Adoptive Parent Responsibilities

Every adoptive parent, prospective and actual, is responsible for ensuring that they and the adoption agencies with whom they work follow international standards for the protection of the rights of women and children.  You are therefore responsible for knowing what these standards are, and for familiarizing yourself with their spirit.  Read the following ...

• United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women
• United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child
• Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption

... and after reading, make a commitment to their spirit and demand the same from your adoption agency. Adoptive parents have the lion's share of power in adoption, and need to start using it to correct its injustices. Our demand for healthy infants fuels corrupt practices. It is therefore unacceptable for us to lay the blame on others; we are responsible for working to end adoption corruption wherever it exists.

To help, I share with you a remarkable checklist that adoptee activist Jane Jeong Trenka offered in a comment to this post. She urges prospective adoptive parents to reconsider adopting from Korea until Korea and the United States have taken steps to correct these practice flaws and injustices. I have taken the liberty of putting Jane's comments into a format that will help guide the consciences of prospective adoptive parents and will help those of us who have already adopted or who facilitate adoptions from Korea to focus our energies. This message, delivered loudly and clearly from everyone living or connected to adoption from Korea, has the power to change. Please do not be silent.

1. Remove reservations to Article 21a of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which ensures full consent of parents, relatives and legal guardians following appropriate counseling.
2. Sign the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption and the adoption meets the standards of international law. 
3. Improve women's rights.
4. Act in the best rights of the child by following the internationally recognized principle of subsidiarity:
   a. Family preservation (including unmarried single parent families)
   b. Domestic adoption in Korea
   c. Intercountry adoption
5. Stop including mixed-race and premature children in the category “handicapped”.
6. Make a concerted effort to develop systems for handicapped children to be supported by their own families.
7. Create transparent practices and enforce them in Korea.
8. Close loopholes in the U.S. laws that have left some adoptees without U.S. citizenship.
9. Ensure that birthfamily can be contacted for medical information (e.g., bone marrow transplant, other serious medical needs) upon adoption and into the future using all possible means, including confirmation that relinquishing parents’ names have not been falsified by themselves or others.
10. Stop all actions which manipulate, in any way mislead or take advantage of the emotions of relinquishing parents, adopters and adopted individuals.

I also offer my own thoughts own responsibilities shared by every government, adoption agency and adoptive parent. These and a commitment to protect and aid the world's children are not mutually exclusive.

• A commitment to protect children's and original families' human and civil rights, integrity and dignity
• An understanding of:
  • The impact of loss of family, country, culture, language and heritage on adopted people and a commitment to provide lifelong support
  • The impact of family separation on adopted people and their original families and a commitment to provide lifelong support
  • The special demands of adoptive parenting
• Recognition of the dangers of trafficking, child selling and coercive adoption practices and a commitment to prevent them
• Respect for the people, cultures, languages and faiths of countries placing children in intercountry adoption