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Scroll to just over half-way down to read of charities' links and key problems in adoption.

THREE PROFESSIONALS' INSIGHTS FOLLOW ON FROM HERE.

1/ NANCY VERRIER M.A., PSYCHOTHERAPIST.
"The chosen child and the grateful child myths are two beliefs that die hard. Although made to feel as if it were the case, most adoptees do not feel chosen so much as they feel unchosen by their birth mothers. To be chosen by anyone else after that is anticlimactic. So far as being grateful, it is the adoptive parents who should be grateful. They are the ones pursuing the adoption. They are the ones who got what they wanted. No child would choose to be separated from his biological mother. That he may have to be separated from her is a different thing altogether. That is an intellectual, adult decision, not an emotional/sensual baby experience. Although grateful for many things his parents may have done for him, no child should be obligated to feel grateful for having a loving set of parents. That should be his right."

That is an extract from Nancy Newton Verrier MA in her concluding chapter 2o called Adoption Myths, from her book called Coming Home To Self, published by Gateway in '03 and available on Amazon, much consulted and recommended by both adoptees (and the ivf-sufferers).

Here's Nancy from the same chapter -

"There have been suggestions made that the children could remain with a permanent family and the family would be considered legal guardians. The biological parents would have visitation rights when indicated. While there may be merits to this solution, I don't think it is the answer. Besides the fact that people wanting children may not be willing to do this, neither may the children. I have talked to many children who were in foster care most of their lives, some of them with the same foster parents. Every one of them wished they had been adopted. Even though most adoptees have trouble feeling as if they belong in their adoptive families, many know that their adoptive parents feel that they belong. It gives them comfort to be accepted and loved in this way. That might not be the case if the parents were considered only guardians. I do believe that all children should have access to their biological families and heritage. Open adoptions may be the answer if they are made binding - if the agreement is legalized and both sets of parents are held to the agreement. Binding open adoption may be harder on the parents, but it would definitely be better for the child."

You can probably deduce that if you read all of Nancy's book that there will be an understanding of all the people involved (she/we include natural family members) in the adoption process.

Here is what she says in chapter 2, called Adoption And The Brain -

"In my travels around the world I have met many adoptees who have tales of having their special talents unappreciated by their adoptive parents. One young woman in New Zealand lamented that she was a champion athlete, winning many trophies and medals, yet her parents never attended her meets. They didn't consider sports to be a worthwhile activity. The same was true for a young man in Australia, who had always wanted to play piano. His parents were not interested in music, so they never allowed him to take lessons. He had decided just a couple of months before speaking to me that he would take lessons on his own, for which I commended him. He can certainly play piano, but he will never be the concert pianist he might have become had he been encouraged to play from an earlier age. There are many adoptive parents who are encouraging their children to pursue any talent that they may have, even when they know little about it. These parents are to be commended because they are acknowledging that they don't expect that just because a child is reared in a particular family, he will have the same interests and talents as other family members. It may actually be be much more interesting to have a child with different interests, because this gives the parents opportunities to expand their own horizons!"

Here's a quick insight from Nancy into how hard it is for adoptees to fall in love -

"It is important to understand that for adoptees there may be have been some delay in the forming of synapses, due to the experience of separation from the biological mother. It does not appear that this delay affects the innate intelligence of the child, but this delay may have an affect on the scholastic performance of adoptees. There is, however, another phenomenon that may have a great deal to do with the ability of adoptees, as well as other people who have abandonment issues, to perform certain types of functions, to interact with other people, or to form intimate relationships. This has to do with the predominance of of the right or left brain in signaling receptors to stimuli."

And for those with problems forming intimate relationships but who would like to try to- and we do understand that this can be very confusing and/or agonising - we quote a little more from Nancy just below, hopefully to enlighten you here. This is from chapter number 15, called The Power And Pathos Of Relationships -

"Although there are many theories about about why we fall in love with one person and not another who has the same characteristics, falling in love is pretty much a mystery. Usually it is the part of the relationship that hits us first. Having chemistry isn't the same as infatuation. Whereas infatuation is fleeting, chemistry can last a lifetime."

The adages blood is thicker than water, the apple never falls far from the tree, and noting that a child is a chip of the old block are all testaments to the reality of family life and are used as part of family life to take pride in the child's place as their kith and kin. But these genetic markers, as Nancy calls them, are missing in adoptees lives (and the ivf-mades') which is another of Nancy's points.

