hello and welcome to world the part of the conventional wisdom is that a child is always better off in the family down in an institution given in being without family means losing all existing social ties but it is international adoption really always in the best interest of a child to discount that amount joined by elizabeth bartholet faculty director of the child advocacy program at harvard law school ms bartholet i really appreciate you being on the show i think it's a very sensitive issue and we are all for a very very interesting discussion thanks for having me now i know that you are one of the most vocal advocates in your country for international adoption but after growing steadily for almost six decades the number of children being adopted into

the united states has been. falling sharply recently if i'm not mistaken number drawn by a hospital in two thousand and four in two thousand and ten and russia just recently became yet another country in these growing list of countries banning or restricting adoption into your country how do you explain that well i don't think it has anything to do with any diminishing need for homes for children i think it's because the forces. or hostile to international adoption notice the numbers going out and set out to turn that around so i think it's very deliberate political action both by governments and by n.g.o.s and why would be those hostile forces those host governments interested in. doing what seems to be against the interests of children well that's a great question i think the primary forces here are organizations that purport to

be child friendly so unicef save the children and other child. human rights organizations are driving those numbers down even more than governments and i'm not entirely sure why that is i think press people have to ask those organizations what their motivation is now i heard the you say in one of your previous interviews that there is a lot of quote phony remand to says when it comes to justifying why children are better off in that home countries and the issue of heritage for example often comes up here but i wonder if there is there is not just as much phony romanticism when it comes to adoption especially international adoption because the default assumption here is that a child is always the better off in the loving family down in an institution but the question is really how many of those adoptive children and up with loving

families who can properly take care of their needs well i think the social science is very clear on that there have been lots of studies of adoption both domestic and international and the studies show overwhelmingly the almost all the children placed in adoption do exteriorly well bonded with their parents and almost all the problems that those children may have have to do with being placed late in life in other words the problems they. may have in adoption some of them almost always have to do with the fact they didn't get adopted early and they got damaged by the life they lived when institutions but ms bartholet isn't it also also the case that the studies that here are foreign to you they studied adoption in general as a phenomenon rather than being a specific study on how successful international adoption really ease because at this point at least i could find no use data on the success of foreign adoptions

there's no centralized authority in your country that would keep track of those children and at this point we simply don't know how many of those children were successfully integrated into their families and how many of them were later given out for adoption and of course we would all like to believe in the goodness of human nature but i think when we deal with such a sensitive issue this child welfare we have to rely on hard data and the problem is that at this point there seems to be none i think that's wrong there's lots of hard data and i cited in my articles on my site both the studies that have been done that are absolutely specific to international adoption there have been lots of those so it is true of course that not each and every fact related to international adoption has been carefully studied so that it's true that we don't have all the figures on for example exactly how many internationally adoption opted children

have been. so-called reach home i think the real homing phenomenon is shocking and terrible but the only numbers that have surfaced so far of the number of are absolutely tiny by comparison to the tens of thousands of international adoptions that have taken place in the last couple of decades i would absolutely love to discuss their homing phenomena a bit later on but before we go there since you you say that. there are numbers on the success of foreign adoption can you give a rough estimate of some percentages here and how many of those really work out sure the rate of a da of abuse and neglect in internationally adopted families is significantly lower than the rate of abuse and neglect in normal biological families and i think if you compared the rate of abuse and neglect in adoption to the rate of abuse and neglect in russian normal biological families again you would

find the rate of. abuse and neglect in adoption including international adoption phenomenally lower than the rate of abuse and neglect in russian biological families. my point is not the extent of abuse obviously in each country that abuse is taking place but i think if we look at the domestic adoption of both in russia and the united states we can see that it's an extremely complex phenomenon and the rates of adoption disruption adoption of resolution a pretty high in the united states if i'm not mistaken one in four adoptions for various reasons in russia that number may be even higher the statistics here are very complicated but in the case of international adoption you have to factor in additional challenges adjusting to new culture adjusting to new language the loss of social context and the worst thing of all is of course that there is absolutely

