Adopting from Russia: A War of Perceptions

Only one US airline flies non-stop between New York City and Moscow. To some frequent flyers, the route is known as “The Orphan Express.” Since 1992, when Russia began allowing foreigners to adopt its orphans, 15,000 Russian children have joined families abroad, many traveling this route to the US. In the accounting year ending September 1997, Russia became the number one source of international adoptions for the U.S., with 3,816 kids swapping nations.

Despite the fact that the majority of these adoptions are successful – and that many of these kids’ lives are literally saved – a huge amount of negative media attention, in both countries, has left Russians and Americans suspicious. The immediate needs of thousands of children are in danger of becoming obscured by the hurt pride and frustration of Russians and by Americans’ fear that these orphans are irreparably damaged and incapable of joining a family.

Russian Life found adoption professionals cowed by press abuse, and adoptive parents hesitant to discuss anything that might fan the flames of anti-adoption sentiment. We also discovered that, while it is true that some adoptions fail – some disastrously so – most children adopted, who would have grown up in orphanages and faced lives of little opportunity, have found families that love them and an overall better chance at life.

The majority of negative press coverage has centered on two incidents. The first, in May, involved a couple found guilty of beating their two newly adopted daughters on the flight home. The second, and even more regrettable story, was of a Colorado woman who killed her three-year-old Russian son after months spent coping with the child’s destructive tantrums. The boy had been diagnosed with reactive attachment disorder, a condition that sometimes occurs in children that have been institutionalized early in life. A child with the disorder is often self-destructive and cannot emotionally bond with parents.

There have also been a number of stories broken by the Russian press of child-selling and abuse by adoptive American parents.

It is not hard to imagine that prospective adopters, upon hearing these stories, might be chilled and scared away. It is also easy to see how Russians might say “what kind of people are we giving these kids to?” Add to that a bruised sense of national pride, a feeling that Russia is being treated like a third-world country, and shame that the state is unable to care for its children, and it is not difficult to understand why some Russians have developed negative sentiments for international adoption.

In November, the chair of the Russian Duma’s Committee on Women, Family and Youth, communist Alevtina Aparina, likened international adoption to cultural genocide and referred to adoption agencies as “trading companies.” She also introduced legislation that would have essentially strangled adoption efforts, although it has since been watered down.

It is a war of perceptions. And much of the contention stems from a lack of understanding why people want to adopt children from Russia and from ignorance of what happens to the children once they come to the United States.

The Parents

Sifting through the multitude of individual reasons why people decide to adopt internationally, there are some generalities. As with people who adopt domestically, many couples who turn to other countries to build their families have already exhausted the technology of fertility. But probably the most significant reason adopters go abroad is because the American system is slow, bureaucratic and unpredictable. “People are saying ‘to hell with that,’” said Bill Pierce, president of the National Council for Adoption (NCFA).

There are often long waits for domestic adoptions, as well as strict regulations that exclude people because of age or because they are unmarried. Some states actually require people to prove that they are infertile before allowing them to adopt. There are no such constraints to adopt from Russia, and the entire adoption process takes only five to nine months.

Another significant reason is that people are concerned about litigation by birth parents, which seems to be increasingly common in the U.S. The theory goes, Pierce said, that if you adopt from abroad, you’ll have “less chance of somebody showing up at [your] door and messing with your kid.” He largely agrees. We, in the US, he said, “have screwy judges and screwy courts.”

Pierce added that, in his experience, religious beliefs are also often a “heavy motivator” for people adopting internationally. “They’ll say, ‘I felt that God was telling me to do something about this child.’” But even the more secular of adoptive parents, he said, seem to be moved by “a pure, unexplainable humanitarian impulse.”

“It’s really a simple thing for me,” countered Marlene Cimons, a health policy journalist for the Los Angeles Times and adoptive mother of two, “I’m building a family ... It’s not my motivation to be a savior.” Russia, said Cimons, “was the one place that I – as a single, older, person – could go.”

