Tag: Holt International

The Now Way

LINK>Adoption Birth Vlog example
MaryJane Lance – once again in pursuit of a child

Blogger’s note – This post is from an adoptee and is about children who are adopted and exploited on social media. The adoptee’s post is below –

Documenting the adoption journey has been an integral part of the overall adoption story. At one time the creation of lifebooks was meant to be a way of helping the child understand what it meant to be adopted. It served an important purpose to ensure that the child’s sense of self was rooted in their adoption..

Once social media became the established way of capturing our lives, lifebooks became obsolete in favor of blogs and vlogs. We now live in the age in which people make a living as content creators, much to the thanks of YouTube. From traditional profile books and listings with adoption agencies, to creating their own websites, featured news coverage and social media hashtags, prospective adoptive parents sought out every possible way to let the world know their story in the hopes of being matched with a child for adoption.

Posting one’s life on social media is native in today’s culture. And because it has well-established ways to monetize online content, these prospective adoptive parents have learned the business. So what is the big deal? It’s normal to post content about your family, right? Many family-run Youtube channels get views in the hundreds of thousands and millions. Everyone loves feel-good reality content.

Right now, the media is shedding light on the failings of the adoption industry. The Netherlands, home to the Hague Adoption Convention, has officially closed its international adoption program (again). South Korea is undergoing a comprehensive investigation revealing hundreds of adoptions involving the falsification of records. Holt International is linked to many of these cases. Dillon International has shut down. The Russian president was accused of committing war crimes by kidnapping Ukrainian children and adopting them into Russian families.

The Asunta Case was in the top 10 Netflix series based on the true story of Asunta Fong Yang. In the U.S. the media is putting a spotlight on the Stauffer Family scandal (2020) involving the rehoming of the boy they had adopted from China. The Stauffers became a YouTube sensation story having monetized their adoption journey. So, what is the scandal exactly?

Tik Root wrote an eye-opening Time magazine article, “The Baby Brokers: Inside America’s Murky Private-Adoption Industry” published in 2021. Prior to that was the Reuters report, “The Child Exchange” exposing the Yahoo child rehoming groups published in 2015. Last year, the media descended on the issues and ethics of child influencers. The Stauffers are one of countless adoptive families who have taken to social media monetizing their adoption journeys effectively exploiting Huxley for profit.

Exploiting children is nothing new, neither is adoption. So, where does the Stauffer Family fit into this picture? Why is this a big deal?

Here’s the adoptee’s perspective:
The adoption industry has reached critical mass and has been developing new ways to sustain it’s multi-billion dollar operation. No longer a taboo subject conducted through back doors held in secrecy only priests could hear, adoption has saturated virtually every level of society. In the confusion and chaos of a divided media, social opinion, subplots found in the DC and Marvel universes, K-Dramas, and TV shows, sports, gold-winning olympiads, tech leaders, musicians saying they will adopt a child, and celebrated family reunions on Good Morning America, the adoption industry is free to carefully and gradually change its course with little attention or resistance.

Issues from the current adoption system become course correction for the industry’s next leap forward into the already multi-billion dollar surrogacy market. With all of this attention on the adoption side of the industry, the surrogacy market grows virtually unnoticed. Children like Asunta Basterra and Huxley Stauffer (formerly known as), are victims of a known corrupt, exploitative industry. They are commodified and dehumanized in the name of adoption. They are bought and sold in a child trafficking scheme to later be disposed of or “rehomed” once their use has run out.

Despite the ongoing efforts of investigative journalists to expose these truths, the adoption industry has proven its power of propaganda ensuring people remain ignorant, confused and brainwashed at the expense of children’s lives. We must continue making every effort to send a clear and unified message to stop this crime. Stop commodifying and exploiting women and their children for profit. There are now 9 million adopted people in the U.S today. Our numbers are going to grow exponentially in the coming years. We have taken a stand against violating our rights. We have taken a stand against being stolen, kidnapped, and trafficked. And now we are taking a stand against being made into disposable people.

Not An Economic Product

After seeing this graphic, I went looking and found the opinion piece and found it in the LINK>Philadelphia Inquirer. Wow, the author was adopted by people in Las Cruces New Mexico (the place where I was born). She writes of seeing “a delivery slip my adoptive mom signed upon picking me up from the airport intact, not unlike an Amazon package delivered on someone’s front stoop.”

I understand completely what her experience growing up there would have been like. She writes – Growing up in Las Cruces, I never learned any Korean history, language, or culture. The racial dissonance of being Korean in a white family in a white community proved immense and unrelenting. I did not meet or see another Asian person until I was in the sixth grade. My personal history is a product of the Korean War.

Due in part to Holt International, an estimated 200,000 Korean children have been adopted overseas. The organized, systematic practice of Korean adoption formed a template that has been used to facilitate adoptions from other countries — including Vietnam, Ethiopia, Guatemala, and Haiti. Rich Westerners rush in to “rescue” children after wars or earthquakes. The pull toward international adoption has also been openly encouraged by evangelical Christian leaders. Parishioners are encouraged that this is one way to live out their faith and purported pro-life principles.

The truth is, without a doubt, that adopting and relocating children from their home countries removes them entirely from their racial, social, and historical context. Children placed for international adoption, often have known family members who visit them frequently, after placing them in orphanages only for temporary care. (blogger’s note – this really tugs at my heart, for that is exactly the kind of thing that happened to my maternal genetic grandmother.)

The author questions what that amount of resources (up to $350,000 for adoption and raising the child to adulthood) could do to support families in other countries suffering from poverty? Could that money be used instead to place children with other families in their home countries, and rebuild local economies and reunify families after disasters — which would all benefit the same children adoption aims to help?

Meredith Seung Mee Buse is a longtime Philadelphia public schoolteacher, writer and Korean American transracial adoptee who lives in South Philadelphia.