no way back if adoption. is not going the way it was supposed to be well i think to much of that simply isn't true the rate of disruption is significantly lower than you said with respect to adoption disruptions or almost always. to the adoption of kids when they're older and when they've been significantly damaged to the degree there are disruptions in international adoptions it's almost certainly because governments like the russian government and many. other governments hold their kids in institutions for way too long before they're willing to free them up for adoption i also think that you have to compare you said that i've talked about the over romanticization of kids links with their birth heritage well i think you have to compare what goes on with kids when they're living and dying in institutions which is their real world alternative to international adoption most of the time and my position is i think backed by the facts that what

happens in institutions is absolutely systematic abuse and neglect of virtually every child one hundred percent the evidence is completely clear and it's scientific evidence and has been repeated in study after study you know you can see those studies you keep saying you haven't read the studies or seen studies well they're cited in my article what they say is that i haven't seen the numbers on the success of international adoptions because those numbers in the us state department that keeps track of the mastic adoptions they don't publish the numbers for international adoption and i think the that's reuters investigation that. unveiled these home i recall and this whole re homing phenomenon also pointed to the fact that. there is pretty much no oversight first of all neither reuters people nor the u.s. state department are social scientists we have social scientists many of them in this country systematically studying with social science methodology adoption those

are the people to look to if you're actually interested in what the likelihood of success in adoption is the state department is not in charge of doing social science studies and i don't think you'd trust it if it did waiters is obviously not an objective social science organization i'm not talking about qualitative approach i'm talking about numbers just keeping track of the numbers of children coming in and how many of those children they would. to families two years or five years down the line and how many of them were later given out for. institutional how many of them were institutionalized later or how many of them simply out of the system and i think this is a much more complicated phenomenon that was highlighted not only in the reuter's investigation there are many other. high profile cases of abuse that the old treat as isolated cases but i think there is

a pattern and if if we go to you know i've been to many blogs and websites where prospects of parents say that essentially the biggest problem with adoption dissolution or adoption failure was the lack of knowledge and their high expectations they were removed by their desire to do good. you know saw a child in an orphanage they brought him home but then they realized that they simply. were not ready to the for the extent of challenges again if you look at the studies you will see that even kids who've suffered a lot of damage tend to overcome a huge amount of it when they are adopted i also want to bring to your attention a bill pending in the united states congress it's called the children in families first. bill does say the united states should be committed to doing a better job than it has been doing in terms of just the kind of numbers you're

talking about and i myself would love to see those figures kept better in part because i feel completely confident that if we have the figures they would help show even more than the data we have today that it. does an amazingly good job of helping kids get good homes and that the numbers of a abuse and neglect of all the kids who come into this country are infinitesimal they are truly tiny compared to of course. what happened. as i wonder how how could we have that data because we have the data. we have many studies over the years what we don't have is one hundred percent perfection in terms of keeping track of every single kid who comes into this country i would like to do that but if you don't have the means of tracking every single kid can you even argue that your data the data that is proving that this whole operation is

successful is there i mean if you don't have the mechanism if you don't have the central authority because in the united states it's all left up to states and individual states have different sorts of pragya lation different sorts of rules and essentially at least it's been my impression that it's all a matter of lottery once they keep crosses the u.s. border he's essentially you know in the at the mercy of the circumstances and if he ends up with a good family that can properly take care of his needs that is not just well intended by these qualified to deal with the challenges of adoption it's a struggle flood but if that adoption fails there is absolutely no way back and there's absolutely no system out there that would support this kid or support the family that adopted him this is one of the issues that many adoptive families in the united states voice that at this point of time there is absolutely no support

system for them and when they encounter those demands psychological cognitive adjustment difficulties they have absolutely nobody to turn to well none of what used. very very very long question is true so i'm not going to try to answer at all because i'm getting repetitive answering the same accusations but it's simply not true we do have a central authority it does regulate what goes on in all fifty states it does regulate all the agencies that are involved in international adoption the agencies do keep track of the kids they do keep track of the end up. families they do supervise the families and they do finalize adoptions and we do have in the scientific studies i'm talking about sample studies that do an accurate job of sampling not looking at every single international adoption but sampling international adoption so that we can get a fairly accurate picture overall of what happens in terms of abuse or neglect but at a certain point there's no point repeating what i'm saying to you if you're not going

to listen ok miss let us take a short break now when we come back despite the fact that the number of bunch national adoptions in the united states has been falling recently the country still remains the world leader in terms of adopting children from all around the world but doesn't really take proper care of the once they cross the border that's coming up in a few moments on well the part. of the. state. very hard to take. that. route there.

