Do you know this?

There are approximately 18000 parents registered with CARA, while the number of children in the Government's adoption pool is less 1800.

Monday, October 15, 2007

Devaluing the adoptive child

Adoption discussion # 17

During the 2nd International CARA conference in New Delhi last week, I met a well known adoption advocate who knows our efforts to promote the adoption tax credit, walked up to me and said "I talked to my adoptive daughter who is an adult and who can make most of her own life's decisions, about your adoption tax credit, and she felt that it is devaluing the adoptive child".

For that moment I felt like I didn't have any answers, but later on as I thought through this statement, this is what I felt: Isn't it devaluing the child to pay for adoption? Which one is more devaluing, is to pay to get the child or to get financial relief when one has difficulty to pay for it?

There are individuals who likes to substitute the word "reimburse" for "payment" for adoption agency expenses and justify that adoption agency has expenses, that's precisely is the point. Adoptive families also have expenses and they need help.

What do you think of this? Do you have a comment on this? Write in the comments section below.

RN
P.S. By the way, if you still haven't signed the petition, please take a minute to sign it at this link: http://www.petitiononline.com/atc26047/petition.html

3 comments:

Angelicamom said...

I find the person's comment extremely surprising! In our case, this year, we are paying extremely hefty taxes and penalties (in additon to the adoption costs) on the IRA I sold in order to pay for our adoption. I really look forward to next year's tax credit as some breath of relief!
I am trying to put myself into this man's daughter's way of thinking to try to understand the comment. The only thing I can come up with is that perhaps it feels devaluing to her that a PAP might use the tax incentive as a reason to adopt, and without it, they might not otherwise adopt. Naybe she is looking at the tax credit as trying to promote incentive to adopt? Looking at it that way, if that is what she is feeling, I can see why she would feel it to be devaluing. I think any child would like to feel that they were adopted unconditionally, with no incentives attached.
I suppose that anything is possible, but I know that in our case, whether or not we received the tax credit, we would have sold the IRA and paid whatever we needed to pay in order to have our little one be with us. In the USA, we receive a nice tax credit. It by no means covers the expenses, but it is nice that the government puts some value to adoption and its costs. It would be even nicer (for us at least!) if the government also considered the adoption of a child one of the viable reasons for selling one's IRA so as not to pay such high penalies on it! But then, I guess that could be looked at as financial incentive too!

Anonymous said...

I too find your adoption tax credit campaign completly wrong.

Where there is support for first families to keep and care for the children? So that they don´t get into orphanages...and are then freed for adoption...by the agencies who pocket money on the way.

Ruby rethink your campaign. It´s misplaced.

- yes do cost free adoptions- as you visioned sometime ago..

Did you realise that in the US the tax credit, just resulted in the agencies raising their fees?

Rgds

Arun

Ruby Nakka said...

Linking "Adoption Tax Credit' to counselling the biological parents is non contextual. If we believe that adoption has a place in the society, then it must be extended to every citizen of the society on an equal footing irrespective of their economic status. Also Adoption Tax credit promotes transperancy as the agencies will be forced to give authentic receipts to the beneficiaries for tax purposes.

Ruby