When Barbara Evans set out with a church group in the winter of 1995 to collect her new daughter, she thought she was picking up a child with a minor, readily correctable heart ailment and developmental delays that would disappear quickly. The Evanses were prepared to adopt a child with special needs, or so they thought–after all, they already had a son with cerebral palsy, whom they had adopted in the United States years before. “That’s my personality type,” says Barbara. “I need to save people.” Saving Elena, however, has proved a herculean task. Back in the States, doctors told the Evanses that Elena’s heart problem was more severe than they had been led to believe: she needed a transplant.
Scarier still were Elena’s emotional problems. Like many orphanage children who have never known their mothers and been cared for by a succession of female caretakers, Elena rejected her new mom and bonded only with her father, Bill. The situation tested the Evanses’ marriage–especially when, hearing her father’s truck approach the house, Elena would spontaneously work herself into “full hysterics,” prompting Bill to ask, “What have you done to her?” Elena now visits an array of medical and developmental experts. “We use everybody who will look at her,” says Barbara. “We need help.” Elena’s problems-and the progress she’s made-speak volumes about the risks and rewards of foreign adoption.
Adopting overseas is an increasingly popular option for Americans, and for most of the roughly 10,000 couples and single parents who choose it each year, it’s a godsend. Adoption within the United Stateshas traditionally presented a variety of well-recognized difficulties: a shortage of healthy white infants; a social-services mind-set that frowns upon transracial adoption, and the so-called “Baby Richard factor”–a fear, perhaps exaggerated, that an adopted child will be reclaimed someday by a birthparent. While reformulated adoption laws and changing attitudes toward transracial adoption may eventually make domestic adoption easier, at the moment the pull overseas is strong. Almost a third of the foreign-born children adopted by Americans last year came from China, and so far experiences there have been predominantly positive. Parents in China–a strongly patriarchal society-are apt to abandon female babies for no reason other than that they’re female. And since Chinese children tend to be adopted at younger ages, they aren’t exposed to the deprivations of orphanage life for very long. Korean kids, who make up another 14 percent of overseas adoptions, are generally the product of a famously well-managed foster-care system and therefore tend to fare well after their adoptions. The smaller numbers of kids from Latin America mostly have correctable medical problems such as parasites, hepatitis and tuberculosis.
Adopting from the orphanages of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union ($,000 or so children last year) demands the most care. Media reports in recent years have afforded glimpses of often heartbreaking conditions there. Two other Russian cases in the news will only add to that terrifying image. In what is expected to be a heavily reported murder trial next month, prosecutors in Greeley, Colo., will charge that entrepreneur Renee Polreis, 45, beat her 2-year-old adopted Russian son, David, to death last February, out of frustration with his misbehavior. She’s pleaded not guilty; her lawyers are set to argue that bruises and other injuries on the boy’s body were self-inflicted during violent tantrums. And two weeks ago, New York police arrested Richard and Karen Thorne of Phoenix, Ariz., after some passengers and crew on a flight from Moscow to Kennedy International Airport reported that the couple had abused their two newly adopted Russian children during the 10-hour journey home. According to authorities, Karen Thorne, 42, struck one of the two girls “in the torso and upper body,” pulled on her arms “with extreme force” and @truck her “in the back of the legs.” The couple faces charges of assault, harassment and endangering the welfare of a child. In an interview with NEWSWEEK, the Thornes maintained their innocence. Karen says she understands why fellow passengers were concerned but that she and her husband were simply trying to cope as best they could under the circumstances: a long flight with two hysterical, sleep-deprived children, neither of whom speaks English andone of whom Richard Thorne, 48, describes as having “a short attention span.” “If she didn’t get her way, she’d collapse on the floor and hit her head and fall like a sack of potatoes,” he says.
