I admire adults like Jane Jeong Trenka, adopted from Korea, who have returned to Korea to try to change the laws stigmatizing single women who become mothers, and to lobby for adoption in-country. Her cause seems noble to me, and one that is to be supported.

However, cultural mores are slower to evolve, as shown in an article by the BBC. Here’s an excerpt:

“The problem is that adoption in Korea is taboo, so the gap left by the fall in foreign adoptions has not been filled by adoptive Korean parents. Those who do adopt sometimes do it in secret.

When Choi Hyunjin was adopted, her new, adoptive parents kept it secret even from their own close relatives.

The couple sit on their sofa in a high-rise apartment near Seoul and say with one voice: “We didn’t even dare tell our own parents because we knew they would disapprove. They would only say ‘Why are you bringing up other people’s children’?”
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The taboo arises because the importance of blood-lines in Korea is ancient and deep-rooted. Korean Confucianism places great emphasis on ancestors…This means that orphans – who cannot explain their familial past – have a hard time of it.”

Find the article here: Taking on South Korea’s adoption taboo

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-30692127

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I wrote this blog in 2012 and hope you don’t mind if I re-post.

For more than 10 years, after my first husband divorced me and I moved from New York to California, before I met Tim and we adopted our children and became a family, I felt very lonely around the holidays. True, my parents and siblings loved me (and still do), and so did my friends. Nevertheless, my isolation, never easy on many days, could almost crush me this time of year.

That experience taught me how painful and harsh loneliness can be—in some ways, its own debilitating illness.

Today I feel very lucky to be surrounded by family—Tim and our kids, my sisters and brother and their families, my parents. But I’m remembering people who aren’t in the same state, and sending them a silent wish for better days ahead. xo

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The government of Guatemala has arrested Nancy Bailey, the founder of the orphanage Semillas de Amor, according to this article in the Associated Press. From the AP:

Guatemalan authorities have arrested an American accused of human trafficking and participating in illegal adoptions.

Prosecutors say Nancy Susan Bailey was apprehended in El Salvador and turned over to Guatemalan authorities via Interpol at the border between the two Central American countries.

The arrest warrant for Bailey was issued in 2008 and charged her with taking children and putting them up for illegal adoption for fees as high as $40,000, according to a statement released by prosecutors. She was arrested Tuesday.

Bailey founded the orphanage “Seeds of Love” outside the Guatemalan capital in 1996.

Guatemala’s International Commission Against Impunity issued a report in 2010 saying it found 3,342 irregular adoptions, mostly to U.S. couples.

The commission described networks of child-trafficking in the country for the purpose of illegal adoptions.

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