As is well known, journalists know a little bit about many things. That makes them very suitable as guests on birthdays and in talk shows, they can talk about everything. But they are less suited as experts. But now a program came on television with a subject I really knew something about: adoption. media logic (NPO2) this time was about the adoption debate. As an adoptive father I am an experience expert, I have attended courses, and I have read books about it.
Last February, the government suspended adoption from abroad because there are too many abuses in the countries of origin. Children were put up for adoption without the consent of the biological parents. The papers were also often found to be forged. There was talk of child robbery, child trafficking, even baby farms (human farms). Because this happened abroad, the Dutch government had little control over it. So better stop.
touching stories
To the surprise of the committee that advised the government on this, and to the astonishment of the anti-adoption activists who speak in the program, the new cabinet chose this year to resume adoption from abroad. According to media logic This is because, although the media has been paying attention to the abuses for years, they also tell moving, positive stories about adoption, and the latter are more likely to stick with the public. Rather grow up in a rich country in a family, is the reasoning of the proponents in media logicthan in a poor country in an orphanage.
Inherent in adoption
But actually that’s a different matter. The point here is: what is the scope of those malpractice? And are they inherent in adoption? The abuses are actually independent of the question whether a Dutch family is better for a child than an orphanage in the country of birth. Is adoption wrong at all? Or is only the intermediate trade not good? And what can you do about that? You should figure that out.
Medialogica is a program that officially examines other media to show how imaging works and what its influence is. But often the program is about the topic itself, rather than how that topic got into the media. And in this case, the program goes along with the apparent contradiction of malpractice versus saving children. One thinks this, the other thinks that. And they can’t deal with how it really is, because unfortunately the half hour is already over. This is how it behaves media logic itself exactly the same as the programs it is supposed to measure.
And was there anything else I could do with my expertise? I don’t know what it’s like to be adopted, I thought, so I’m not a real expert by experience. Most adoptees are doing well, research shows, but many struggle with attachment and trauma. It is quite hard for them to be adopted. In other words: it is hard to be relinquished by your biological parents. Children from orphanages also have problems with attachment and trauma, perhaps worse.
And those malpractice? I suspect they are ineradicable. A rich couple comes to pick up a child from a poor country, then market forces set in, there is money to be made, you get corruption. That’s the unpleasantly neocolonial thing about adoption. It’s so uneven.
Well, actually I had a lot of thoughts and questions about it, but no strong opinion. I didn’t know anymore. My opinions are stronger when there are things I know less about.