Overseas adoptions rise -- for black American children
By Sophie Brown, for CNN
updated 8:38 AM EDT, Tue September 17, 2013
Elisa van Meurs with her adoptive parents Bart and Heleene van Meurs on vacation in Switzerland.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- While adoptions to the U.S. are in steep decline, more U.S. children are being adopted abroad
- The rise of "open adoptions" where birth mothers choose adopting parents has led this trend
- Most U.S. children being adopted abroad are African American babies, adoption attorneys say
- Experts: Birth mothers are drawn by the exotic locale and a perceived escape from racism
Editor's note: In this
series, CNN investigates international adoption, hearing from families,
children and key experts on its decline, and whether the trend could --
or should -- be reversed.
(CNN) -- Elisa van Meurs grew up with a Polish au
pair, speaks fluent Dutch and English and loves horseback riding -- her
favorite horse is called Kiki but she also rides Pippi Longstocking,
James Bond, and Robin Hood.
She plays tennis and ice hockey, and in the summer likes visiting her grandmother in the Swiss Alps.
"It's really nice to go
there because you can walk in the mountains and you can mountain bike
... you can see Edelweiss sometimes," said the 13-year-old, referring to
the famous mountain flower that blooms above the tree line.
It's a privileged life
unlike that of her birth mother, a woman of African American descent
from Indianapolis who had her first child at age 15. Her American family
is "really nice but they don't have a lot of money to do stuff," said
Elisa, who met her birth mother, and two siblings in 2011. "They were
not so rich."
I thought it was so strange. I'm here in Holland and they're telling me I can get a (U.S.) baby
Bart van Meurs, adoptive father
While the
number of international adoptions is plummeting
-- largely over questions surrounding the origin of children put up for
adoption in developing countries -- there is one nation from which
parents abroad can adopt a healthy infant in a relatively short time
whose family history and medical background is unclouded by doubt: The
United States.
"I thought it was so
strange. I'm here in Holland and they're telling me I can get a baby"
from the U.S., recalled Elisa's father, Bart van Meurs, who originally
planned to adopt from China or Colombia but held little hope of
receiving an infant. "This can't be true." But less than 18 months
later, van Meurs and his wife Heleene were at an Indiana hospital
holding four-day-old Elisa.
While the typical tale of
international adoption is U.S. families adopting a child from abroad,
foreign families like the van Meurs adopt scores of U.S. children each
year. The numbers are far lower than the thousands of overseas children
adopted each year by U.S. families, but over the past decade the number
of U.S. children adopted by foreign parents has been steadily rising --
and almost all of the children are of African American descent like
Elisa, say attorneys who facilitate international adoptions.
U.S. laws that allow
birth mothers to choose the adoptive family of their children feed that
growth, as some prefer to see their kids grow up in an exotic overseas
locale rather than the U.S., experts say.
"A family from Indiana
might talk about taking their child on vacation to Florida, to
Disneyworld. A Dutch family talks about taking their child on vacation
to the south of France or the Alps," said Steven Kirsh of
Kirsh & Kirsh, an Indianapolis law firm that has helped place hundreds of children with families in Europe.
The van Meurs on Florence's Ponte Vecchio during a family vacation earlier this year in Italy.
Escape from racism
When Susan, a Florida
resident, chose to place her son for adoption in 2006, the social worker
gave her three binders with information about three prospective
families. But she only needed to see the first binder of a couple from
the Netherlands to make her decision. "If my mother had lived, she'd
look just like (the prospective Dutch mother)," recalled the 37 year
old, who asked that her last name not be used. Her own mother died when
she was two months old.
Susan also wanted her
son to grow up far away from the life she knew. She was a 30-year-old
prostitute addicted to crack beginning a prison sentence when she
learned she was pregnant. She did not know whether the child's father
was a man who raped her "for hours" or a drug dealer whom she "had done
something with" one time, she said. But both men were African American,
and she believed the child would face discrimination growing up in the
United States.
White people are going to hate him because he's half black ... black people are going to hate on him because he's half white
Susan, birth mother who chose a Dutch family
"There's too much
prejudice over here. The white people are going to hate him because he's
half black, and the majority of black people are going to hate on him
because he's half white," said Susan, who is Caucasian. "And then he'll
have to do extra things to prove what kind of a Negro he is, and extra
things to prove what kind of a honky he is and I don't want that. I did
not want that for my kid."
