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Adoption on Wikipedia need Updating

almost_human's picture
Tue, 2008-06-10 16:20 - almost_human

The entry for Wikipedia on adoption walks, (like all of their definitions on controversial topics) a fine line between impartial and substantiated assessment of the issues.

There are several citations missing in the analysis, as well as plenty of room for more citations on the adoption reform side, as well as some slight tweaking of the language.  Some things that jumped out to me were:

  • Lacking is anything critical under the Reasons for Adopting / Adoptive Parents heading - such as colonialism, religious recruiting, paedophilia, narcissism, are left out
  • There is also no mention of high profile adoptions under the sub-heading Issues Surrounding Adoption / Adoptions in the Media
  •  Nor are there any cases of adoption abuse mentioned in Issues Surrounding Adoption / Adoptions in the Media
  •  under the heading Types of adoption by location and origin / International Adoption the reference to the HagueConference needs updating

I'm not as well versed on these topics (yet!) but maybe some of you who are armed with references can submit some changes to the document. Our side has been addressed, but it needs to be fleshed out more to balance things.

Wikipedia is often a first source for people now adays, due to its collaboration from multiple viewpoints.   Let's make it reflect reality. 

 

 

Comments

Wed, 2008-06-11 13:24 — Niels

references

Lacking is anything critical under the Reasons for Adopting / Adoptive Parents heading - such as colonialism, religious recruiting, paedophilia, narcissism, are left out

Good catch. Before changing anything in Wikipedia, we need to find the proper references to back up these reasons for adopting.

Paedophilia as reason we have already covered in the following three cases in the abuse list Boys adopted by John Krueger, Daniel Peckenpaugh, Masha Allen. The other reasons you mention I believe have all in one form or the other been mentioned here, but for that we really have to find better references. Those reference I would very much like to see republished on PPL, material has a habit of disappearing from the internet.  

There is also no mention of high profile adoptions under the sub-heading Issues Surrounding Adoption / Adoptions in the Media

There is enough out there about Hollywood adoptions to at least mention it in the article, with many references all around the internet.

Nor are there any cases of adoption abuse mentioned in Issues Surrounding Adoption / Adoptions in the Media

I would hope our abuse cases list is an authoratative source in Wikipedia's eyes. We started that list because there was no such resource anywhere on the internet. There are several articles out that mention the 12/13/14 cases of Russian adoptees being killed by their adopters. Suncaana.com has an impressive list of children abused and/or murdered in the families they were placed in. The list is big, but doesn't offer much detail. It also doesn't differentiate adoption from other forms of child placement. When we set up our abuse cases list we decided to focus it on adoption cases only first. This was for purely practicle reasons. The list of foster care cases is so long, it would take us months to get it ready for publication. I would really like to start doing work on the foster care cases, but we really need help with that. That work can't be carried by only one or two people.