[Disneycrazed]

Baby Hotel: The Gateway to Guatemalan Adoption - Worldpress.org

Wondered if anyone else had seen this article.

[Mindybeth6]

I read this article completely a few weeks back and found it disturbing and sad. I think it portrays a very rare case of what can happen when adopting a child and a case that is also very unlikely, in my opinion, to be that severe in nature. I also thought that it was so sweet to hear about the man in the band, whom we have all seen playing at the Marriott, if we have stayed there, talk so sweetly about the child. I just wish for once, they would portray adoptions in a better light. I just hate the "raw" terms they use to describe the adoptions. THese babies are exports, they are children. Would someone please let them know.

[arthymom]

Some of it made me want to get on a plane and have a good long conversation as I read him the riot act.

His perspective is way off. His point of view (and the stories he shared) trying to demonstrate that we are a bunch of uneducated and insensitive Americans is sooooooo completely off the mark.

1. Many of us are bilingual or speak Spanish really well
2. Many of us have gone through great lengths to learn about Guatemala's culture and history
3. For many of us, adoption is a real financial hardship.
4. Many of us have suffered real suffering trying to have our own kids...
and the list goes on.

but I have to admit that some of what he said is factually accurate, though I wish it weren't.

[knarfmo]

I just submitted this letter to the editor. There are two other letters there, the second of which is very well written.

***********************
I just read Jacob Wheeler's article on Guatemala adoption, and I was disappointed to find the Mr. Wheeler chose to emphasize a couple of dramatic examples of Guatemalan adoptions gone wrong.

My wife and I are in the process of adopting a baby from Guatemala, and I noticed that Mr. Wheeler forgot to mentioned that most Guatemalan adoptions are facilitated by American adoption agencies that monitor the attornies and try prevent problems such as that mentioned in the article.

Instead of hanging out in the hotel with Americans, perhaps Mr. Wheeler should have gone onto the streets of Guatemala City or into the rural villages where, as he mentions in his own article, conditions are not good for children.

Yes, there are likely some abuses going on with the Guatemalan adoption system. But the US and Guatemalan governments both review the adoption case to try to determine any signs of fraud or baby trafficking. This includes a DNA test matching the birthmother to baby. The Guatemalan government also does an extensive review of the case before it can be finalized in family court. Mr. Wheeler overlooks these facts in his overview of the Guatemalan adoption.

It was an interesting read, and I'm sorry for the situation that family mentioned in the article found itself in. But the article is neither objective or comprehensive in its analysis of a complex subject.

[Mary Mulcahy]

I also read the article and participated in some discussion. Some of the families here have not seen the ugly side of adoption, it is hard for us to believe that this can happen. It does. The majority of adoptions are done in accordance with the law but there are cases when potential adoptive parents are given incorrect, misleading and just wrong information about their case. we have had parents post their stories on the big list or other lists and name names. It may not be everyday but just one case handled this way can hurt every adoptive family and anyone that participates in an unethical adoption just makes it worse. We are only a small group of families that are or have adopted from Guatemala so we really don't know the whole story.

I have witnessed a similiar case myself. One of my friends was refered a child with medical issues and was never informed of the issues. She went to see the child and found that she was only 8-1/2 pounds at almost 4 months of age. The child needed foster care and special feedings and formula. Her agency was going bankrupt and her child was referred to as "damaged goods". The attorney after begging agreed to place my friend's daugther in a private foster home and my friend had to pay the extra money. My friend is very brave and a strong person, she continued with the adoption knowing that her daughter had problems and did bring her home. Her daughter was diagnosis with CP and is doing well but would have died if left in Guatemala.

On my pick up trip for my second child, I met a mom who was adopting an older girl. The attorney had another family interested in this child who would pay him more so he tried to string this woman along, she won out but the adoption took over a year. She had to go to the US Embassy and I think maybe this attorney was eventually banned.

I agree with many others, the termology used is offensive, I don't like the way they present the export of babies.