2/ A PSYCHOLOGIST
Here are observations made by behavioural psychologist Dr. John Bowlby about children's separation from their mothers -

"Scepticism is sometimes expressed about about whether a period in hospital or a residential nursery has effects in the long term as well as the short. In this connection the findings of a recent analysis by Douglas of data collected some years ago in the course of a longitudinal study of over four thousand children are of interest. When the children were assessed during adolescence, those who had been in hospital before the age of five years, either for longer than a week or two or more occasions, were found to differ from other children in the following four ways. They were -

"- more likely to have been rated by teachers as troublesome at ages thirteen and fifteen and seventeen years
- more likely, in the case of boys, to have been cautioned by police, or sentenced between the ages of eight and seventeen years
- more likely to have scored low on a reading test
- more likely in the case of school-leavers, to have changed jobs four or more times between the ages of fifteen and and eighteen years

"The tendency to delinquency and unstable employment records are significantly increased for children who experienced a further stay in hospital between the ages of five and fifteen. All these differences remain significant when the rather atypical backgrounds of children who are admitted to hospital before the age of five years - e.g. as regards health, large families - are taken into account.

"These findings tend to support the belief expressed earlier, in Chapter 4, that the effects of separation from the mother during the early years are cumulative and that the safest dose is a zero dose."

That item is an extract from Dr. Bowlby's three volume piece called Attachment and Loss, published by Pimilco in 1998, from volume 2 chapter 15, called Anxiety And Anger. Bowlby's three piece work, while more academic than Nancy Verrier's, is also an informative and a pretty easy-to-follow read. It is available from Amazon too, on-line.

3/ A SUPPORT WORKER
Here is a quote from Rev. Keith Griffeth MBE (a UK Royal plaudit) resident of New Zealand, now retired, but much loved for his support work, on-line and locally for adoptees and the ivf-made, and for the way he put words to adoptees' feelings -

"Adoption is finding parents for children: but it is also strangers becoming intimate insiders, it is a loss of kith and kin, it is a re-arrangement of persons, it is children living with secrets, secrets about themselves that they cannot unravel, that is the right to know who they are......"

......was the opening of Keith's The Right To Know Who You Are lecture given in Canada in 1976, to introduce the idea of open birth records, in order to feature the details of adoptees' roots on their birth certificates. More recently Keith summed up the staus quo so -

"Adoption (and donor conception) loss is the only trauma where the victim is expected by the whole of society to be grateful."

Politicians removed the need for a father in ivf, yet the single mother can be victimised- with the child also victimised by a new and enforced orphanhood.
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CHARITY LINKS. KEY PROBLEMS IN ADOPTION.
Original birth certificates may/not have been destoyed, but there were already 143,000,000 orphans being ignored prior to Haiti. Some adoption agencies and countries think they are helping children but adoption causes chronic trauma, as well as taking away straightforward self-definition; the professionals' books quoted here are on sale years after being published showing the wider public's continued need for them. Please check out http://forbiddenfamily.com for vital current reportage in the light of Haiti's tragedy, and http://poundpuplegacy.org for a more emotional (and justifiable) chronicled version of adoptee life. http://www.soschildren.org provides a solution. Please scroll to this site's very end for UNICEF's position - are we breaching it?

INTER-COUNTRY ADOPTION'S PITFALLS.

YOUR WESTERN MONEY CAN GO FURTHER.
Though there are one hundred and forty-three million orphans world-wide (Marketwatch on-line 2008) there are onlyan average of thirty UK inter-country adoptions each year though Haiti has increased this up one hundred and fifty. Other countries have a similar tiny fraction. You may wish to check your target country for the local statistic, they are routinely short so please help if poss. as Western money buys alot in these countries due to their lower cost of living, please see UNICEF's link at this site's end for children's requisites.

BLOOD TIE REUNIONS CAN BE IMPOSSIBLE TO ORGANISE.
Inter-country adoption is not necessarily the rescue mission it seems as presently most inter-country adoptees cannot trace their roots.

Inter-country celebrity adoption can be ok because they are rich and can make sure the adoptee has a chance to go home, yes, home, same as any emigre can and does say, see how popular reunions are, click below and then look for a subhead on the left called fostering and adoption to find the page with statistics -
http://www.baaf.org.uk/about/index.shtml

WHAT ADOPTEES THEMSELVES FEEL.
See the link just here to read examples of families' personal accounts - http://www.abolishadoption.com/in/signers.html

Please get and keep the orphan's birth certificate for them and/or note any, yes any, of the biological family's whereabouts/data for info. on their DNA in order to obtain DNA information for their medical insurance purposes, popular now, by helping an orphan, the orphan will know what's what too.

Adoptees (and ivf-sufferers) both like to go information-gathering - it's because they need to piece together an understanding of their roots, something those with intact family trees can even take for granted.

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Send the family of humankind money, please, see UNICEF 's website link to donate, and to read where money is needed, click just here -
http://www.supportunicef.org
All nations signed to the UN Convention after world war two, see them in action globally, working with children -
http://www.unicef.org
Read UNICEF 's adoption position here -
http://www.unicef.org/media/media_41918.html