Not every adoption story from Eastern Europe is tragic; some are positively upbeat. Dayna Holt and her husband adopted their daughter from a Russian orphanage last year. “You hear so much about the horror stories, but I think the majority of families are glowing,” says Holt. Her own daughter is “just completely bonded to us. She’s a delight.” Says her husband, Glenn: “We couldn’t have done any better with our own genes.” But some horror stories are not exaggerated, and the fears that these tales inspire are based on some sad truths. In orphanages, the infants’ lack of physical contact and a changing cast of caregivers can make it impossible for them to form the bonds they need to live healthy emotional lives. These deprivations can spawn developmental delays and, in some eases, so-called attachment disorder, which can result in severe behavioral problems. And hidden or undiscovered medical problems can compound the agony. Helmut and Josephine Reinhardt of North Providence, R.I., were frustrated in their efforts to adopt domestically, so the couple wrote to an agency in Georgia in 1995, expressing their wish to adopt one or more “reasonably healthy children,” who might live a “normal famfiy life.” The agency offered them a boy and two girls from Russia, all of whom, the Reinhardts say they were assured, were healthy.
It was during a routine exit meeting with orphanage officials in Taganrog, Russia, that the Reinhardts got the first inkling of the trials that were to come. Then, and in documents they later had translated, they say they discovered that their children’s birthmother drank and was probably a drug abuser, and that her children – fathered by two different men–had been profoundly neglected. Worse yet, the father of the two older siblings had tried to kill their mother and then committed suicide-possibly in front of the children.
Back in Rhode Island, the couple took the kids for physical and mental exams. Marissa, now 4, was the worst off: her welcome to America was five days of hospitalization for a head injury allegedly inflicted by her birthmother’s abusive husband. The children’s rocky beginnings also fostered a slew of trying behavioral problems. All three have symptoms of attachment disorder. Helmut broke down one day watching his children devour a meal as if they were fighting for food in an orphanage. “We feellike caretakers in a group home,” says Josephine. “We don’t know if they love us. We don’t know if they care.”
The reinhardts, like many troubled parents, blame their adoption agency, which is no longer in business. “Adoption agencies think somehow a child’s development can be flash-frozen like a TV dinner. Five trips to the mall and two to Toys ‘R’ Us and the children are melted down,” says Thais Tepper, who in 1993 founded the Parent Network for the Post-Institutionalized Child after adopting her son, Drue, from Romania. “Who are they kidding?” But others point the finger right back, blaming overeager would-be parents who didn’t heed warnings. “When Romania opened up, I told everyone to wait, but nobody listened,” says William Pierce, head of the National Council for Adoption in Washington, D.C. “Lots of [people] rushed over to rescue these kids. They had no idea what they were getting into. These were severely damaged, institutionalized kids.”
In any event, avoiding geographic trouble spots won’t necessarily rule out problems. In a study of 129 adoptees from 22 countries at the International Adoption Clinic at New England Medical Center in Boston between 1989 and 1993, Dr. Laurie C. Miller and her colleagues found that more than a quarter had serious medical conditions and that most of these had gone unrecognized prior to adoption. Only half of the children were developmentally normal. Dr. Dana Johnson, a University of Minnesota pediatrician who runs a 10-year-old clinic for internationally adopted children, says that upon arrival in America “the children’s overall health status is worse” today than in the past.
Yet those same experts will tell you that, due to the near-miraculous resilience of children and the patience and efforts of their American parents, the prospects are good for most kids adopted abroad. Bethany DeNardo, a developmental therapist at the Boston clinic, says that “with stimulation and loving care and good food,” most kids will bounce back. Miller echoes that, despite theft initial handicaps, “the vast majority” of the kids she sees “are going to do very well.” Nodding toward dozens of photos in her office, she says, “I have a wall of smiling kids.”
Western medicine can work wonders for the run-of-the-mill health problems that most internationally adopted kids will present. And with therapy, most of the linguistic and motor impairments to which orphanage kids are prone will improve. Miller’s elinit and others around the country now offer pre-adoption counseling-poring over medical records, photographs and even videotapes to help parents evaluate prospective children ahead of time. Dr. Andrew Adesman, who counsels families at Schneider Children’s Hospital in New Hyde Park, N.Y., points out, “The irony is that adoptive parents have an option that birthparents don’t. I don’t get a chance to decide whether or not I want to accept the child that my wife gives birth to.”