It does give one something to think about.
Mary

[myguatbabes]

go to to make a buck! I wrote a letter to the editor and am pasting it below. I know there are some problems with Guatemala, but this guy makes it sound like what he writes is typical instead of out of the norm. Anyway, here is what I said:

Dear Editor,
I am an adoptive parent of 3 children from Guatemala and do not now, nor have I ever worked for an agency. I know that there are occasional cases of adoptive children being abused, in fact have seen it for myself, but for the most part the people of Guatemala are very loving and nurture these children while they are in their care, waiting to come home to their adoptive parents. I think it is unfair to portray Guatemalan foster mothers in general as abusive, uncaring individuals. Also, some of the terms used in this article are deplorable, such as "selling babies to Americans," and "real mother." You know, we are paying the cost of the care of our children,not unlike domestic adoption and we are paying the attorneys to provide a services, exactly like we do here for domestic adoptions. These children have three "real" mothers, the birthmom, the foster mom and the adoptive mom, respectively. We are all very real and we all love these children with everything in us, with very few exceptions to this rule.
We are not using the Marriott hotel as a gateway to a baby, but merely a safe place to reside while we complete the legal part required by our own government to bring our children home. I am amazed that ANYONE could look at UNICEF's pathetic attemts to convince Americans and Guatemalans that these children would be better off in their own country. You said yourself, in this very article, that these children have virtually NO chance for a successful future and in fact their very existance is at stake if they are not adopted by these, supposedly "rich" Americans. In addition, we are not bringing these children here to keep them from their roots and the majority of us do everything we can to help our children plant their roots both here as our children and in Guatemala, the country of their birth.
Finally, I would like for you to know that most of us who adopt from Guatemala or any other country for that matter, take out second mortgages on our homes, borrow money from anyone and everyone willing to help us, become fundraising enthusiasts or even selling our homes and purchasing cheaper homes in order to afford to have the opportunity to parent these children. Regardless of whether there is one in every community or one in every neighborhood, we are the parents of these children, just as you are the parent of yours and your parents before you. Just because we have chosen to build our families through international adoption via the beautiful and precious children of Guatemala does not make them or us any less of a family. I hope that someday you will understand what you so obviously do not. I suppose when you ae simply writing a book, so YOU can make money, you must portray your subject in whatever light will sell the most books. It is just a shame that you have chosen to do that no matter what the cost to the children of Guatemala or the now American children who originated from Guatemala.
Regards,
Nancy Wood

[Pipercub]

:/ Okay. Guess I'll be the minority. It wasn't a perfect article, but it was one of the more balanced ones that I've read as of late. It presented alot of information and both sides of several arguments. We don't like to read anything negative, but I think we are sometimes too quick to dismiss any opinion (or facts) contrary to ours. There was a lot of truth in this story and it wasn't overly offensive IMO. Very few argue that reform needs to be made in the adoption process in Guatemala. There needs to be conversation about these issues; it isn't an easy or comfortable thing to do. But sweeping the negative aspects under the carpet or getting angry when the problems are mentioned (and perhaps highlighted, even when they are not indicative of the majority of cases) is not necessarily the right thing to do. This article didn't anger me. It made me stop and think. So in that sense, I think it was a good article.

[Mindybeth6]

Piper...I do agree that it was FAR better then some of the other ones I Have seen in the past. Still sad and some of the wording was little less then correct but some of it was true.

[GuatMommy2Be]

Not the most positive article, but they didn't call Guatemala a baby farm (or I did not notice if they did..) that is a huge leap.

[hoping4kids]

My DH and I read this article a couple of weeks ago. We both thought at first he was bashing adoptions in Guatemala but we agreed that there were some truths in the article. We kept trying to figure out exactly what he was trying to convey with his writing.

[BrandyHagz]

I read it and normally I don't respond to threads like this - but I have to say, I read and didn't stop until I was done, then I reread it and I walked away with a similar opinion, its one of the best ones I've read.

It shares, in my opinion, many of the different sides of Guatemalan adoption without sugar coating it or lending itself more to one side or the other.

Its one of the best articles I've read about adoption in years - and I read them often. I think the writer did a wonderful job bringing the reader into the emotion involved while also sharing many of the facts and stories that are shared on this forum on a daily basis.

It’s sometimes hard to get outside of our little bubble and see that there are thousands of parents who adopt from Guatemala every year who never visit this or any other forum or newsgroup. The stories often reflected here on the forums don’t necessarily reflect the reality of adoption.

Honestly, I think he did a great job of reflecting real people, with real emotion and real stories.

I’ll be writing him a letter for sure – thanking him for taking the time to write such a powerful piece, which I thoroughly enjoyed reading.

[airstar98]

I have to say, well first thank you for the link to the article. Now, I have to say the author wrote a fantastic article. I learned so much reading it and found that they did their best to be part of both worlds. I do think that if the author was personally adopting from Guatemala then the article would sway towards one extreme based on their personal experiences with the adoption process.