“This is not about where the kid is from,” she said. “A child is a child ... I don’t care if it’s good for Russia or bad for Russia. Its what’s good for the children. That’s my motivation, and I dare say that is why most everyone else does it too.”

There are also a number of parents who adopt because they are themselves of Russian heritage. Cimons, in fact, is the daughter of Jewish Ukrainians and “grew up listening to Russian and Yiddish.”

Support Organizations

What many Russians and Americans do not know is the extent to which a grassroots structure has grown up in the U.S. to help and educate adoptive parents of Russian children.

“There’s so much support and information, now,” said Karen Klein Berman, who tells stories of “the old days” (1992), when parents like herself were pretty much on their own. Berman now chairs Families for Russian and Ukrainian Adoption (FRUA), a national support network for families who have adopted or are in the process of adopting from the former Soviet Union.

“People now are going there educated,” Berman said. And if this is true, it is due in no small part to FRUA. Founded in 1993, the organization is made up entirely of volunteers – many of whom are also adoptive parents, and focuses primarily on educating parents and their communities, as well as providing humanitarian aid to Russian orphanages. FRUA currently has over 1,000 members and is in a stage of “very rapid growth,” said Berman.

Another tool in the suite of resources for adoptive parents is the A-PARENT-RUSS (or APR) Internet mailing list. “The Internet has been such a boon for us,” said Cynthia Teeters, who owns and maintains the list. APR provides its 1,500 subscribers – prospective and adoptive parents  – with a forum to discuss all aspects adoption from Russia, from navigating adoption paperwork to coping with potty training.

Teeters said, “I worry about people who don’t have access to that kind of ... I don’t want to say ‘raw’ information, but ...” It fits. The advice posted on the list may often be far from professional, but it offers a window to the personal experiences of other adopters. And members of the list are often remarkably candid.

The Orphanages

There are over half a million children in the more than 900 state-run orphanages across Russia, and like all things run by the state, the orphanages suffer from insufficient funding. According to childcare experts and adoptive parents who have visited the orphanages, however, it is not for lack of love or effort on the part of orphanage workers that the children are neglected.

“I was pretty impressed by the number of orphanages where [the children] got a lot of love,” said Dr. Jane Ellen Aronson, a pediatrician and expert on the health of international adoptees. The staff “may not be child development experts,” she said, “but they do a good job with the basics.”

It varies regionally, but a Russian child cannot be adopted internationally until he or she is listed in a national database for a certain amount of time; Russian families are always given preference chance at adoption. [Note: the U.S., which also has about 500,000 kids in its foster care system, has no such national registry.] Only about 40-50,000 of the Russian children in orphanages (10%) are legally adoptable. For this reason, not everyone involved with international children’s services agrees that foreign adoption really helps orphans.

“We discourage Americans from adopting” in Russia, said Dr. John K. Smith, who leads teams of humanitarian aid volunteers for a U.S. Christian charity called Children’s HopeChest. If the majority of Russian orphans are going to remain in orphanages, said Smith, helping those institutions will do far greater good than adopting a lucky few.

Plus, he says, Americans generally adopt the healthiest, brightest babies. “We are taking out the kids that have the highest chance of surviving in their own culture, and we’re leaving the ones that have the least chance.”

Smith said he sees Americans in Russia “shopping for a child as if they were going into Walmart looking for an item of clothing.” If a Russian child has “the gold coin of beauty and the silver coin of intelligence, they’ll be snapped up,” he said. “But what about the plain child? Or the one with fetal alcohol syndrome?”

Surely, if Smith makes this observation, many Russians must as well.

The Orphans

Russia’s own statistics, said Linda Perilstein, director of Cradle of Hope (one of America’s largest international adoption agencies), show that, upon leaving orphanages at 16, one third of the children become homeless, one fifth commit crimes and ten percent commit suicide, she wrote in a recent article. There are more than 2 million homeless orphans in Russia.