are the. here you go. how do you operate dylan but i'm going to him was pretty good sports such. as i'm not an olympic hockey player bomb which is on to find me. my fly.

welcome back to all the parts of asia discussing international adoption of elizabeth bartholet buckle to director of the child advocacy program at harvard law school ms bartholet before the break. the investigation that was done by a reuters news agency a couple of months ago into this whole re homing phenomenon and. i think. when you look at this issue the issue of international adoption and countries who recently moved to ban or restrict american adoption those issues are very very much politicized but. in the u.s. media those cases of abuse or neglect of the hands of american families are usually treated as as isolated cases but that's reuters investigation. seems to point to the fact that the problem is far more systematic than previously

thought well you used the word systematic actually the number of really honed internationally adopted children was infinite testable compared to the number of international adoptions in the last couple of decades an aide to senator landrieu who introduced the bill i just talked about that's been introduced in our congress can't calculated that number of something like point zero eight percent but you know that in no way indicates that there's some significant percentage of internationally adopted kids who've been either re homed you know much less once re home and subject to any kind of abuse or neglect in the new home and just for our viewers i would like to explain that when we're talking about your home in riyadh talking about families who are ready to offload the kids to perfect strangers to. it's essentially an internet based community of people who can no longer deal with

the challenges presented by their kids and they're ready to give them to perfect strangers without governmental oversight or just a quick exchange of letters or photos and children are handed over to different caring takers but since you contested the numbers and the spread of that phenomenon let me just mention that reuters analyzed just one yahoo group and that yahoo group had more than five thousand messages offering children or new homes for them about seventy percent of the children advertise there were foreign born so it seems that there is a tendency for foreign kids to be all for it for real homey i think that's untrue i think it's a tiny phenomenon compared to the number of international adoptions and i think that the people who don't like international adoption as apparently you do not and as unicef doesn't regularly love the fact that occasionally scandals show up

because those scandals can be used as a way to help shut down international adoptions you're being a bit unfair on me because i have never argued for shutting down international adoption what i'm arguing for is a more critical and more scientific approach and more systematic approach to taking care of those children and again going back to the reuters investigation i think they cultivated. on community board alone more than somewhere around two hundred children for all four of them they also found the child abusers convicted child abusers got access to those kids through these whole recalling phenomena and so in the bodies are going here that the should you know change those children to institutions but sometimes i think we need to take a bit more critical approach rather than promoting these rosy picture of international adoption and. i'm saying is overall it's an amazingly rosy picture in

that adopted kids international as well as domestic are treated better than regular kids growing up in untroubled biological families in the united states there is less smell treatment in all the studies that in which people keep track of maltreatment statistics so i'm not going to talk more about reuters you can conduct the rest of the interview yourself i'm not going to conduct an interview in which we focus on a tiny you know phenomenon that has nothing to do with the sort of underlying truths of how will do when they're kept in institutions as compared to how well they do in international adoption now one issue that is often brought up in relation to international adoption especially in the united states is the issue of money because international adoption in your country is a for profit enterprise and you need as far as i understand anywhere between fifteen and forty thousand dollars for the whole procedure. doesn't that in itself

create an incentive to maybe be a little less rigorous or maybe a bit more motivated to promote that phenomenon at least on the part of the adoption agencies because obviously they are not there. only benefit the children they are also in business to make money almost all adoption agency or formally not for profit they are absolutely every single one of them regulated by states and regulated by our federal government to ensure that they operate with best interest of the child first and foremost so no i don't think the fact that people often get paid for their services is something that may should make us suspect the institution but in the united states there is also a large propel ation of children eligible for adoption around one hundred twenty thousand why would americans. still prefer to pay so much money to struggle with bureaucracy which is a major issue when they can adopt

