His kids are more important to him than music, that’s for sure.”

Chapman has won five Grammy awards and 51 Dove awards from the Gospel Music Association. In a February 2003 interview with Baptist Press, Chapman said it was the adoption of Shaohannah that brought a life-changing “aha” moment.

“Until we adopted Shaohannah, I didn’t fully understand the depth of what Jesus has done for us,” Chapman told Baptist Press. “(Without Christ) I was hopeless, without a future, without a name … then Jesus came into my life, gave me hope and a future. He gave me a new name.”

Chapman called adoption the “visible gospel,” a term he borrows from Christian author John Piper.

“Adoption is the perfect picture of what God has done for each of us in making us His children through Christ,” Chapman said.

“God’s done amazing things in our family. Without a doubt, adoption has been the most profound experience in God.”

The Chapman Web site also indicated that another artist would be filling in for a scheduled May 24 performance by Chapman.

The family is requesting that, in lieu of flowers, donations be directed Shaohannah’s Hope. For more information, visit www.shaohannahshope.org.

Source: Published by Keener Communications Group, June 2008

Actress Brooke Smith, who stars as Dr Erica Hahn in ‘Grey’s Anatomy’, has adopted a baby girl from Ethiopia, her representative has confirmed.

Smith, 40, told People magazine in October that she and her husband, cinematographer Stephen Lubensky, were considering adopting.

“You know, why not?” Smith, 40, said. “We still might end up there some time.”

Smith, who is most well-known for her role in ‘Silence of the Lambs’, and Lubensky have traveled to Africa several times, and filmed a documentary on conservationists in Zimbabwe together

It is the second daughter for the couple, who have a 5-year-old daughter, Fanny.

Memo to Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt: the next decade may prove to be a difficult one. As the world’s most famous adoptive parents, the actors may be alarmed to hear that a new study shows being adopted approximately doubles the odds of an adolescent being diagnosed with a behavior or emotional problem. Furthermore, the findings open up the question of what’s behind that increased risk — adoptive parents or genetics?

Americans adopt about 120,000 children each year, and the vast majority grows up happy and healthy. Yet researchers at the University of Minnesota have found that a small minority of those kids — about 14 percent — are diagnosed with a behavioral disorder or have contact with a mental health professional as adolescents, or about twice the odds that non-adopted teens face. “Despite the popularity of adoption, there is persistent concern that adopted children may be at a heightened risk for mental health or adjustment problems,” the study’s authors write in a report released Monday.

That’s in line with what previous adoption research has said for many years. What this new study challenges are the reasons behind this phenomenon. In the past, most researchers have dismissed the adoptees’ disproportionate number of behavioral or mental health problems as a result of adoptive parents’ demographic trends. That is, since people who adopt tend to be wealthier and more educated, they are likelier to access psychiatric care if their kids exhibit symptoms of, say, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Also, through the adoption process, these parents are generally more familiar with mental health services than non-adoptive parents. Yet after studying more than a thousand children, both adopted and not, Margaret Keyes warns that assumption may be flawed. The Minnesota psychologist and her colleagues found that disparity could be due as often to innate factors such as perinatal care or his birth parents’ genes. “The deleterious effects may quite possibly have come before the adoption ever took place,” Keyes, the study’s lead researcher, says.

Keyes’s team was able to make this distinction largely due to its methodology. Whereas most adoption research relies on questionnaires filled in by parents, this study spoke directly to the adoptees themselves. Working with three large adoption agencies in Minnesota, researchers interviewed nearly 700 adopted children and 540 non-adopted children, all ages 11 to 21, as well as parents, mental health professionals and teachers. Participants also had to have a non-adopted sibling within the same age range to help compare behaviors. “We brought them all right into our laboratories and asked the same questions to both the child and the parents,” Keyes says. “That way we were able to use our clinical training to diagnose symptoms ourselves.”

Another surprising conclusion that the Minnesota study produced was the fact that children adopted from within the U.S. are more prone to behavioral disorders than those adopted from overseas. Some 40,000 children worldwide annually emigrate from more than 100 countries through adoption, a trend increasing rapidly in the U.S. since the 1970s. But these foreign adoptees are far more likely to internalize their problems, suffering more commonly from depression or separation anxiety disorders. Domestic adoptees, on the other hand, tend to act out. While consistent with adolescents studied in both North America and Western Europe, Keyes says, this finding “goes against preconceived notions that kids from foreign cultures would have a harder time adapting to new families.”

Despite her study’s findings, Keyes is quick to stress that there is nothing in them that should discourage parents from adopting. “Males are likelier to have behavior issues,” she says. “But no one is overly concerned about having boys.” Still, Keyes advises adoptive parents to be on the lookout for problem behaviors and to rely on the network of mental health providers they built up when applying to adopt their children in the first place. “All adolescents struggle with finding their identity,” she says, before adding, “It makes sense adopted children would struggle more than most.”

Source: Times By Kathleen Kingsbury

A man who was adopted as a child and spent the past year researching his ancestry discovered that his biological father is on Ohio’s death row for killing a corrections officer and two others in the state’s worst prison riot.

Sean Baker, 41, met his father, George Skatzes, 62, for the first time in March at the Mansfield Correctional Institution, where Skatzes is being held while he appeals his death sentence.

Baker, a truck driver who lives in Henderson, Ky., said he was initially disturbed to learn that his father is a convicted murderer but now believes in his innocence.

“Dad’s totally different than what people see of him,” Baker said. “There’s still a lot of good in Dad and people need to see that.”

Prosecutors considered Skatzes a leader in the 11-day riot at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville in 1993, in which nine inmates were killed along with corrections officer Robert Vallandingham.

Skatzes, who was already serving a life sentence for a 1983 aggravated murder conviction, was sentenced to life in prison without parole for the murder of Vallandingham and to death for the killings of inmates Earl Elder and David Sommers. He also was convicted of kidnapping the three.

Baker said he believes his father was unfairly convicted in the Lucasville case because prosecutors made deals with other inmates to become informants, and those inmates told lies about Skatzes’ involvement. The state has previously denied that inmate informants received preferential treatment.

A message seeking comment was left Thursday for Mark Piepmeier, who was the chief prosecutor in the Lucasville cases.

“Everybody looks at my father as a bad person. They don’t know the truth,” Baker said. “I wouldn’t stick up for him if I thought my father was guilty.”

Baker began researching his ancestry in December by posting an online plea at the Ohio Adoption Registry, a Web site that provides a way for adopted Ohioans and their biological families to find one another.

It worked. Baker located a brother and a sister, who told him about his birth father.

Baker said he wrote his father and shared a few phone calls before their prison meeting March 29.

“It was very emotional,” Baker said. “We latched onto each other and never let go for about half an hour.”

The meeting also gave Baker a chance to ask his father face-to-face how he ended up being adopted.

“He was 21 years old when I was born,” said Baker, who has four children of his own. “Dad was in his rowdy days, not wanting to settle down. Things just didn’t work out the way they were supposed to.”

The two continue to write each other every week and talk by telephone.

Baker said they don’t talk about the death penalty.

Baker plans to change his name legally to George Skatzes Jr. to reflect his lineage, and he continues to hope his father’s death sentence will be overturned.

“I love my father very much,” Skatzes said. “It’s just the way it is right now. We’ll straighten it out.”

Source: Associated Press