Adoption for the Sake of the Planet?

Dr. Wendy Walsh, a psychotherapist who blogs at "Dating. Mating. Relating" is also a columnist for Pregnancy Magazine. "A single mother of a multiracial family" (applause, please), she has appeared on television as a psychological "expert" and is author of “The Boyfriend Test” and “The Girlfriend Test.”

On TodayMoms she takes on adoption as the environmental PC thing to do.

First, Walsh compares adoption to IFV.  After comparing costs,  she points out the inherent medical complications and risks of the later as if adoption were 100% risk free.  No possible down side whatsoever. No kids ever sent back on planes alone or dumped at ranches because they "failed to bond" to the satisfaction of the purchaser, er adopter.

Walsh concludes her assessment of the increase in infertility, not with a desire to find medical solutions or educational prevention programs, but with a solution for making the medical dysfunction of a few all of our issue to resolve:

 "...with steady rates of one in five women over the age of forty being childless, a case can be made that nature's intention was for a village of caregivers to nurture any given child."

How idyllic. A cozy little village where no one flaunts their material assets to create a sub-culture of less fortunate breeders. Has she read The Handmaid's Tale?

Her either or scenario left out surrogacy as an option.  Is she totally unaware of the current rent-a-womb programs in India and elsewhere and the children who are stolen, kidnapped and trafficked for adoption to meet a demand?  Will all of this desire to have a child of one's "own" magically end because of sharing?  Why then are so many kids in foster care, even those who could be adopted, if we could all be encouraged to share the chores - and joys - of child raising equally without showing preferences for skin color, age, ability? 

Is there any evidence that it is in the children's best interest to be raised communally, or is Walsh's only concern providing for the infertile?

She then speaks of her friends and acquaintances who hold ignorant, fear-based prejudices about who should procreate and who should be subjected to eugenics - nice crowd of moronic snobs she hangs with! 

Without considering a compassionate middle ground of making birth control available to many in the world who cannot afford it and have no access to it, she swings to the opposite side of the ridiculous pendulum (but the one that sounds so much warmer and fuzzier) and reminds us:

"The planet earth will be expected to support nearly 10 billion people by the year 2040. My own children will be barely middle aged by then. "Humans are 10,000 times more common than we should be, according to the rules of the animal kingdom, and we have agriculture to thank for that," says Steve Jones, head of the biology department at University College London."

Ah, yes...the environmental argument for redistributing the world's children. Well, Dr Walsh, the problem with that is that of most environmental arguments (paper or plastic?). Yes, Virginia, electric cars also use up energy and need fossil fuel to create the electricity (unless you have a windmill or solar collectors on the car's roof).

In fact, some suggest that by taking children from third world countries and having them adopted into more industrialized countries - as is the way adoption flows - uses more natural resources per human so moved!  Do you not think the two children Madonna took from Malawi orphanages to her palatial estate are doing far more harm and will continue to for the rest of their lives then had they remained - with their extended families - in their natural habitat? Think of the toilet paper and toilet flushes alone, not to mention clothing, toys, cell phones, computers and their future cars and air travel.

Of course none of the PC environmental talk takes into account the impact of destroying cultures and languages through the suggested homogenization - which in reality is the imperialism of the wealthy. What of the loss of genetic and human connectedness?  Will future generations simply loose all curiosity of their roots as they join hands and sing Kumbaya or "We Are The World"?

How will we stop the rich and powerful fertiles from selfishly hoarding their own offspring? Will they - the children born to the Madonna's and the Jolie's be likewise added to the communal pile? Who will make them?

What about humanitarianism?  Let's take the parable about teaching a man to fish instead of giving him one fish dinner or asking him to join us and all share our fish together.  If we apply this higher form of charity to the world's children we see that it is the caring thing to do to provide families in crisis what they need to remain intact -- as is being done by NGOs such as SOS Children's Village, Save the Child, Christian Children's Fund and others -- rather than taking their children and leaving them in their situation. Would Walsh live in THEIR villages and help care for their children?

The way to defuse the effects of over-populations is simply to accept infertility,  as people used to or to foster, but NOT to relocate children.  

Care to comment on this "adoption is better for the environment" rant? You can do so here.