The commerce of adoption
On May 27, 2003, federal agents Denise Holtz and Tom Clinton visited the home of Matthew Mancuso, to investigate advertisement of child pornography on the internet. When they pulled into the driveway, they noticed Mancuso outside with his adopted daughter Masha. Immediately, after being separated from Mancuso, Masha asked the investigators if they had come because of her secret.
Masha's secret began five year earlier, when Matthew Mancuso purchased her through an adoption agency Reaching Out Thru International Adoption. This agency was affiliated with an orphanage in Novoshakhtinsk, Russia. Mancuso had no intention to being a father to Masha, he wanted a sex-slave and he got what he wanted, and paid for.
Masha's story is unique in many ways, yet it is plagued with problems known to exist within the adoption industry. Masha's story is special not because she was sexually abused by her adopter, that sadly happens quite frequently. Masha's story is special not because she was sexually exploited for pornographic purposes, in that respect there are similar cases. Masha's story is special not because she was adopted for the purpose of sexual abuse and exploitation, even in that sense Masha's case is not a singular exception. What makes Masha's case so special and unique? There is so much knowledge and information gained from it.
Adoption is a secretive business; under the pretext of the protection of privacy, not much is officially known about the way in which children change hands. It's fair to say those protective measures mostly serve the organizations involved. Masha's case is much the Rosetta Stone of adoption, because of her testimony before a Congressional Committee and the subsequent use of Congress' power to subpoena, all of which gave a unique insight into the workings of the agencies involved.
In this article we will explore the workings of organizations involved in adoption. Our working thesis is that adoption is a commercial activity in which organizations make an income through the sales of children. As a result of that, the safety and well-being of children takes a back seat to the machinations of the child placement industry. [I want to pun the phrase "drive to adopt", but it could be overkill]
Proponents of adoption will deny adoption is a commercial activity. They will point out that children don't have a price tag, but instead fees are paid for services rendered. Supportors will also claim adoption agencies are finding families for children not children for families, yet both the history of adoption and the process under which these adoptions take belie these statements. All one has to do is peruse the internet and see the many young faces made available for those interested in having a young needy child in their home. What does each face represent? A child asking, "Don't you want me?".
An example of real-life adoption advertising can be seen at rainbowkids.com. This is a website that advertises several affiliated adoption agencies and uses the photolisting method. The website is very much like any other online shop, listing the children available for adoption (stock), having a search option with various options, a single page showing the particulars of the specific item and a checkout option, much like a shopping basket, going be the name of "My Rainbowkids". As the name implies rainbow kids are available in all colors of the human spectrum, coming from various sources from around the globe. For a pedophile, having access to such a display of match-making options is like having a catalog of mail-order-brides, only child-sized.
***Of all forms of adoption, inter-country adoption is the most commercial, and therefore the most dangerous for young healthy children. That didn't use to be the case. Not so long ago, domestic infant adoption worked by the same rules, inter-country adoption does now. However, as demand for more adoption has increased, the supply side of domestic infant adoption has, much to the chagrin of prospective adopters, gained more and more influence on the process. The reason for this: open adoptions, as a result of which adoption agencies had to stop seeking pregnant women to meet the needs of their clientele, but find adoptive parents that meet the approval of the relinquishing parent(s). Of course intermediaries still make an income through these arrangements, but due to the loss of secrecy, they have lost much of their power.
Not all domestic infant adoptions are open adoptions and when such is not the case, the commercial patterns become evident again, with all the down sides that comes with it.
Before discussing the effects of commerce have on adoption, as becomes so painfully clear in the Masha Allen case, let's step back little over a hundred years ago and see how adoption developed into the industry it nowadays is.
While adoption had been formalized in various states in the US since the Massachusetts Adoption of Children Act of 1851, the law was mainly intended to formalize the placement of older children in need of families. Whether there was any infant adoption mid-1800's is difficult to figure out.
In her book Pricing the priceless child, Viviana A. Rotman Zelizer, describes how during the 19th century the value of children changed due to two related mechanisms. First of all the infant mortality rate started to drop significantly, due to which parents started investing more of their time, money and energy in children. At the same time children became less and less valuable as a productive asset. Child labor, while continuing into the 1930's, slowly started to disappear from the late 1900's. The factors of both declining economic value and larger investments made in individual children, lead to a growing sentimental value of children. This opened the road to commercial adoption.
