This I Believe...Adoption

I'm currently looking for an internship.

(As in, oh my goodness I need an internship in 2 months so I can graduate in less than a year and get a real job and get closer to leaving the country AHHHH!!)

Ahem. When I was in elementary school, I wanted to be a teacher. I dabbled in dress-designing and architecture in middle school, but by high school I was back to teaching. I even did two internships at schools in our district. There, I discovered that I did NOT want to be a teacher. Not with this education system, at least.

Luckily, that led me to Child Life which led me to my major which is now pointing in five million possible internship directions. What I really want (and what I've been avoiding this whole time because I thought it wasn't possible) is to work with adoptees, orphans, poor kids, and somewhere else on the planet.

I imagine I'll do a lot of rambling on those last three in the near future, especially as I get further into the application process. But today, you get a shortened and heavily edited version of an essay I wrote in high school.
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       I believe that every child deserves a loving family and a safe home. This normally wouldn't be a radical statement, but when I say every child, I don't mean every child born in America or a nuclear family. I mean that the upbringing of every child around the world is our collective responsibility. For me, building a family through adoption will not be a last resort but something that I will be privileged to do. I would consider myself irresponsible if I weren't adopting any children. There are too many people already crowded onto this planet for me to have as big of a family as I want without adopting internationally.

       Let me start by saying that I realize there are problems in the U.S. foster care system. (I've taken who knows how many classes where this gets brought up). However, as a result of my aforementioned overlapping areas of interest, I am most interested in and concerned about international adoptions. Kids in the foster care system have a tough life, but they have the opportunity to do so much if they choose to and get the right encouragement. The children left in third-world orphanages don't even get a first chance, growing up without parents or resources until they are dumped on the street to make room for more orphans. These kids are the ones who hold my heart but they are also the hardest to adopt.

       From a child development and human rights perspective, the two biggest issues facing orphans and adoptees are attachment disorders and child trafficking issues.

       Reactive attachment disorder is to blame for many of internationally adopted children's behavior issues. I don't want to bore you with the details, but attachment issues are a result of children never getting the chance to properly bond with their parents or their overwhelmed caregivers. This bond, as anyone who's studied child development can tell you, is vital to the child's developing a sense of trust (instead of mistrust). The longer it takes the child to get adopted, the longer they go without meeting their emotional milestones, impacting the growth of autonomy over shame and doubt, initiative over guilt, industry over inferiority. This is why many orphans have learning disabilities and/or behavior problems.

       Then, there is so much corruption within the system itself. Many of the children in orphanages are not orphaned or unwanted. They have loving families but have been kidnapped and virtually sold to an adoptive couple. Child trafficking problems have led to many countries delaying or even permanently halting adoptions. Unfortunately, these tragedies are hurting the adoption cause – children who need homes aren’t getting them because they can’t be adopted internationally. People that thought they would be taking home their son or daughter learned that the child they considered their own is part of someone else's family. Ending the corruption and maintaining the integrity of foreign adoptions is crucial to the estimate 143 million orphans around the world waiting for a home.

       Even with all the things that can go wrong in an adoption, the basic underlying fact is that adoptions work. A majority of Americans have been affected by adoption, either personally or through a close friend or relative. Adoption gives the mothers and fathers that cannot care for their children the reassurance that their child will be cherished. It provides a future for a little one who has lost all of his or her relatives as a result of disease, poverty, or violence. Above all, it is the only hope for the hundreds of millions of orphans who just need someone to take them into their family. If I don't adopt that child, who will?

Official More Blessed Word Count: 8,640