| Adoptions tend to make headlines when celebrities like Angelina Jolie and Madonna decide that an exotic child from the wilds of Asia and Africa would make a nice adornment to the family. Thousands and maybe millions more take place every year, and hopefully work out for all concerned. But once in a while an adoption comes unstuck and all manner of stories fly around, raising serious questions about whether the best judgment has been exercised by do-gooders who presumably wanted to give an abandoned child a new start in life and enrich their own lives too. The case of the Dutch couple which hit the headlines and was analysed in angry and indignant tones in chat rooms around the world illustrates how things can go so badly wrong. One Raymond Poeteray and his wife Meta gave up to Hong Kong Social Services a Korean child they adopted seven years ago when she was only four months old. They claim the girl had serious ‘‘bonding problems,’’ couldn’t adjust to Dutch food and basically didn’t fit into their culture. There are a few troubling issues about this account. How do you decide that a child you’ve raised since she was an infant suddenly doesn’t adjust to your food and culture? Presumably she was subsisting on non cultural-specific milk and baby cereals at the beginning and then, like most other children, graduated to more solid stuff. To suggest that for the seven years they’ve raised her she has never ‘‘adjusted’’ to their food defies logic. This is where the stories by the baby sitters begin to shed some light, if they’re true. One woman said that the girl was raised by Asian domestic helpers, one during the day and the other in the evening, which is not unusual in itself. More worrying is the claim that ‘‘Meta did not treat her as her real daughter’.’’ According to the child-minder, the child was rarely in her mother’s arms; ‘‘there was no love there’’. That is quite an indictment in itself. It also shows how apparent failure by the parents to get her accustomed to their cuisine and assimilated to their lifestyle might explain why she might have developed an appetite for Asian delicacies presumably prepared by the helpers. It has also been reported that the girl was adopted in the first instance because the couple believed they couldn’t have children. They went on to have two children of their own later, a factor that has sparked off the accusations of wilful neglect and what have you. Commonsense suggests that though a phobia of bonding is not unusual amongst adopted children, it shouldn’t manifest itself beyond early childhood. Something must have gone terribly wrong, and maybe the whole story will never be told. Outraged Dutch people writing to newspapers talk about being ashamed and disgusted that their own, who happen to be diplomats, can abandon a child like an unwanted toy, or in the words of one Dutch newspaper, like ‘‘unwanted household rubbish’’. Others call it a crime against natural justice. Strong words, strong emotions and serious concerns about the ethics of dissolving adoptions. A blogger described it as ‘‘band aid solution to infertility problems’’. It is not the first time a case like this has been reported widely. A few years ago, an Irish couple returned an adopted child to an orphanage in Indonesia claiming the child didn’t ‘‘fit in’’. These sorts of things give a bad name to what is an otherwise noble undertaking. Maybe one positive outcome of this whole Dutch saga is that authorities will be more vigilant about how the process is managed and how the suitability of potential parents is vetted. These things tend to be rushed, especially where money or big names are involved. And sometimes there’s more than a little doubt about whether the right procedures have been followed, or whether the right people have given their consent, as in Madonna’s adoption of a Malawian boy, which remains mired in controversy. Authorities in Asia are in the spotlight, and will remain so, because in some countries foster parents from the West are still seen as the most viable for the millions of unwanted female children waiting for a new life in orphanages and unable to find a home amongst their own countrymen. In societies where boys are prized over girls, adoption by foreigners is often the only hope. Most are probably well-meaning. But some seem to be wholly unprepared for the challenges of a culturally or ethnically-blended family. And, sadly, a minority fail to go that extra mile, and forget that a child does not come with a love-by date. When monks and the militia in Cambodia clash as they did again this week, the scenes are ludicrous in the extreme. You have on the one hand, men who are supposed to be the peace-loving, pious guardians of the nation’s moral consciousness. On the other hand you have a different breed of guardians altogether, gun-totting, hardened men who are taught to protect the regime ostensibly to maintain law and order. When the two come to blows and kung-fu kicks, it is a sad reflection of the extent to which a country can degenerate, accusations of who started it notwithstanding. | 