Yet already in July, 1883 the (Wallstreet?) Journal wrote an article "A broker in babies", reprinted in various news papers at the time, that described the work of a baby brokers in New York, claiming: "the recent researches of a Journal reporter revealed the fact that there are at present something like forty or fifty individuals and firms employed in this industry". One of these individuals is being interviewed in the article and asked whether he finds the business profitable:
"Well, generally the demand is rather in excess of the supply, and hence the chances of profit 'are fairly good, but my expenses are large. My rent is heavy, and doctor's fees make a large hole in my profits. My competitors are very numerous, and of course that cuts down prices. Things are not what they used to be.' Now, if a customer is not satisfied with my rates she goes elsewhere, in fact, goes 'shopping,' The establishment opposite has been a great source of loss to me. Where I used to get $200 a year ago, I must now be satisfied with $75.
A recurrent theme through out the history of infant adoption is the fact that demand is in excess of supply.
In the late 1900's there were so-called baby farms all across the USA, where mothers could place children that were conceived unwantedly. In order to place a child in a baby farm the mother had to pay for the care of the child. Conditions in baby farms were appalling and 80% of children placed there died. Due to changing valuation of children in the early 20th century, baby farmers discovered they could both receive money from the mothers who placed the child as from couples wanting to adopt an infant. Within a relatively short period of time, baby farms transformed into baby brokers and the age of commercial adoption was started.
A more upscale version of black market baby brokering was pioneered by Louise Waterman Wise, who founded the Free Synagogue Child Adoption Committee, which was later renamed into Louise Wise Services. In Illinois, Florence Walrath founded the Cradle, which supplied children for such celebrities as: George Burns and Gracie Allen, Bob Hope, Al Jolson, Donna Reed, Pearl Buck and Gale Sayers. In New York City, Clara Spence founded the Spence Alumni Society. Alice Chapin founded the Alice Chapin Nursery, later merged into Spence-Chapin. Both the Cradle and Spence-Chapin are still in business.
While baby brokers and the first adoption agencies were amateurs in the field of child placement, at the time of their rise, a new profession, that of the social worker was taking shape. Social workers of the time, were mostly working for child welfare organizations, that were strongly opposed to infant adoption. Much of their arguments were based on eugenics, fearing the bad genes of the lower class would wreak havoc in the upper middle class adoptive families. These sentiments not only plagued the professionals of the time, but also played a role in the work of the upscale adoption agencies of the time. Henri Chapin, husband of Alice Chapin was very specific about this: “Not babies merely, but better babies, are wanted.”
When finally in the 1940's and 1950's child welfare organizations did enter the infant adoption arena, they brought with them the notion of standards. Baby brokers at the time, independent adoptions and adoptions through upscale adoption agencies were totally unregulated. Money was the only requirement to adopt a child. With the entrance of professionals in the field and their subsequent relaxation of standards to become competitive, things started to change.
In 1945 75% of adoptions were done through baby brokers, the number had dropped to 50% in 1945 and to 20% in 1971. With their entrance on the market and the high profile arrest of Georgia Tann [expand the story], the push for higher standards culminated in the 1955 Senate Judiciary Hearing lead by Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver. Despite overwhelming evidence of malpractice Kefauver's investigations didn't lead to federal regulation of adoption. Prospective adoptive parents formed too strong a lobby against regulations. The demand for babies was and still is stronger than the demand for ethical practice.
It's interesting to note that the Kefauver hearings took place as part of the investigations in juvenile delinquency, the rationale for this was given by Senator Alexander Wiley of Wisonsin, who stated:
I do know that the adoption of a baby is a sacred matter, a trust which should be assumed only by couples who have proved that they are capable and anxious to raise the child with loving, protective care, as they would their own children, if they had been so blessed. I do know that careless or mercenary placing of a child in a bad home is like planting good seed in poisoned ground. A bad home is the beginning of a juvenile delinquent.
Bad home life denies the child the right to grow up straight and fine. A bad home life casts a child out into the street where lurking evil warps the future.
Adoption racket, placing babies in warped homes, just for the sake of greed, should be stopped, should be stamped out in America. This is a subcommittee to study juvenile delinquency in the United States so that our country may in the future wax stronger instead of weaker.