For me and my experiences, I can relate. As some of you know I lost my referral for my twin girls. We went to visit and were told that one girl had gone to the clinic that very day. We were told that the girls would come the following day. The next day, one girl came but they told us we could not keep her and that the other baby was now in the hospital and may not make it through the night. We begged to see the baby, to even say a prayer but they wouldn't let us. We were told is was too dangerous to go to the city and that the attorney almost got beat up when he went to get the one baby. We tried to get the sick baby by emergency to GC were she would be safer, but the facilitators said that the girl could not leave. The more we tried to see our girls, to pray for them, or even get them to the city, the worse the case got, first it was a cold, then bronchitis, then possibly HIV, then 60 days of quarantine, then the facilitators suggested that we prepare our hearts to know that we may not even get to have the healthy baby, he suggested that we consider another placement. It was very sad, I couldn't even understand this thought. I couldn't consider another baby when my baby girls were so sick. I told him that I wanted to be there for the girl until they passed. I later found out that the birth family was not really wanting to place the girls anymore. I already lost one baby girl, a year ago, because a birth mother changed her mind after having the baby, I just couldn't go through this again. We accepted the referral for another baby. I'm still sad about the twins. If I had more money to pay for fees, I would still try to adopt the twins and a boy too, but I really can not financially afford to pay attorney fees for more than one child. A long story to say that I could really relate to this article. Also, by the way, we took the little girl to the doctor right away and she was suffering from thrust in her mouth, a yeast infection, and a hernia. She's doing much better now, but, these things do happen. I have a great agency and I even met the facilators and I do believe that they are doing their best. I just think that maybe my girls were sick to begin with and rather than just tell me straight up, they tried to get them better before letting me see them, however, one couldn't get better. Also, I wished they would have just told me in the beginning that the birth family was reconsidering placing them for adopton, because I know that is a risk we all take when adopting. I don't want to take a precious baby away from a family who wants to keep the baby. My whole heart in adopting was to find a child who was an orphan and who needed a home. I would have understood that at the beginning, but we had to spend probably about 2 hours of slow torture trying to talk me out of wanting the baby girls. Overall, I just felt it was so sad that a baby can be replaced so easily by a new referral. I was told, though, that the people there do not relate to how amerians fall in love with their children and value them as members of their family, by only seeing and having a small picture. It was sad but in the end I do have a baby girl who is available for adoption. Everyone really tried to help as they could, it was just a hard situation.

[DD Amasa]

I read the article before and I still find it offensive and disgusting and completely unbalanced.

[Mariais5]

I think it was pretty well balanced. I would take offense at a few comments...

I don't understand what he meant about (paraphrasing) white middle class Americans not speaking Spanish and not associating with migrant workers.. Are migrant workers the only people in America that speak Spanish? I find that very degrading to middleclass Hispanics in America. We have MANY hispanic friends who influence Bryce's life.

He bases his article on these three families.. Why not interview several families. Were there only three adopting families at the Marriott at this time? I hardly think so! But, he finds an abused child, a drunken adoptive father with little sense, and a family adopting a premature baby who doesn't appear very healthy. I would venture to guess that the other, what, twenty-five adoptive families at the Marriott at that time were more reflective of the norm.

I don't like the fact that America gets blamed for so many problems in other countries ~ The Guatemala civil war was America's fault, American military trained Guatemalan death squads to wipe out indiginous villages, and the urban gangs are so bad because they learned that on the streets of LA... Sounds like Guatemala would have been a prosperous and crime free nation if not for the US.

All in all, it was a good article. A lot of information that we need to hear. I believe we owe it to our children to learn as much as we can..

[MicheleB]

I too read and re-read the article.

It was a very well written article and I was glad to see that it represented more than one view of the Guatemala adoption process.

It was not a article based on emotion or bias, but covered facts and views from all sides. It mentioned UNICEF, Casa Alainza, and Wendy Berger without promoting or taking sides - just stating the facts or views. I appreciate that.

I am by no means an expert in Guatemala adoptions and can only give my view and opinion, but having been through the process 3 times and having kept in touch with the process and with the country, I think this article is the most complete article I have seen so far. I am gratefull that I didn't see a lot of generalizations like I have seen in past articles.

Do I "'like" what I read? NO! However, the truth hurts sometimes. Even though I don't like it, it seems to me the most complete and as close to the truth article I have read. There are a few phrases I could have lived with out, but all in all - right on the money - no pun intended!

Just my opinion!