Celebrity adoption... trend or political statement?

It’s a celebrity trend that’s difficult to ignore. These days it seems that anyone who has ever been in a movie is shopping the world for their newest baby. The trend famously started with Angelina Jolie and her adorable son Maddox, whom she adopted in Cambodia. Now, people are lining up to out “third-world” each other in their adoptions. For the record, Madonna wins with the son she may or may not have adopted from an orphanage in Malawi.

It’s certainly understandable why Americans, famous and nobodies alike, look outside our boarders when they’ve chosen to adopt. The process to adopt an American baby is laborious, time consuming and expensive.

Laws are increasingly more sympathetic toward birth parents, so adopting an American baby often involves taking the chance that the birth mother will come looking for the child in a few years, demanding a relationship. The trend here in the US is also moving toward “open adoptions” where the birth mother picks out the adoptive parents and is often involved in the child’s life. That leaves the adoptive parents to do the difficult, expensive things involved in parenting and the birth mother is free to be the ideal, permissive, cool mom on the side. What potential adoptive parent really wants to get into that sort of mess?

The celebrity adoption trend is nothing but positive. It raises awareness that the American red-tape adoption is not the only option. Couples who cannot have children on their own, or would rather not have children of their own, see their alternatives. It also puts multi-ethnic families in the public eye. Perhaps lawmakers will take notice and make adopting American babies more accessible.