Making informed decisions about international adoption can go a long way toward mitigating the potential for problems (sidebar). Parents, obviously, should take pains to select an experienced, reputable agency. For families with problems, though, the most important question is not “Whose fault?” but “What now?” Often, time and patience can make a word of difference. Joanne and Martin MacNeely first looked into adoption in 1993; not because they couldn’t have their own children, but out of a strong conviction that adoption can enrich the lives of kids and parents alike. Joanne herself was adopted, as was Martin’s mother. As first-time parents, the couple from Cape Cod, Mass., favored a child under the age of 5. But their state’s social-services department immediately discouraged them. “They told us not to bother if we weren’t looking for a child well over the age of 5 and who had very serious psychological or medical complications,” says Joanne. Through an out-of-state agency, the couple found Juliana at a Bulgarian orphanage.
The couple was expecting major difficulties. “We tried to prepare friends and family that she could be retarded,” says Joanne. “We decided we could deal with that.” And, indeed, for months after she arrived in 1995, Juliana, now 6, lashed out at her adoptive parents. For the MacNeelys, that summer was a series of"hell weeks." Now, however, Juliana is “a completely different child,” says Joanne. “Kids are like sponges, looking for any input-love, stimulation.” Juliana is affectionate and loving; she’s made friends and learned to communicate in simple English. She has picked a favorite color-blue-and even a favorite film, “Pocahontas.” Says Martin: “It’s like night and day.” The couple plans to adopt another Bulgarian child later this year.
Improvement does not come as easily for everybody. Some parents find themselves stymied by a social-services culture that doesn’t recognize the problems of formerly institutionalized kids. A lot of families are afraid to speak openly about their despair and rage–and even some of the therapies they’re using–lest they be investigated forchild abuse. Less serious, though more common, is the reaction that Laurie Beck-mann of Lebarton, Ohio, got when she sought help froat her agency. Her daughter Anna, adopted from Russia in 1995, was violent and seemed fascinated by knives and fire. Distraught, Beckmann phoned for help. Her agency told her, “You don’t love her enough,” Beckmann says. “That was like a stab in the heart.”
For a while, Beckmann muddled along, attributing her daughter’s diffic@ties to the stress of the adoption. Then, shortly after Anna turned 5, Beckmann attended a seminar on attachment disorders given by psychologist Gregory Keck. “I sat there and cried. This man was describing my daughter like he had been in our home.” Keck taught Beckmann and her husband not to rise to Anna’s bait. “We were giving her a lot of pleasure jut@t by getting angry at her,” she says. At Keck’s suggestion, Beckmann practiced a controversial “holding therapy” with Anna. “She lays on my lap. I hold her like I would a little baby. She looks up to my face, and we sit and talk.” At first Anna resisted the bonding exercise, but after a while Beckmann saw “a happiness starting.” Anna even blurted out in therapy that “I want my mommy to like me.” Today, after further therapy, as well as treatment for an undiagnosed case of parasites that had been plaguing her, Anna “is a normal 6-year-old American kid,” her mother says.
The Evanses, from Sacramento, have had success, too. The couple, who run a construction business, have an income of less than $28,000, which allows them to qualify for state medical benefits. Barbara has fought to get her daughter special services in school, no small feat in cash-strapped California. She takes Elena to four speech-therapy sessions a week and to countless doctors’ appointments. But long hours of holding Elena, letting her cry and gradually bond, have paid off for mother and daughter alike. “She’s so beautiful, so vivacious,” says Barbara. “I am so in love with her.”
Indeed, even the most troubled families tend to agree on one thing: if they had it to do over again…they’d do it over again. “In a heartbeat,” says Barbara Evans. “For the most part, adoption works,” says Elizabeth Bartholet, a protbssor at Harvard Law School and author of “Family Bonds: Adoption and the Politics of Parenting.” “It’s a challenge,” says Bartholet, herself the adoptive mother of two Peruvian boys, “but I also think that challenge makes for rich and wonderful families.” It’s worth remembering that parenthood, whether biological or adoptive, always requires a leap of faith.
Of the roughly 125,000 children adopted in the United States last year, more than 11,000 were foreign-born. China is currently the most common country of origin.
Percent of foreign adoptions by country, 1996 China 29.3% Russia 22.4 Korea 14.0 Other 12.6 Romania 4.9 Guatemala 3.7 India 3.4 Vietnam 3.1 Colombia 2.3 Paraguay 2.3 Philippines 2.0 Sources: U.S. Imm. and Naturalization Services, U.S. Dept. of State.