Even her own daughter, then aged 11, said "she would never accept that n***** child."
Susan is not alone, says Adam Pertman, Executive Director of the
Donaldson Adoption Institute and author of
"Adoption Nation."
Many birth mothers have a perception that their black or mixed-race
children will not face the same race issues in the Netherlands as in the
United States.
"In the United States,
as much as Americans want to believe it's not true, we are still a
country where there is a least some degree of racial prejudice. The
birth mothers' perception of Holland, in particular, was that the same
was not true in Holland. There's that feeling that maybe we can escape
those issues if (the child is) somewhere else."
Seventy Dutch families who adopted U.S. kids gather for an annual Fathers Day picnic in June.
Dutch Father's Day -- American style
This past June on
Father's Day, about 70 Dutch families who have adopted children from the
U.S. gathered at a park outside Amsterdam. The picnic is a time for the
children to celebrate their American heritage: "The kids are dressed
with a red, white and blue beret in her hair, if it's a girl, (or)
they're wearing New York Yankees t-shirts," said Michael Goldstein, a
New York attorney who facilitated the adoptions of the picnic attendees.
Bluntly, the U.S. is probably the only country that will allow a gay couple to adopt a child
Michael Goldstein, adoption attorney
Among the families were
Marielle van den Biggelaar, a stay-at-home mom and her husband, Marnix, a
sales manager for a women's clothing brand, who adopted their two
children, Eva, four, and two-year-old Norbert as babies from Florida and
New York, respectively. "For the kids it's really important to see that
they're not alone and that all these kids have the same history, and
they're all adopted and they're all from the same country," Marielle
said.
"It's really nice to see
them all together and to talk to each other about experiences -- with
their hair and with their skin -- and they're all the same people with
the same mindset, so it's really fun for the kids and for us, as well."
The couple encourages
their children to embrace their American origins, celebrating
Thanksgiving each year with other families who adopted children from the
United States. "We try to tell them about their culture and about their
background," said Marielle, who decided to adopt after years of
unsuccessful fertility treatment. "We would love them to (start
speaking) English when they're really young because if they want to go
back (to America) and if they want to see where they're born, it would
be nice if they can speak to ... their parents if they are going to meet
them."
Their children stand out
in Het Gooi, a village about 30 miles (50 kilometers) from Amsterdam.
"They're famous here, where we live, because it's a really white
society," Marielle said.
Marielle van den Biggelaar with her 4-year-old daughter, Eva, who was adopted from the U.S.
Some of the parents at
the June picnic were same-sex couples. With laws in some states allowing
gay marriage and adoption, the United States is one of the few
countries from which gays and lesbians can adopt, and many U.S.-born
children sent to the Netherlands have been adopted by same-sex families,
according to Anneke Vinke, a Dutch adoption expert at the
University of Leiden.
In the last five years, 17% of the U.S. children that Goldstein helped
to place with foreign families were adopted by gay couples.
"Bluntly, the U.S. is
probably the only country that will allow a gay couple to adopt a
child," Goldstein said, adding that some states allow couples, gay or
straight, to adopt whether they're married or not.
"So the gay families of
the world, when they can't adopt in their own countries or don't want to
necessarily, and want to adopt a baby, they're going to turn to the
U.S."
Why the Netherlands?
Reliable data on
overseas adoptions of American children is hard to come by. Last year
the U.S. State Department officially reported that 99 American children
were adopted by foreign families. But the real number is almost
certainly higher, said Peter Selman, an expert on international adoption
at
Newcastle University in the U.K. who acts as a statistical adviser to the U.N. body that oversees international adoptions.
For example, in 2010 the
U.S. State Department counted only 43 U.S. kids who were adopted
overseas, but the same year five countries -- Canada, the Netherlands,
Germany, Switzerland and Ireland -- reported adoptions of 205 children
born in the U.S., Selman said. According to statistics by receiving
countries, there were 126 U.S. children adopted overseas in 2004,
steadily rising to 315 in 2009.