Also, children with physical handicaps or even correctable disabilities are sometimes placed in state mental institutions after they graduate from the orphanages.

Even children born perfectly healthy face a daunting brigade of diseases and medical conditions by living in an orphanage (see box). They are, for example, at higher risk for contracting HIV or hepatitis from unsterile needles than the general population and face a number of conditions associated with malnutrition.

In September, the Journal of the American Medical Association published a study which found that Russian orphans generally experienced both physical and developmental delays, and that “growth delay correlated with time spent in an orphanage.”

The authors of the JAMA report concluded: “Because of the growth and developmental delays in these children, we suggest that children coming from these environments should be considered – at least temporarily – ‘special needs’ children. Parents and physicians must plan to provide a period of intense rehabilitation.”

The Agencies

There are now hundreds of adoption agencies in the United States offering Russian adoption services. Many are non-profit organizations started by people who have adopted internationally themselves. But, said FRUA’s Karen Berman, despite the good intentions of most agencies, it is essential for prospective adopters to keep in mind that “agencies are business,” and parents must act like good consumers.

“There is no Better Business Bureau of adoption,” warned Bill Pierce of the NCFA. Most non-agency organizations involved with adoption are not willing or are unable to openly provide critical information on agencies for fear of litigation. While “there are excellent agencies out there,” Pierce said, parents should be “even more careful in choosing an adoption agency than you would be in choosing a pediatrician.”

It is not legally required to adopt through a private agency, but individually researching and fulfilling the many components of adopting internationally would be a sizeable task. Agencies, generally, are instrumental in locating an available child and guiding parents through the required paperwork, background checks and the home study process, in which a family’s abilities and needs are assessed by a social worker.

The better agencies also make a concerted effort to educate parents on the specific medical and emotional development issues common with children from Russian orphanages. They also help them assess what kind of needs they are themselves capable of handling. Not surprisingly, most people are looking for healthy infants, but there are also many who want to help disabled or ill children.

Agency fees vary widely, from under $10,000 to over $20,000. Some agencies – again, probably the better ones – offer reduced rates to parents willing to care for children with special needs.

Currently, all adoption agencies in the US are regulated by their individual states, a process Pierce called “virtually meaningless.” The adoption field in general is “terribly fragmented,” he said, and “it’s getting worse.”

While not everyone involved with adoption has as bleak a view of agency regulation as Pierce, there is definitely room for improvement. Many international adoption agencies and support groups began as grassroots efforts. As they have grown, a solid system of accountability has not been put into place. This, however, may soon change ... .

The Hague Convention

The Hague Convention on Inter-Country Adoption is a multilateral treaty now being considered for ratification by the U.S. Congress and by legislatures of countries around the world. While Russia is not a signator of the treaty, the Convention would have a huge influence on the way all international adoptions were handled.

The convention, wrote Maureen Evans, director of the Joint Council on International Children’s Services, “is designed to standardize adoption requirements, allay fears that internationally adopted children are being treated as servants or otherwise misused, and improve the process by which a child can gain a permanent family.”

Details of how the Hague will be implemented in the United States are being worked out by the State Department. The treaty, which was symbolically signed in 1994, will need to be approved and funded by Congress. By most estimates, this will happen in the next two to three years.

Under the treaty, Russia, had it signed on, would have primarily acted as a “donor” country and, as such, would have been in the company of many third-world nations – a bit of a slight. Russia is also, not surprisingly, wary of allowing international bodies to dictate internal functions of the state.

Upon implementation, each of the signatory countries will create a Central Adoption Authority to preside over its adoption process and to work in cooperation with the Authorities of other countries. In the United States, private adoption agencies will have to be certified by the Authority, as well as by their individual states. This will certainly bring a level of protection to parents searching for an agency, and better protect the children as well.

Most advocates of international adoption are avid supporters of the Hague – in theory. There are grave concerns, however, that the Central Authority will be insufficiently funded and greatly bog down the process of adoption.

