Adoptions, boom of demand, but children are scarce

In ten years the families that would want them are doubled but the number of the children does not change

Adoptions, boom of demand, but children are scarce

By CONCITA DE GREGORIO

The FACTORY of adoptions produces children and this is the reason for which in speaking about this, market terms are never used, because not very appropriate, demand and offer, the costs and the moment of delivery, the quality of the object. The factory of the adoptions transforms the double absence in present, it moves into the land of the suffering and of hope, exploring the entire range of human feelings that are not always noble. It concerns people, its constructs families and it is should go without saying that neither persons nor families are goods. This said, it works as any other factory and it is important to know, and above all to say it to those who still knock at its door.

A concrete example, for clarity. Ms. and Mr. F. have introduced three years ago a double request for adoption: national and international. The second practice has moved faster, and was personalised by an African child of three years, black. The future parents have gone two times to the institute to get to know it, in its country: they have carried gifts, stayed days to play with him. In the meantime news has arrived from the other side, the one of national adoption, that they could have a newborn Italian baby. The couple F. renounced the African child and has chosen the Italian. Smaller, therefore better.
For sure this has been a difficult choice for them, but that is how it went. The guilty one, as all stories will need to find immediately the guilty person, also in this case, is often the system, thus nobody in the end.

A confused mechanism, a general executive manager of the factory of  adoptions does not exist, every unit travels for its own account, the competences are divided over four ministries in one Tower of Babel/Confusion of small jealously guarded powers and often overlapped.

In the law of the jungle governs the individual arbitrator: better a white newborn than a black toddler. It makes thousands of persons happy, too. In its fuzzy way it works.

Let us look from close at this gigantic ‘fuccina’. Only the single year 2006, it gave birth to five thousand new children. In six years, from 2000, it brought 25.000: 18.000 foreign, 7.000 Italian. The population of one small city. The first thing to know is that the factory of the children is fed by poor countries. Children from the United States and Italy are not adopted by Spain or vice-versa. The abandoned children are an indicator of the uneasiness of the countries they live in. They find themselves in: Ukraine and Colombia, in Vietnam and Bolivia. Parents of richer countries adopt children from poorer countries. In some cases, in the country of origin the abundance of offer is seen as a shame.

The imperial Russia of Putin has rendered the export of its children much more difficult: longtime it kept the borders closed. For a super power to have overfull orphanages is a shame. Developed countries keep their children, they do not abandon them and when it happens its assistance net makes sure they find another home. In Italy it is like that. In the sixties institutes were full and the wheels of charity functioned in full. Ten years later, the amount of abandoned children is small and constant in number: more or less thousand every year. Many of them, especially since 2000, are children of foreign women. The Italians hardly abandon their babies anymore. As a consequence, (2006) confronted with more than 16.000 requests for adoption - the demand -, the adoptable Italian children - the offer – turns out to be 1200: less than one for every ten couples, nine couples to be destined to remain without child.

Moreover the Italian children are older, nearly always school age. The practice to define the adoptability are –correctly- long (must clearly be that nobody will claim that child, that is effectively alone in the world), the verifications of compatibility between the couple and the future children are meticulous and sometimes debilitating. Time passes, when adoption is a fact, years have passed by. The Italian market is therefore asphyxiated: few children and who are already older, long waiting times.

If the offer is remained stable the demand has been doubled in ten years.

The couples that introduced request were 8.000 in 1995, and are 16.000 today. Says Melita Cavallo, head of the department for Child Protection, an undisputed authority and a true guru in matters of adoptions, 25 years of experience in all the childcare institutions of the country and author of tens of publications, among which “Finding children” the bible of adoptive parents. "It started with Moses, and ever since then, mothers abandon their sons placing them in a basket, other mothers save them from the water. Augusto adopted Tiberio in order to guarantee the family line. The reasons of abandonment and the reasons for welcoming children change with the living conditions and the culture of time. In Italy in the post-war period there were many prejudices to adoption: sons of prostitutes were not gladly taken into the house, children of nobody with “who knows what kind of character written in the dna’. Since ten years the curve of demands is in constant growth: with prosperity sterility increased, the medium age in which women try to have the first child went up. Ninety percent of the children are adopted by couples without children. In richer North and the Centre of Italy, there are not enough children to adopt. Hence the boom of the international adoptions ".

If there are none in Italy they search outside: there the three requirements of the market - availability of the goods, rapidity of delivery, quality (are better). The children who arrive from the foreign countries are smaller, arrive in average after two years of waiting, and are thousands. In six and a half years for 15.000 request for international adoption 18.000 children entered the country: more than one per couple. One needs to entrust oneself to an agency, one of the 72 associations authorised by the Government to work with the foreign countries. The problem is the costs. While the national adoption has zero cost, for a child from a foreign country the family pays an average of 15.000 euro. One must have this money. Then it is true that the State, for incomes under the 70.000 euro per year, reimburses a part or couples can deduct from their tax income. But the couple must first advance this payment and then have two months of holidays (of lacked income, another time) in order to go to the country and to perfect the practice. Rosy Bindi, Minister for Family and president of the Commission for International Adoptions, is "just happy for the approval of the  Financial institution of article 54, just the day before: the right for maternity leave of five months is extended to the adoptive parents and can be taken also in the period that precedes the minor’s entry into Italy. The parents who go ahead to get a child, from now on will go on maternity leave ".

Bindi, in adoption matters, exposes a crucial principle that is far from the dominant thought: "a right for the families to have a child does not exist: but the child has a right to have a family". We will come back on that when we speak in the continuation of this inquiry of "the given back" children: a percentage that grows with the education level and well-being of the adoptive couples. It is the child that has the rights, not the couple that wants it. It is for the child that laws are made and cautions are adopted.

And here we are, the laws. Their performance. For who wants tomorrow looking for the opening door, one needs to be informed that there is no central database, there is no coordination, neither an authority to address oneself to. In Italy the national adoptions are of competence of the ministry of Justice. The international adoptions are the competence of the Ministry of Family and therefore directly of the Presidency of the Council. It is here that the CAI (Adoption Committee) has residence: Bindi president, Daniela Baton, magistrate and vice president. As social Solidarity in Ferrero they make way for temporary stay of foreign minors. A manner through which hundreds of children have been adopted from Belarus, who came to be withdrawn from the air of Chernobyl and afterwards they were adopted under a special procedure. One must address oneself to the Ministry for Equal Opportunities for abuses and cases of violence; trafficking of human beings is under the competence of  Minister Pollastrini. A directory of the adoptable Italian children does not exist: every Court guards its own. And thus, that is the starting point: from the Court of its own city. From the services of the region for the information.

From the Institute dell Innocenti of Florence, first and extraordinary lay agency of attendance of abandoned infancy, for the documentation: they are the ones that elaborate data and publish monographys. Would it not make more sense to have one single centre that, for example takes care to avoid the superimpositions of procedures? To avoid the cases of double demands, not to arrive to the choice that the F. couple had to made? Melita Cavallo in her office in via Julia, Rome: "It would be right. I am going to a convention in Paestum to introduce a plan for a national database. I have written books and collaborated to bills in parliament on this but the problem is that to divide power is easy, in Italy, to unite difficult. Every ministry, every agency holds tight to the utmost to keep competences. Nobody gives in, all have fear to lose something ".
(15 November 2007)