I know that in most cases, we who chose to adopt did so not only to satisfy our own need for a child but also because we felt sympathy for the children forced to live in the state run orphanages. We felt we were doing something good for our children. It is true that we may have been nieve regarding the challenges of parenting a child from an orphanage background. We may not have been fully aware of the extent of emotional trauma our children may have suffered. Still, I believe most of us adopted because we cared about the plight of the children.

When we first adopted, most people thought we had done a good thing. Today, we hear that we should have adopted from within our own country. That by adopting from a foreign country, we have done some sort of disservice to the children who are in foster care here. We are even accused of being racist for not adopting minority children from the US.

The people who criticize today, did not see the news broadcasts of the children languishing in their cribs in Romania. Many were barely older than children themselves so they don’t remember seeing the media campaigns appealing to parents to adopt these children.

We who watched these presentations did believe these children needed homes. We believed and still do believe that we did something good. If we did some sort of disservice to our children and their biological families we did not do so intentionally. We love our children and wanted to enrich their lives while they enriched ours.