“We have to do everything right and legally and ethically, but we also have to do it quickly,” said Perilstein. “We know that time matters ... every month lost, every kid lost, is a tragedy.”

Roaches or Sausage?

With all the joy and enthusiasm that adopted Russian children are causing in this country, it can be easy to forget that Russians do not always greet foreign adoptions with open arms. Opinions in the motherland range from cautious support, to suspicion, to outright hostility. During a debate on adoption legislation in the State Duma, one incoming deputy declared that it is better for Russian orphans to eat cockroaches from Russian rubbish heaps than “their 60 types of sausage.”

With Russia’s population shrinking every year, this hostility is hardly surprising. The country, so the argument goes, is being robbed of its gene pool and the children of their language and culture. Denouncing the “baby business” has become a battle cry for the leftist opposition in the Duma. Meanwhile, reaction from the press is mixed. One Moscow journalist, Igor Svinarenko, was won over after visiting several American adoptive families with Russian children and proclaimed: “Lady and gentleman deputies! Hands off the orphans! They feel sick enough without you.” On the other hand, scandals involving foreign adoptions enjoy big press and bigger headlines.

In addition to the two previously-mentioned abuse cases, other scandals have bounced quickly into the Russian media after their coverage in the US. Just recently, ABC’s “Prime Time Live” reported that the Special Delivery Adoption Services agency, based in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, has been bringing pregnant Russian women to the US since 1987 to give birth. The newborns, who are automatically considered US citizens, are put up for adoption immediately, thus neatly circumventing Russian adoption laws.  And, as this issue was going to press, the Russian media reported a case of four adopted Russian children from Cherepovets whose American parents turned them over to foster care, claiming the children suffered from reactive attachment disorder. After they bonded with a new foster family, a dispute broke out between the original family and the foster family, and the children were again moved to a new family, which appears to be permanent.

There is also alarm about the possibility of other adoption abuses – namely selling the children for their organs. One Russian journalist pointed out that it is possible to adopt a Russian child for $20,000 (or less) and then sell his organs for a large profit. But these alarmist (and spurious) allegations fail to take into account the background checks and follow-up monitoring that take place with all adoptive families. Russian Life could discover no evidence that such transactions have ever taken place. Nor do the accusers cite cases, only abstract possibilities.

Others charge that Russian children are often steered toward foreign adoption in exchange for fat bribes from individuals or adoption agencies. Kommersant Daily ran a long expose on the activities of the Russian Education Ministry, which became the first coordinator of Western adoption agencies in 1991. According to Kommersant, the original concept was a simple barter deal – the US got kids, the ministry got fax machines and other coveted office equipment. From there, the deal allegedly progressed to free trips stateside for ministry officials.

But controls have tightened considerably since 1991. Whereas before, local authorities had the final say on an adoption, the matter is now decided by the courts. A child is considered for foreign adoption only after several months of searching for Russian adoptive parents. When asked about corruption in the system, the spokeswoman in charge of adoptions at the US Embassy, Moscow [Embassy policy does not allow RL to identify officials by name – Ed.] said: “We have not found any evidence of actual corruption ... involving forged documents or changed identities ... I can certainly believe that there may be potential Russian parents who have been discouraged. That could be because they were not good candidates to adopt. There are American prospective parents who do not get a favorable home study. It is a very high standard to be considered people who are ready for the challenge of taking a child into their home and raising it as their own. Not everybody can do that.”

Russians’ ingrained suspicion of foreign adoptions has other roots besides national pride. As the US Embassy spokeswoman explained, much of it stems from Russian attitudes toward adoption in general, which mirror those prevalent in the US thirty years ago: “Russians ... don’t speak openly about their plans to adopt,” she said. “They don’t announce the fact that a child was adopted. And so a family considering adoption doesn’t have that kind of automatic support, that community of adoptive parents. And parents who have already adopted and are experiencing difficulties don’t have the same resources they can turn to for help ... they very often conclude that there must be something wrong with this child who is acting in such an odd, difficult way, and they very often end up bringing the child back to the orphanage and the adoption fails for lack of support.” In addition, Russians have trouble understanding why Americans would want to adopt children with serious physical or mental illnesses.

