They were all at it during the week — all the sanctimonious tut-tutters using the airwaves to complain about Madonna adopting David Banda, a 13-month-old boy from Malawi.
On Thursday morning Mags Riordan, an Irish aid worker in Malawi, got in on the act on The Tubridy Show on RTE Radio. Riordan is clearly a woman of great strength and virtue. She works in what sounds like a fantastic project in Malawi helping poor children to achieve some kind of sustainable life.
I have enormous respect for people like her, but not everyone can move to Malawi and live in poor conditions helping a village full of orphaned children. So it sounded just a bit churlish of her to claim that, while she would never cast aspersions on Madonna’s maternal abilities, the phrase “fashion accessory” sprang to her mind when characterising the adoption.
Okay, so I am not entirely sure it’s natural for a woman of Madonna’s age to be writhing around in glittery leotards. But as pop stars go, what has she done that is so wrong? She has an apparently stable marriage. She is remarkably clean-living. Her children seem to be reared in a normal fashion. She’s even religious (all right, so Kabbalah is bordering on cult rather than religion, but it’s more than most of us have these days). She gives loads of money to charity, including £1.6m to Malawi.
Is it such a bad thing that, in addition to pumping money into Africa to help thousands of orphans, she also wants to pick up one of those poor children and give them a better life? Sometimes you just have to do what you can. Madonna is doing a lot. I think Riordan should be a lot less sniffy about the whole thing.
At the very least, Madonna has given enormous publicity to the appalling crisis in sub-Saharan Africa. There, millions of orphans live in squalor, if they live at all, without love and attention because there simply aren’t enough adults to go round. Riordan may even get a few extra donations this month due to the platform provided by Tubridy and Madonna.
Inter-country adoption gets dreadful abuse. Do-gooders complain about children being removed from their culture. The fact they are also being removed from economic and emotional deprivation seems to be beside the point. What do they think a child actually wants? The right to grow up in an orphanage competing for a scrap of affection or the right to a healthy life in a happy home? I know what I’d do if I visited an orphanage in Malawi. I’d sign over the SSIA and then figure out a way to bring home at least one of those children and hold them and love them. To hell with “culture” and self-flagellation over our imperialist western values.
The only people with a right to complain about Madonna are the poor unfortunates going through the invasive and endless process of adopting a child themselves. Madonna has been involved in the adoption process for several months, but it’s obvious she was able to cut a few corners. I don’t mind that really — what’s money for except to cut corners? What is unfair are the hoops through which normal prospective parents are required to jump before getting a child.
The problem is that somewhere along the line adoption has become a dirty word — nowhere more so than in Ireland. Adoption in some people’s eyes is equivalent to child-stealing. Of course, in Irish history a lot of the time adoption actually was child-stealing. How many children were taken from unfortunate mothers in those dreadful laundries and single-mother homes? Where did they go? Some were sold to America and Canada. Others were handed over to childless couples with nothing more than an assurance that the rosary was said every night. How many of those children ended up as workhorses or in the care of people completely unsuited to parenting? We’ll never know.
Many children weren’t told they were adopted and had awful trouble trying to track down their birth parents. Thus, adoption very quickly got tied up with a lot of misery and people hiding their tracks. Children didn’t know who they were and birth mothers wondered what had become of the infants they gave away. A quick read of adoption message-boards on the internet reveals extremely sad stories of adults trying to piece together their life histories. Some American and Canadian citizens have practically no information with which to begin their searches.
Then the backlash occurred. Today if a single mother suggested giving her child up for adoption, she’d be talked out of it. Prospective adoptive parents have to go through a ridiculously long procedure to adopt a child — whether Irish or foreign.
Of course, parents have to be checked out thoroughly and not just for economic background. The state has to ensure that children will go to a stable and loving home. But why does that process take anything up to five years? The waiting list to be assessed can be anything up to two years alone. But you won’t find prospective adoptive parents complaining too loudly because they don’t want to risk incurring the wrath of the social worker who has the power to grant or deny them a child.
Consider that many adoptive parents have gone through years of attempting to have their own children. It must be heartbreaking. Then they have to put up with accusations of buying children from poor countries. The rare and unfortunate cases such as that of Tristan Dowse, the Indonesian boy sent back to his orphanage, are thrown in the faces of nice ordinary couples looking for a child to love.
Just because rich westerners are seeking out children in developing countries doesn’t mean that past crimes are being repeated. Madonna may not be seeking a fashion accessory. Neither might Angelina Jolie, who has adopted an Ethiopian child. Maybe they are just trying to help. It’s not fair of us to project our sordid history onto the philanthropy of rich Americans, whose only crime appears to be being rich Americans.
Some social activists complain that the likes of Madonna perpetuate inequality. They argue that Bono’s work is more constructive, since he is trying to alter the actual infrastructure of deprivation. Bono’s fine, but I don’t think his campaigning should negate what Madonna or any other adoptive parent does. Taking a child out of deprivation and bringing them home to love is a good thing. So let’s say “thanks” instead of “why?”