The Kefauver investigations took place in the middle of the Baby Boom Era, that largely coincided with what has been coined the Baby Scoop Era. In many ways the ideology displayed during the Baby Boom Era fed the Baby Scoop Era. The ideology of the Baby Boom Era as depicted in the main stream media and films of the time, was about getting married and making babies. Women were supposed to earn their M.R.S., meaning, marrying right out of high school and staying at home to raise children. This pressure for marriage meant a stonger condemnation of children born out of wedlock, while at the same time putting more pressure on infertile couples to get children at any cost.
There are several other effects playing a role in the increased supply of infants in the post war period. Up until the late 1920's maternity homes ran by Evangelical Christians, pressed unwed women to keep their babies in order to redeem themselves. Present day Evangelical Christians are among the most stalwart proponents of domestic infant adoption. Where up until the 1920's keeping the baby was considered a punishment for "loose" sexual behavior, this gradually transformed into a punishment to reliquish the baby, while at the same time awarding the infertile couple with a much wanted baby. This transition was guided by the social workers of the time, seeking expansion of their profession. Where Evangelical sentiment saw unwed women becoming pregnant as innocent victims of seduction and abandonment, social workers saw these women as neurotic, delinquent, ignorant and incapable of raising children. The growing influence of social workers on maternity homes enhanced the the number of children available for adoption.
Another impact social workers had on adoption practices was the pressure for secrecy. It wasn't until the early 1940's that the sealing of birth certificates became common practice through-out the United States. This practice created another impetus for the raising the child "as if" born from its adoptive parents.
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The 1950's also marked the rise of international adoption.
Displaced Persons Act of 1948 due to which 4,065 "orphans" entered the United States
Refugee Acts of 1953 due to which an additional 1806 children entered the United States, one third of whom, coming from Greece.
During the same period, 2,418 Asian-born children were brought to the United States through ICAS, and two-thirds (1,602) of these were Japanese.
Between 1953 and 1962, approximately 15,000 foreign-born children were adopted by American families.
In the ten years ending in 1976, approximately 32,000 additional foreign-born children were adopted by U.S. citizens, and about 65 percent of these children came
from Asia, primarily from the Republic of Korea (ROK).
The number of children adopted into the United States from Latin America increased almost threefold--from 332 to 977-- between 1973 and 1975.
Between 1966 and 1976, some 60 percent of the West European children adopted by Americans were born in West Germany or Italy. It is interesting to note that, although Western European families adopted many non-European-born children, West Germany continued to export orphans until as recently as 1981. From 1976 to 1981, 304 West German-born children were adopted by Americans. One explanation holds that many of these were racially mixed children fathered by black U.S. servicemen stationed in Germany, children who might have a difficult time being fully accepted into mainstream German society.
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While the market was soaring through-out the so-called baby scoop era, humanitarian driven attempts to "rescue" first babies born to GI's in Germany and later in Korea, lead to such agencies as Holt and Pearl Buck's Welcome House. Already in the 1960's baby brokers started finding their way internationally too. Mid 1960's Seymour Kurtz, an attorney who ran licenced adoption agency Easter House from Chicago, imported children from Germany and Austria for the American Market. In the 1970's he would run an operation from Mexico to eventually focus on American supply altogether. His practices eventually lead to a congressional hearing in 1978 (?), but no formal action was taken against him until 2008.
Though highly disputed and criticized at the time, Seymour Kurz set the stage for modern day adoption agencies, where licencing is a guarantee to be in business, other than a guarantee for ethical practices. His complex network of organizations, both abroad and in various States in the US, was a method later on copied by other adoption agencies and facilitators.
Despite State regulations for adoptions, there have remained loop holes in the adoption process which smart business minds have exploited ever since the 1950's. Business moves from one state to another, when regulations are being tightened or relaxed. The 1980's saw booming business in South Carolina, in the 1990's business shifted to Texas, while over the last ten years domestic infant adoption has found a home in Utah. A remarkable phenomenon is noteworthy to mention. LDS family services, the Mormon church adoption agency, is registered as a church, thereby being able to operate even more secretively than other adoption agencies, not even having to file their financial position with the IRS.
In 1974 Association of Administrators of the Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children was established to streamline the adoption procedures between various states. The compact however did nothing to curb the commerce of adoption and in fact helped create a nation wide market for adoption. In that sense its impact is comparable to that of the Hague Convention on the Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Inter-Country Adoption, which in an attempt to regulate intercountry adoption to protect children from commercial exploitation, in reality mostly regulates the process without hindering the business of adoption.