What are some reasons people are against international adoption?

This is my take as an adoptee and adoptive mom:

1) As you mentioned, you are separating the child from their home country, which is not a minor detail. Different countries have many, many different customs, and depending on the age of the child, this can cause a culture shock, in addition to a feeling to disconnect as the child grows.

2) We have many, many amazing, remarkable, perfect children right here at home, and sadly, not enough homes for them. In fact, in Canada, there are so many children in care that children are being LEFT in extremely abusive situations, or returned to extremely abusive situations because there is otherwise no where else for them. When my daughter was an infant, she was in foster care for a few days, and since there was nowhere for her to be, two social workers had to sleep in a hotel room with her.

3) Child trafficking. Madonna and other “do-gooder” celebrities are collecting children from around the globe as trophies for their own public images. They ignore the laws of these countries and appeal to their governments to release the children for adoption in exchange for “aid”. It’s disgusting. These children’s lives are being treated as worthless. Even if one is not a celebrity, the release of these children for adoption is often a political move for these countries to maintain positive foreign relations. To which I say: Yuck.

4) The notion of “gratitude”. International adoption is looked at by many as the “newest, coolest” charity. No child should ever be born with a job. Every child is entitled to love, care and respect, regardless, so to “rescue” a child is not a correct attitude with which to enter the very difficult job of parenthood.

I am an adoptee, but did not necessarily become an advocate until I adopted my daughter. She is my child, and it is my job to be an advocate for causes that affect her. The popularization of international adoption is not only a negative for kids needing permanency here, but it commodifies children in general, which I find abhorrent.

Whew. Sorry about the rant. I know that many people who adopt internationally are well-intentioned, but I believe that it would be more effective to provide aid to countries to allow them to domestically parent their children than to “sell” those kids for aid.

I’m an international adoptee, so here’s from the horse’s mouth…and I’ve answered this before, so I’ve cut and pasted it here since that was thousands of Y!answers ago…

international adoption MAKES YOU FEEL LIKE AN ALIEN from another planet
- you’re almost always in the spotlight: either total strangers will be squealing in delight about how cute you are gushing about adoption or asking probing questions they would never ask if you were white.
- people will have ignorant expectations based on stereotypes about you, and you will always have to explain your background, your lack of history,and your lack of culture to people.
- you will be hounded by people with a fetish for the exotic.
- you will learn about your culture but it will be ACADEMIC and you will be torn between its added imposition and a yearning to fully know it, which is impossible unless you repatriate.
- you will be surrounded by a sea of white faces so your whole world is white faces. you will stop and pause when people approach you differently or respond to you differently. you will dismiss this. and then when you catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror you will be horrified to want to treat that image differently as well. you will be horrified that the image staring back at you is not the image you are used to seeing. you will despair. you will be always the odd man out. you will want to seek out more like yourself, but you will be embarrassed to be seen with them. because there are no images of your kind in popular culture. because you see how that kind gets treated and you think you are somehow not like them. this is called internalized racism.

international adoption MAKES YOU FEEL ISOLATED
- you will meet other adoptees as children and be thrown in together, but actually you’ve nothing in common.
- you will meet other people of your culture, but there’s no way to connect to them. they will speak to you in their tongue. you will awkwardly explain you can’t speak in their tongue/your should-be tongue. they will walk away, disappointed in you and sad for you.
- you can not entertain searching for your birth mother, because she is buried deep within another country, a country where you can’t communicate, a place teeming with those people.
- your parents will be proud of themselves and what they did by getting you. because you are different looking, you will have to suffer that pride by your very presence every time anyone sees you together.
- your parents will want to talk about adoption, but you know they can’t handle anything negative you might feel about it. and you’re too young to verbalize it. you suck it up because you have to. you have to deny the reality of your difference and thereby negate any of the problems associated with being different. you have to fabricate a false front that can handle everything with cheery optimism. you become the good will ambassador for adoption, but it’s a lie. that’s a lonely place to be.

international adoption eventually MAKES YOU ASK QUESTIONS
- why did my parents have to rip a child from its culture?
- what kind of rescue fantasies did they have, and are they valid?
- what does charity mean? how charitable is adoption, anyway?
- what is my birthmother’s story? was my adoption ethical? did my parents check into this?
- what were they trying to gain/proove by choosing this radical route?
- who did they think they were?
- was i just a toy for purchase?

adoption hurts – we walk around with no beginning to our stories, no connection to anything, devoid of roots, dropped here as if we truly were aliens.

international adoption hurts even more
- there’s so much more lost, and it’s irretrievable.
- we’d rather our countries had helped our mothers
- we’d rather our extended families had had access to take care of us
- we’re outraged to learn very few children are real orphans
- we’re outraged that so many relinquishments are based on temporary economic hard times.
- we’re outraged that the people who run non-profit adoption agencies board members make six figure incomes
- we’re outraged at the hidden costs of adoption and that people are profiteering by our sale
- we don’t appreciate how adoption siphons off the problem of out of wedlock childbirth, when the countries could address these problems with adequate birth control and social programs but adoption allows them to shirk their responsibility to their own people.
- we’re outraged that there is a market to exploit all these
- we’re outraged that the so-called potential adoptive parents who claim charity as their purpose would not bother to sponsor families to avoid relinquishment.
- we’re outraged that the cost of one adoption could save multiple entire families in the country the child comes from.
- we’re outraged that the civil rights of adoptees get violated daily, that their histories are fabricated, that their names are changed, that their birth records are tampered with, and that they are denied access to their records.
- we’re outraged adoptive parents do not do their home-work, or choose to ignore unethical practices.

please adopt ethically.
please adopt domestically.
please adopt one of the children passed over here because they are no longer babies.

the story of Tristan Dowse is one of many reasons

One of the emerging reasons is realization that many of the babies are actually stolen and sold into adoption.