Most American families were, and still are, interested in adopting a white infant
Steven Kirsh, past president of the American Academy of Adoption Attorneys
"The United States has
sent an increasing number of children for overseas adoptions in recent
years," Selman said. Goldstein, the New York attorney, also says that
the number of outgoing adoptions he facilitates now is higher than a
decade ago.
The State Department's
system for tracking international adoptions only includes reports from
certain adoption providers, such as those accredited under an
international treaty known as the
Hague Convention,
a spokesperson said. Other adoptions involving U.S. children, like
those completed through the foster care system, are not counted. "In
order to address that shortcoming, we have increased our outreach
efforts to encourage receiving countries and public domestic authorities
to report the outgoing adoption information to us," State Department
spokesperson Elizabeth Finan said by email.
Canada is the number one
destination for children adopted from the U.S. -- 148 went there in
2010 -- likely owing to its proximity, experts say. But the Netherlands
has consistently ranked second each year; about 250 U.S. children were
adopted by Dutch families from 2004 to 2010.
The popularity of
American children for Dutch families appears to have grown by
word-of-mouth after Steven Kirsh, the Indiana adoption attorney, helped
an acquaintance's sister -- who lived in the Netherlands with her Dutch
husband -- adopt from the U.S. in the 1990s. Similarly, Goldstein began
providing adoptions for the Netherlands after a Dutch family working for
the U.N. sought his help for a U.S. adoption.
Adoption attorney: 'The Dutch families were just interested in adopting
an infant. The color of the child's skin didn't matter to them.'
"Most American families
were, and still are, interested in adopting a white infant. The Dutch
families were just interested in adopting an infant. The color of the
child's skin didn't matter to them," said Kirsh, former president of the
American Academy of Adoption Attorneys.
"We were getting some incredible families adopting -- just the best of
the best. It was easy for the birth moms to fall in love with these
couples."
Children with special needs
Following the decline in
international adoptions, most children being adopted from overseas are
defined as having special needs, such as developmental disabilities. The
U.S. babies are often not special needs children, although some states
prioritize adoptions for non-Caucasian children. U.S. babies going to
the Netherlands might have a "minimum exposure to drugs, but usually
some kind of lighter type of drugs like marijuana," said Goldstein.
Susan's son was exposed
to crack cocaine during the first 10 weeks of her pregnancy, but he has
been lucky. "The doctors have said there are absolutely no side effects
from the drugs," she said.
As the former crack-addicted prostitute that I was, I had seen so many girls that went through foster care
Susan, on giving her child for adoption
Kirsh says the most
common misconception about birth mothers is that they turn to adoption
because they want to get rid of the baby or don't love the child. For
Susan, adoption was a last resort.
"I tried to get family
but I had nobody to take my kid. My grandmother was too old; my father
had just had a major heart attack. I had nobody to take him." She even
turned to an abusive ex: "I even begged him. I had nobody. Nobody."
Foster care wasn't an
option either: "As the former crack-addicted prostitute that I was, I
had seen so many girls that went through foster care, and the abuse and,
you know, it's awful. It's awful there."
"I didn't want to keep
him in foster care. It's not fair. It's not fair for me to think: Well,
you know what, one day I might get my life together. Well, you know
what? Your life is not together now and your baby needs love now."
An open adoption
Foreign families are
generally more willing to have some level of openness than American
families, according to Kirsh, and this can make them more attractive to
birth mothers. "The Dutch families would, for example, want the birth
mother to help name the child, because they wanted the child to have
that connection to the birth mother. Almost never does an American
family do that."
Dana Naughton, an adoption researcher at the
Pennsylvania State University
said that the foreign families were involved in some of the first open
adoptions in the U.S., where a culture of secrecy around adoptions was
once common and children may not even have known they were adopted.
"In some ways these
adoptions are pioneering international open adoption. That's not a
process that's common in terms of communication between adoptive
families and birth families. And to varying degrees it is what underpins
this process," Naughton said.
Marnix van den Biggelaar with his 2-year-old son, Norbert.
