What's wrong with adopting from home?

An article in this week's Time, "The Baby Deficit" discusses how "changing attitudes about international adoption are creating heartbreak for American families." The article tells the story of one family and their challenges in adopting a child from Kyrgyzstan with a secondary focus on the amount of international children adopted by American families. Many countries are enacting policies to curb and prevent adoptions of their children by foreign citizens. Most claim the halt to adoptions is in order to reduce the corruption that is often present and improve the quality for the children. Others may be doing it for more political reasons.

American adopted 22,991 foreign children in 2004 and 9,319 in 2011. That is a large number. I would be curious to know how many American children are adopted by American families in each of those years. Not having this information means this post is just unsubstantiated thoughts, but perhaps at least some of them are merited.

It seems that more families are looking abroad to expand their families, when they are unable or unwilling to begin their own. I wonder why they do not first look to this country. I have heard that the regulations make it difficult to do so and there are certain rights granted to the biological parents that could allow them to change their minds about adoption. Yet when adopting a foreign child can take many years, trips to the nation, and tens of thousands of dollars in costs, I wonder if the issues with the American system is just perceived.

Since 1999, 66,630 children were adopted into the United State from China, with Russia (45,112), Guatemala (29,731), South Korea (18,605), and Ethiopia (11,524) following. Two of these nations are still developing and two have severe ideological differences with the US. Prospective parents interviewed in the article state that they are adopting the children from foreign countries to give them an improved life and others invoke calls from scripture.

Not all of the adopted children are doomed to a life of poverty and terribleness. Many could probably grow up quite fine in their own cultures without any problems. Yet it is how some people view these cultures that results in the general categorization that all these foreign babies have no chance of a good, productive life. But this view is extremely skewed by American standards and is rather reminiscent of late colonial times. People looking to adopt should look first to the home front - there are plenty of children here who need a good family to escape from poverty and grow into good citizens. The challenge, then, is to realize that America is not perfect and there are problems here too. Just because one does not think about them does not mean they do not exist.

Courting a Courtship

Browsing Facebook this morning I came across a post from a friend who shared a New York Times article on courtship and the struggles of young adults and dating. Reading through it I had some thoughts, or maybe just some hopes, that this problem may be over-exaggerated and isn't as dire as the article makes it out to be.

I will not argue that in this ever more technological age we, as individuals, are growing ever suckier at communicating in meaningful ways. Sure, text messages and email are fantastic developments, but there are times when a hand-written note, phone call, or face-to-face in-person conversation is the right way to go (an outrageous thought, isn't it). And I would hope that this commitment to being a little bit better would be no where more prevalent than in the dating scene.

Courtesy of Landmark Report's
"Ask Justin."

The article sights hook-up culture as one of the major reasons. Prevalent mostly in college life and mostly fueled by alcohol. I think, though, that most people taking part know it is not a romantic relationship in the traditional sense. Being able, as in individual, to make that distinction is important. That ability should then show up should one decided that are looking for more than just sex with a (sometimes) attractive individual.

Physical attraction is one thing, and is definitely important. Yet there are far more components to an individual that get noticed and considered when looking for this real partner, when looking to maybe grow up and settle down. And this is part of where courtship and actual dates are important.

By no means would it be beneficial for our society to return to Medieval levels of wooing a princess - that just is not practical or desired in today's world. And no one is arguing that to correctly court you need to spend a ton of money for a Broadway show and dinner at the fanciest French restaurant in town. You can go on an actual date. In my opinion, which I hope is shared by others, it does not matter the physical location so much as what is experienced while there. There is some bottom line of classiness required. No one wants to go on a first, meaningful date to KFC; Applebee's is perfectly acceptable though.

Courtship is not dead; it's most recent form may be on its last legs. The acts of courting a woman, dating, and forming a relationship will change as the times, cultural standards, and people change. And this is a good thing. A move towards texting "yo, lets hang out 2nite" is not guaranteed. I would advocate a mix of the old with the new. Be progressive, but be classy and bits of old-fashioned. No one will complain about having a door held for them; many would about the male always paying for everything. A first date is an important get-to-know you step. Make it such. It should be just about you two. Then again, we do lack conversation skills so maybe the group hangouts with text invites should be how everyone determines their significant others.