a child from nearby institution there are lots of americans who do adopt from our foster care system and which is where most of our kids are not in institutions they're in foster care there are americans who adopt from foster care and there are americans who go abroad to adopt and some people do both and my own belief is that the united states should not focus solely on the best interest of quote its own children i think our policy as this pending bill in congress would make our policy should be that all and parroted kids everywhere have a basic human right to get a home and i don't see why we should favor our kids over russian kids or watermelon kids well according to the institute for human services in the united states one reason why americans turn to international adoption is because they're looking for children with specific characteristics they usually prefer children who are young children who are in good physical and psychological health and children of

preferred gender and race and the supply of those children i'm sorry for putting it crudely in the united states is limited can i just respond to that that you're completely outdated factual picture of international adoption almost all the kids that americans are now adopting from abroad or older kids who have suffered significant damage who have very significant emotional and physical disabilities that constitutes almost the entire population so no in today's world americans are not going abroad to get healthy infants because actually infants are not being placed anymore kids are almost always over a year and they've almost always suffered very severe damage. yet they've if you look at the most frequent complaints by the american adoptive parents in relation to russian. system for example they used to complain. the fact that they don't get that full scope of information on their kids and that they're presented with

a kid seems to be four or five years old relatively house and then later on they discover all that house and psychological issues and what i would like to ask is how do we really draw a line here that's been not encouraging shopping for kids you know not encouraging parents going around and looking for a kid with a particular i color but on the other hand we do want to ensure that parents know as much as possible about the child and his potential how say she is he's psychological issues how do you really draw the line here because it's a it's a very complicated issue and many you know officials here in russia feel that parents should not be exposed too much to a child before completing that well i agree with you here i think it is a complicated issue i don't think the parents should be shopping around for the perfect child so i agree with you on that and i also agree with that i think what

you're indicating that you think which is the least i think that. parents if they're going to. be good parents for a child first of all it has to be a good match they have to sort of decide and know roughly speaking what they're getting into in terms of the kinds of challenges that the child represents and secondly if they're going to be good parents they need to be prepared because they can do a lot better job parenting the child getting them to the kind of experts that the child may need if they know what kind of experiences the child has been through that might have left scars. it's not a secret that here in russia for example one of the reasons for abandoning children is alcoholism of their parents and the associated. ailments. associated with david this major so. problem i see human other countries the problem may be different depending on the reasons that are pushing people to abandon their

children i wonder if reach institution do you think should take care and be responsible for making sure that parents are up to speed and fully realize the challenge that they're. well first of all i think the the most important thing is for government policy makers throughout the world to do what they can to prevent the damage much of the damage that happens to children happens after birth and it is not necessary so right now we have government policies that systematically require that children be damaged and what we should have is government policies that seek to free up children as soon as possible after birth if they're not going to be able to be parroted appropriately by their birth parents secondly of course you're right we should be trying to prepare adoptive parents for taking care of kids for example with the you know very drastic fetal

alcohol syndrome and. sees in this country have the responsibility for doing that preparation i dumped in the agencies but no not the government itself do i understand their correctly the government regulates the agencies and it's the government's responsibility to require that adoption agencies be appropriately prepared to educate the parents but yes it's the agencies that have the direct one on one responsibility to prepare the parents and i have we have about a minute left and this is a question that he said that he wouldn't like but let me mention that i wonder how being discussed everything had to be discussed already if it's not the time for the united states itself to take some action to maybe limit the extent of it. international adoption into its country at least until there is

a fully functioning system to ensure that the welfare of those children is well protected because even you have recognized that there are certain problems out there there are problems in every area of human life so no i certainly don't think there's a systematic problem in this area and i certainly don't think that we should shut down adoption or limit international adoption thereby penalizing the kids who are sitting on rotting in institutions midst about thought they have to leave it there i appreciate you joining me for this very difficult conversation and our viewers if you like the show please join us again same place same time here on worlds apart.

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