Duma Deputy Alevtina Aparina is skeptical of foreign adoptions and said she feels that more should be done to ensure that Russian children stay in Russian families. At the end of 1997, Aparina and her committee prepared a packet of legislation amending Russia’s adoption laws and making it much more difficult for foreigners to adopt Russian children. Specifically, it was proposed that a child’s immediate relatives be required to testify at the adoption hearing regardless of whether they had taken any previous notice of the child, that intermediaries such as adoption agencies be banned, that children receive obligatory follow-up visits from Russian consular officers in their new homes and, most disturbing to adoption advocates, that international adoptions be halted altogether until Russia had signed bilateral agreements with the nations of the adoptive parents.

These restrictive measures spring from legitimate fears. At present, while ample monitoring of adoptive families does occur, the reports do not always make it back to the Russian authorities. Russian courts depend on the adoption agencies to submit reports, and if an agency folds or simply refuses to submit the reports, the courts have little recourse. As a result, there are alarmed reports of “missing children” – followed by the inevitable speculation about organ trading – when in fact these disappearances are almost always due to simple changes of address. This monitoring problem (and the issue of bilateral agreements) would be solved in the future if both Russia and the US sign and ratify the Hague Convention.

The very presence of adoption agencies also causes suspicion. According to the Embassy’s spokeswoman, “what seems normal to us – having a private agency involved in an adoption – doesn’t seem normal to Russians. They consider it to be a government function, and they don’t see a role for a private organization in the adoption process.” These agencies have come under fire, particularly from Aparina’s group, for encouraging bribery among officials. But, while Russian families can and do adopt successfully without intermediaries, these agencies play a vital role for prospective foreign parents by overcoming language and bureaucratic barriers.

In spite of all the suspicion about foreign adoptions, the proposed amendments came in for harsh criticism both internationally and within Russia, and Aparina’s committee was forced to cut and compromise. The bill that is currently up for debate in the Duma comes minus the immediate relative requirement, minus the restrictions on agencies and, for the moment at least, foreign adoptions will be able to proceed without bilateral agreements. Under the law, however, adopted Russian children will remain Russian citizens until the age of 18, and embassies in the country of adoption will be required to look after the rights of the adoptees.

In the end, choosing between domestic adoptions and foreign ones seems to miss the point. The Russian government could do more to encourage Russians both financially and emotionally to adopt, without ruling out foreign adoptions. “Everybody wants these kids to stay in Russia,” said the Embassy contact. “That’s what the Russian government wants, that’s what the Russian people want and that’s what the US government wants too. It is our policy that Russian orphans should grow up in Russian homes. But we also believe that Russian children for whom there is no Russian alternative should have the option of being considered for foreign adoption.”

“Russians are beginning to feel like the only place in the world where Americans adopt is Russia,” she continued. “But although it happened to be the biggest single-source country last year, it still does not even make up a majority of foreign adoptions.”

The Families

The television shows a video of an alarmingly thin little boy. He stares ahead blankly as Russian-speaking attendants put a rattle in his hand and move his arm to shake it. The effect is chilling. It is almost impossible to believe that this is the same child as the one who now plays on the floor before the screen with his adoptive brother.

It is the video Dan and Sandy Roberts received from their adoption agency of their son Kyle (then Vasya). The orphanage had been desperate to find a home for the boy. He had stopped eating and hardly moved, except to constantly scratch at the mattress of his crib. Baby Vasya had already been turned down by a dozen families.

“There’s a child in there, and I think that you can get him back,” the Roberts were told by their agency director. The couple agreed, and Dan flew to Russia. “Sandy went through labor with Steven [their biological son]; I went through labor with Kyle,” Dan said.

