Virgil

This is a follow up to my blog on the woman who returned her Russian adopted child to Russia. Here: http://www.online-literature.com/for...og.php?b=10191

Now in spite of the stupidity of the adoptive mother putting the child on the plane alone to send the child back, I tried to point out that the Russian orphanage system has some real problems. Most comments focused on the mother’s irresponsibility, and that’s understandable, but I did not doubt that the Russian system produces some really troubled kids, and I suspect that that boy really was too much to handle and that mother got in over her head. The other day the NY Times had an interesting article on the Russian orphanage system: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/04/wo...p=1&sq=&st=nyt. It’s worth reading.

I think this substantiates what I was trying to say about the Russian orphanages. I only had anecdotal stories to go on, but sometimes anecdotes are enough. Here are some key parts of the NY Times article.

There is nothing dreary about Orphanage No. 11. It has rooms filled with enough dolls and trains and stuffed animals to make any child giggly. It has speech therapists and round-the-clock nurses and cooks who delight in covertly slipping a treat into a tiny hand. It has the
What it does not have are many visits from potential parents.

Few of its children will ever be adopted — by Russians or foreigners. When they reach age 7 and are too old for this institution they will be shuttled to the next one, reflecting an entrenched system that is much better at warehousing children — and profiting from them — than finding them families.

Unfortunately so many orphanages become warehouses. That’s not just the Soviet Union. I don’t think governments spend enough on orphanages and I don’t think people donate enough to orphanages. Remember, there are children there who are just looking for a chance in life.

The case of a Russian boy who returned alone to Moscow, sent back by his American adoptive mother, has focused intense attention on the pitfalls of international adoption.

But the outcry has obscured fundamental questions about why Russia has so many orphans and orphanages in the first place.
In recent days, senior Russian officials have begun to acknowledge how troubled their system is.

The chairwoman of the parliamentary committee on family and children, Yelena B. Mizulina, spotlighted what she said was a shocking statistic: Russia has more orphans now, 700,000, than at the end of World War II, when an estimated 25 million Soviet citizens were killed.

Ms. Mizulina noted that for all the complaints about the return of the boy, Artyom Savelyev, by his adoptive mother in Tennessee, Russia itself has plenty of experience with failed placements. She said 30,000 children in the last three years inside Russia were sent back to institutions by their adoptive, foster or guardianship families.

Now both of those statistics are shocking. More orphans now than after WWII—my, that is a national crises from many perspectives, and one which shows a lack of resources within the country for some basic needs. But returning 30,000 children in three years from Russian adoptive parents themselves shows how poorly raised these children are. Let me emphasize this: "Russia itself has plenty of experience with failed placements." It’s not the United States or anywhere else that’s the root of the problem; it’s the Russian system.

“Specialists call such a boom in returns a humanitarian catastrophe,” she said

I agree. What will these children be like when they are adults? Without some strong intervention, these dysfunctional children will grow up to be dysfunctional adults. I hope to God I’m wrong, but what else can one conclude?

She reeled off more figures. The percentage of children who are designated orphans is four to five times higher in Russia than in Europe or the United States. Of those, 30 percent live in orphanages. Most of them are children who have been either given up by their parents or removed from dysfunctional homes by the authorities.

I’m afraid it all stems from a breakdown of strong families and a glorification of dysfunctional behaviors, mostly drug and alcohol abuse and prostitution. Anyone that wants to legalize drugs and prostitution just doesn’t realize the holistic social ramifications.

In recent years, the Russian government has repeatedly pledged to bolster efforts to help families stay together, to increase the number of children who are adopted and to expand foster care. But it has not had notable success.

Indeed, while Russia has its share of social problems, the large number of orphans stems in part from a policy that does not place a high value on keeping families together.

I’m sorry, but the nuclear family is still the best structure for children to be raised in. I know the overwhelming majority of single parent homes do fine, but they usually have an extended support system from which borderline families, who have the stress of poverty and dysfunctions to deal with, do not. I’m sorry if I’m getting preachy, but there is a lot of insight here on what social values not to affirm.

The Russian government spends roughly $3 billion annually on orphanages and similar facilities, creating a system that is an important source of jobs and money on the regional level — and a target for corruption.
As a result, it is in the interests of regional officials to maintain the flow of children to orphanages and then not to let them leave, child welfare experts said. When adoptions are permitted, families, especially foreign families, have to pay large fees and navigate a complex bureaucracy.

“The system has one goal, which is to preserve itself,” said Boris L. Altshuler, chairman of Right of the Child, an advocacy group in Moscow, and a member of a Kremlin advisory group.

And so, there is this ever present and ever expanding bureaucracy in our lives. Now some bureaucracy is a necessary thing, but it will never decide to reduce its scope when it becomes obsolete. All systems attempt to “preserve themselves” because their livelihoods are at stake and because they come to rationalize their importance. They don’t envision an alternative way and the system calcifies.

And the article concludes with a reasonable appraisal of the need to seek good homes for these children and not project the stupidity of one mother’s actions onto others:

The case of Artyom at first spurred a strong reaction, with some Russians saying that a country whose population is shrinking should never send its children abroad.

But Ms. Slusareva did not agree. The primary goal, she said, should be to locate good homes for these children — preferably in Russia, but if not there, then elsewhere.

“The hardest thing is when a child asks, ‘When will a mama come for me?’ ” she said. “So the best moment for me is when a child leaves the orphanage with a family.”

The poor children. It breaks my heart. We can’t give up on them, those in Russia, elsewhere, nor our own countries.