For Dutch parents,
adopting a U.S. child is luck of the draw -- and the birth mothers hold
all the cards. The biological mother of the van den Biggelaars' first
child, Eva, chose them as adoptive parents just nine weeks before the
baby was due, and Eva arrived three weeks early. "Instead of nine months
of pregnancy... we had six weeks only to prepare for a baby -- that was
really crazy," says Marielle van den Biggelaar. The van den Biggelaars
sent their "dear birth mom" letter to Goldstein, the adoption attorney,
in November 2008 and were chosen by Eva's birth mom three months later,
in January. The family declined to disclose how much they paid, but in
general the amount for Dutch families ranges from $35,000 to $50,000,
according to Goldstein.
Two-year-old Norbert is
at preschool now and already takes judo lessons, which his mother
describes as "all these little guys, two years old, tumbling through the
room in little white suits." His four-year-old sister, Eva, is "really
sweet and really protective and also sometimes really naughty but that
belongs to her age I think," she said.
Their children
comprehend the basics of their adoptions -- they were born in a
different country and "out of the belly of a different mom" -- and the
van den Biggelaars are saving the details for when the children are "old
enough to understand and to know what happened and why it happened."
But those explanations
can wait. "They're really cute together, they really love each other,
and that's really nice to see," their mother said.
Meeting her birth family
One of the advantages
for the parents of Elisa van Meurs in adopting from the U.S. was the
access to information about Elisa's mother and her medical background.
"I can always find her because I have the social security number. I have
one sister and she lives in the U.S. so it's not a strange country to
me, whereas China is -- and I can't understand Chinese," Bart van Meurs
said.
In America I feel at home, and when I'm in Holland I feel at home, too
Elisa van Meurs, adopted by Dutch family
Since Elisa was a baby,
her parents have sent a letter and photographs to her biological mother
each year through the Kirsh & Kirsh adoption agency.
In 2011, curious to know
more about her origins, Elisa traveled to Florida to meet her
biological mother and her extended family. Elisa's birth-grandmother and
mom told the van Meurs that they were willing to meet Elisa anywhere in
the U.S. and Elisa mentioned she would like to meet close to
Disneyworld.
Elisa had one wish. She
wanted to meet all her family members on this first "meet and greet"
except her birth mom. "She thought it would be too much for her to also
meet her birth mom then," said van Meurs. She met her birth mom the next
morning at Gatorland, a small theme park.
Meeting them was strange at first and she was astonished to recognize familiar features in her mother and grandfather's faces.
"My nose is the same!" she said.
She's glad that they
met: "For me, it feels like happiness because I really wanted to know
how they looked like (and) because they really know how you are." But
now they just go on with their lives, she said, except for the
occasional call on Christmas Day and they became Facebook friends. "If
(I) go there maybe too much, my mother will miss me or something like
that."
Elisa van Meurs on a family holiday to Cap d'Antibes, France in May 2012.
Asked what she thinks
her life would be like had she not been adopted, Elisa said, "I never
thought about it, because now I live here."
While she looks forward
to traveling to the Alps, her favorite holiday destination is America.
Every two years or so, they visit Bart van Meurs' sister near Detroit,
Michigan, where Elisa enjoys roller-skating, eating hamburgers and
French fries, "all the bad stuff," she said.
"In America I feel at home, and when I'm in Holland I feel at home, too."
Sobriety after prison
In Florida, Susan has
been out of prison and sober for four years. She works several jobs, has
an apartment and is raising her three-year-old daughter with her
fiancée, the girl's father.
She and her American
family stay in touch with her son, now 7, and his adoptive family in the
Netherlands. They send DVDs and photo albums, and traveled to the U.S.
in 2011 and again this February. Susan's daughter, the one who rejected
her son before his birth, has even had a change of heart. "She doesn't
care about the race anymore," Susan said. "She loves her brother."
I thought it was the end of the world, and it wasn't
Susan, birth mother on giving up child
It's not always easy for
Susan to see photos of the son she gave up. "There's always something
missing. There's always something gone but I am glad I get to see him
growing up. Yes, I am."
And she loves the boy's
adoptive parents, especially his mother. "I love her to death. She is
just... she's his mom, and that's amazing to watch.
"I don't want girls to
be scared," Susan said of other birth mothers considering giving their
children up for adoption. "This isn't an ending. It's a beginning. For
me, I thought it was the end of the world, and it wasn't.
"I never thought it would be like this."
CNN's Kevin Voigt contributed to this article
