Random Thoughts on Madonna and Adoption

Although I rarely watch daytime TV, I did tune in to Oprah today to hear what Madonna (the pop icon, not the religious icon, obviously) had to say about her much publicized adoption of a 13 month old boy from Mawali.
First impressions (and wholly apart from what she actually said about the adoption): 1. since I haven't paid any attention to Madonna since the days of "material girl" and "spank me" (aka, high school days) I was surprised at her subdued, conservative appearance. 2. mature, conservative appearance aside, for someone who has spent most of her life in the public eye, she was decidedly not eloquent. In fact, she stammered, stuttered, and repeated herself. Dunno, maybe its the time change between Chicago and England. 3. What is with that Faux-English accent? (then again, maybe that is why she stammered and stuttered and was not very polished. maybe it is a hard accent to put on).

OK enough nitpicking about her appearance and presentation (seriously, who do I think I am to comment on that anyway?). As for the adoption of little David himself, and wholly apart from the impact of her "star status" upon the adoption process in Malawi, I think that her motives were pure and its unfortunate that the attention is on the "oh big shot star circumvented the rules and adopted this poor boy and took advantage of his "simple" birth father." I don't know about anyone else, but before this media debacle, I had no idea Malawi existed, let alone the extreme poverty and large number of orphaned children. If Madonna's adoption raises awareness even a little bit about the orphans in Africa and orphans worldwide in general, then that is a good thing. a very very good thing.

Also, (and this might get me flamed big time but what the hell I will say it anyway) the birth father of this little boy has probably been hounded by reporters and paparazzi and other such bloodhounds and doesn't know what to think. He wants what is best for his baby, I am sure. In a perfect world, he would have been able to care and feed and love him in his own home. This is not (big shocker here) a perfect world. How dare those people hound him and torment him about his motivations and ask him over and over -"did you know that"-"are you sure you wanted to do this"-"weren't you pressured to do this" -"Did you know this woman was very rich"- and toss other other such antagonistic probing questions at him in the hopes of getting a good "sound bite."

Adoption is never clear cut as far as ethics are concerned. It is not an easy choice for anyone: birth parents, adoptive parents, and child. We are fooling ourselves if we think otherwise. There is pain and loss involved. It is far more emotionally complicated than ladybugs, dragonflies, chosen child poems, culture camps, red threads, and the ever present "God's will" and "God chose this child for me" and "It was meant to be." It is far richer and far better and far more difficult and far more exciting and far more soul searching and far more EVERYTHING than all of that.

Is adoption a wonderful journey? Hell yes! Is adoption a difficult journey? Hell yes! Is Adoption one of the most exciting, most intimidating, most frustrating, most rewarding, most joy filling and most tear producing ways of forming a family? Hell Yes!

Ahem. now I will step off of my soap box and take a few deep breaths. I do tend to get carried away sometimes, but it is my blog, after all. So if I want to make a fool of myself and post it for the whole web to take a gander at, its my choice, right? never get in the way of a determined fool with a motor mouth. ha!