Posted by
Shogrensus on Thursday, March 22, 2007 2:37:29 PM
Jolie’s Adoption
Joy with a funny one liner: Angelina Jolie: She could single-handedly solve the illegal immigration problem.
I thank Jolie and Brad Pitt for calling attention to the plight of children around the world. I hope they someday adopt one of the more than one hundred thousand children trapped in the American foster care system. I recognize one of the real reasons people adopt children from these third world countries is the reality there are no strings attached. There is no fear of biological relatives looking you up and little chance that many of these children will find their bio relatives.
In America, children often know their bio families, they may have siblings who want to stay connected and even when the courts seal records, there is always the chance the records will be unsealed. (For example there is a bill in Minnesota that further discourages adoption through allowing any adoptee over 18 to access his or her original birth certificate. This bill would eliminate the ability of a birth parent to walk away in anonymity. http://ros.leg.mn/bin/bldbill.php?bill=H1445.0.html&session=ls85)
Based on my experiences as an adoptive parent, I hope she was counseled on the best-practice of waiting a year between major life changes before adopting any child. Most people seeking to adopt would have been encouraged to wait and in fact many adoption agencies will not proceed with adoption unless there has been a year between major life changes. Jolie has had a very busy couple of years: The adoption of Zahara, the burgeoning relationship with Pitt and the birth of Shiloh. Additionally, she very recently lost her mother, which had to have an effect on her.
It is also interesting that she adopted as a single person, as the entire world knows she is in a committed, domestic relationship with Pitt. Home studies in this circumstance would generally include both parents as adoptive parents. If both parties do not want to be adoptive parents, the adoption should not occur. If both parties want to adopt, Pitt should be there with her.
Ultimately, there are thousands and thousands of couples waiting to adopt children, who receive no passes or benefits of the doubt. They wait, they follow the rules and they hope they will be the next to bring their child home. I hope that neither Jolie, nor the countries seeking to place their children, would do anything to circumvent the practices used to ensure children are placed in the best home possible.
I wish the Jolie-Pitt clan nothing but the best, I also hope that Jolie has the emotional support she needs to ensure that the stresses of the past couple of years don’t add up to push her over the edge- a place she appears to have been several times in the past.