Money. Demand. Lack of regulation of adoption"professionals," facilitators, and adoption agency business.
Exploitation. Coercion. Secrets and lies.
All of these are threats to the sanctity of families, particularly families in crisis and those lacking affluence.
Demand is a major part of the problem and demand will continue until such time as we face infertility as a major health problem and add information on reducing infertility risk to high school health education classes. of course, this is unlikely inasmuch as infertility supports several multi-billion dollar industries: infertility treatment and adoption... and now surrogacy. Until we stem the tide, nation after nation will be stripped of their children to meet the demand.
However there is another very important underlying cause of family disruption that is seldom if ever addressed: The doctrine of "best interest."
Best interest can be used to justify taking any child and placing him or her with a wealthier family who can provide more "advantages." As long as we as a culture place more value on material "advantages" than on connectedness, we will continue on a path of family destruction and recreation.
We see the very dangerous effects of this "best interest" doctrine in contested adoptions. Instead of being treated as kidnappings - which illegal, fraudulent or coercive adoptions are - the courts too often look at the "best interest" of the child...or at least those who hold the child captive from his or her family hope they will, and use delays and postponements to increase their boding time with the captive child.
In conjunction with this misused premise is the underlying belief that the end justifies the means.
This end-justifies-the-means belief is extremely dangerous in terms of adoption custody transfers as it can be used to condone a great many illegalities. When end-justified is applied in adoption, it becomes OK to lie to mothers, dupe them, coerce then... all in an effort to remove their children to be raised by those deemed "better."
End-justifies-means has left Loyda Rodriguez's daughter, Anylie with Jennifer and Timothy Monahan despite Guatemala demanding the return of this kidnap victim.
End-justifies the means causes "desperate" for a child, prospective adopters top ignore blatant red lights, such as those delineated in the book Finding Fernanada and to condone paying bribes, as seen in the film Wo Ai Ni (I Love You) Mommy.
Entitlement? Yes. But entitlement is a personal feeling. But it takes the cultural acceptance of best-interest and end-justifies-the-means to uphold policies and court decisions that support personal beliefs of one party's entitlement over another's.
And the underlying prejudice in play in all of this is that wealth equals entitlement and less affluent parents are less fit and less able to provide for their child's "best interest" based on their financial status.
Biology, blood, genetics sadly seem to hold no sway in weighing a child's best interest. We as a society put no importance on these factors except when a doctor asks our medical history or when a baby is born and relatives debate who the newborn resembles most or parents want to take credit for their offspring's abilities or talents.