The Roberts had requested a child with special needs, and the couple is somewhat of a special case themselves. Sandy has a genetic condition called brittle bones and is in a wheelchair. Their son Steven also has the condition. What is more, brittle bones runs in Dan’s family, but while both of his siblings have it, he does not.

The Roberts had originally hoped to adopt a child who had the condition. “For us it’s not a big deal,” Sandy said, adding almost vehemently, “who’s to say that a kid with a disability isn’t healthy.”

Only four months after getting Kyle, they received a call that a nine-year-old girl with brittle bones named Nadia had been located. Would they take her? They were overwhelmed, but agreed, and again, Dan went to Russia.

Since then, both children have done remarkably well. Kyle “eats unbelievable amounts of food,” and has begun to look as if he’s “gonna be a linebacker.” Nadia has started school and has made friends.

The Road to svoi (mine)

There are many aspects of joining a family that are not as tangible as living in a house and eating well – like trust and love. And the transition from orphanage to family is not always easy, especially for older children.

“We ended up in Russia, we got the children, and we were sent on our merry little way,” said Lou Klaric, who, with her husband, adopted a boy of two and a girl of three. The kids don’t know you, she said. You don’t know them. “You spend a lot of time guessing what these kids want and need.”

She and her husband have found nearly impenetrable barriers of trust between themselves and their daughter, Casanya, who was adopted at three. “She is really reluctant to give you any clue as to what she is thinking or feeling. If she really likes something, she’ll tell you that she doesn’t, because she’s afraid that you’ll take it away from her.” The child has also “had some real problems with rage.”

Klaric likens the child to someone who’s recovering from a broken heart. Casanya may not know exactly what was “done” to her or be able to articulate how she feels, said Klaric, but she knows she has to be careful, that she can’t let her guard down. “It’s a difficult relationship ... I thought I was pretty well prepared” to deal with the needs of the child, she said, but “it has been much more intense that I ever thought it would be.”

Sandy Roberts said too that her daughter Nadia, “is always afraid that we’re going to send her back.” She said she and Dan constantly need to “reinforce that we’re not going to leave her.”

“What does Mama and Papa mean? It’s just a word,” Roberts said. “They have to learn what that means.”

Roberts related a story: For the first few days Nadia went to school, she was accompanied by a translator, and, on one of the days, she threw a temper tantrum. She was still bawling when the school bus arrived to pick her up. Her mother kissed her, told her that she loved her and sent her on her way. Nadia, somewhat stunned, turned to the translator, a close family friend, and asked why Sandy would say that she loved her when she was behaving so badly. “That’s what a Mama does,” the woman replied.

Staying Russian

Becoming an American, and still being something else – Russian, Irish, Chinese – is nothing new in the United States. But for families who have adopted internationally, it takes a different twist. The heritage of the child is added to the history of the family.

Many adoptive families endeavor to help their children understand their Russian roots and to do so in a way more meaningful than simply surrounding them with Russian kitsch. Some parents take Russian language classes or make a point of getting together with other adoptive families of Russian orphans. The children help each other with English and sometimes talk about what they remember of their lives in Russia. Many families also seek to maintain connections with their child’s orphanage by sending back letters and photos.

It’s not always easy to give a kid a history lesson, though, points out Marlene Cimons. “You have to understand that kids want to do what their friends are doing.” Nevertheless, she says, “my son is hungry for stories about what he was like when I went to get him in the orphanage.” And, just to make sure the cultural exchange goes in both directions, she said, “I took him to my old neighborhood in Yonkers.”

“When you’ve completed an adoption,” said Cynthia Teeters, “you’ve established a bond with your child and with the people of Russia.” She said she and her husband “root for them. We want them, as a country, to do well.” She laughed and added, “Some people fall in love with their obstetricians. We have that, too, that kind of hero worship.”  RL

Corin Cummings is a freelance writer who lives in Portland, Oregon. Anna Hoare also contributed to this story, with reportage from Moscow.