Russian Adoption: Letter to Senator Mary Landrieu

Dear Senator Landrieu:

I am writing to you because of your involvement with the congressional adoption coalition and because of your recent attempts to communicate with the Russian authorities about the adoption ban. I want to comment on some issues that have rarely been mentioned in connection with the ban. Sad though the Russian decision was for some American families and some waiting children, it may offer us an opportunity to examine factors affecting the success of  both foreign and domestic adoptions in this country.

The Russian legislation was named for Dima Yakovlev, a toddler adopted from Russia who died a tragic but purely accidental death. It would more appropriately have been named for children like Viktor Matthey and Nathan Craver, or others who died as a result of systematic maltreatment of a type advised or countenanced by some adoption caseworkers and educators.

Popular sources of information about adoption and Internet sites such as www.focusonthefamily.com  and www.attach-china.org have to a considerable extent been hijacked by an unconventional, non-evidence-based view of emotional attachment and treatment of mental illness. This perspective claims that all emotional disturbance derives from poor attachment experiences, and that adoptive parents can cause children to become attached to them by displaying their power and authority. In order to display authority, parents must make children completely dependent on them and obedient to them; children may eat and drink only as parents allow them, must not use the toilet without asking, and may be kept in cold or uncomfortable sleeping arrangements, including cages. Such treatment is physically as well as mentally unhealthy and accounts for the frequent findings of malnutrition in deaths of adopted children.  

Because Internet sources present these types of maltreatment as appropriate for adopted children, adoptive parents may have become convinced of this misinformation before they ever receive the pre-adoptive training required under the Hague Convention. Whether their pre-adoptive education contradicts or confirms their beliefs may make the difference between mistreatment of adoptive children and appropriate treatment. Unfortunately, evidence from education of social workers, CASAs, and GALs suggests that in some cases the mistaken beliefs may be confirmed rather than contradicted.

How can the U.S. alter this situation so that adopted children from all countries are safer? As I suggested in a letter to Pavel Astakhov two years ago, an important step would be to review pre-adoption training materials. I would like to see this done for all pre-adoption education, but in light of the Russian ban this may be the time to begin with materials from agencies that work with foreign adoptions. I don’t believe that such a process can constitutionally be created by Federal legislation, and I believe that state legislation would be strongly resisted by groups like the ones I mentioned earlier. However, it should be possible for a congressional committee to request co-operation from agencies that deal with foreign adoptions and to have their materials vetted by independent scholars.

What I suggest here would obviously be only a first step,  but it may be an essential one both toward improving the outlook for adopted children and toward convincing the Russians that the ban is unnecessary.

Sincerely yours,

Jean Mercer,Ph.D.

Professor Emerita of Psychology, Richard Stockton College

NOTE: Senator Landrieu's office answered this the day after it was sent, with a form letter in which the Senator deplored the conditions of children in Russia.

I was recently interviewed on this issue by the Russian magazine Za Rubezhom. Perhaps Senator Landrieu's staff will read about the matter there.    J.M.