Adoptive Parents

NEWS REPORTS are filled with politicians and others who lament that we have become a fatherless society. A recent report from the Council on Families in America, a group that aims to help the family, warned us about the dangers of single parenthood and offered the sage advice that we should "re-create" our cultural values.Many people are demanding that the government crack down on the so-called deadbeat dads -- men who don't pay child support.It is ironic that while society bemoans fatherless children and complains about deadbeat dads, many people favor denying some biological fathers access to their children.

A group of about 200 families from Howard and Prince George's counties has broken away from a national adoption support group, Families Adopting Children Everywhere (FACE), establishing its own organization, the Adoptive Family Network."Our goal is to assist and support families who want to adopt," said Gail Pendergrast, coordinator of the new group, which began offering pre-adoption courses, educational seminars and other services for adoptive families about a month ago.In addition, Ms. Pendergrast said, the new group will focus much of its efforts on family activities and increasing sensitivity about the concerns and needs of adoptive families.

Peter Sprigg's diatribe against same sex marriage ( "Same-sex marriage is contrary to the public interest," Feb. 2) is so full of contradictions and half-truths that it is difficult to decide where to begin responding. Assuming for the sake of argument that "the public purpose" of marriage is the procreation and rearing of children — although there is no reason to conclude that marriage has any one, exclusive "public purpose" — even Mr. Sprigg acknowledges that heterosexual couples marry for a host of "private purposes" and the state recognizes those marriages as valid even if the couple never intends to nor has children.

At least 100 U.S.-born children and perhaps hundreds more are leaving the country each year to be adopted by families in Asia, Europe, Canada and other places -- a practice so little known that many U.S. adoption specialists aren't even aware of it."It is surprising, isn't it, that the richest country in the world is sending children abroad for adoption," said Helen Mark of Adoptive Parents Association of British Columbia, whose members include a number of Canadians with U.S.-born youngsters.

WARSAW, Poland -- Poland is introducing regulations to hamper foreign adoptions of Polish children and to force foreigners who do adopt to maintain the children's links with Poland.The new rules, pushed by the nation's child welfare agency, would ban private adoptions and individual approaches except through the agency.The measures, expected to become law by autumn, would keep Polish children from going to foreign adoptive parents unless an exhaustive nationwide search had failed to find willing Polish families.

Gustavo, a 12-year-old orphan from Colombia, has spent a week at camp, attended the Catonsville July 4th parade and watched an IronBirds baseball game at Ripken Stadium during what he has been told is a vacation to America. In reality, he and nine other Colombian orphans who have traveled thousands of miles are in search for a permanent home, even if they don't realize it. For Gustavo, the ideal home would be in Harford County near his siblings. He is staying in Havre de Grace with a family who adopted his older sister Daniela two years ago. Another older sister, Yaqueline, will soon become part of a Bel Air family.

One of our colleagues, in a recent column on adoption, wrote that if couples considering making a baby had to endure the same battery of tests and background checks required of adoptive parents the world would be a better place. The suggestion might have struck some as tongue-in-cheek, yet current events force one to contemplate its merits.In Western Maryland, the Washington County sheriff's department says that a Hagerstown area couple whose 3-year-old son was discovered alone in a California mall this month told friends they intended to abandon him. Lisa and Wolfgang Von Nester Sr. "said their intention was to leave the child out there," investigator Rick Ziolkowski said.

Somewhere in California, a little girl abandoned seven years ago by a Baltimore drug addict has lost her "forever family."The Lochearn couple who adopted her before moving west in 1991 went to court in an effort to have the adoption dissolved on the grounds that Baltimore social service workers misled them about her severe emotional problems.Asked to play Solomon in reverse -- with neither the parents nor the city wanting the child -- Chief Judge Edward A. DeWaters Jr. of the Baltimore County Circuit Court yesterday ruled the adoption valid.

Beyond the normal kid stuff, adopted children can hear especially hurtful questions from other children, causing stress for them and their adoptive or birth parents."

HAGERSTOWN -- Sylvia and Michael Mauk are white. And that, they contend, is the main reason they lost Tiffany, the black foster daughter they raised for two years before the state took her out of their home and placed her with black adoptive parents.The move, the Mauks say, violated their civil rights, with the state using their race to deny them the chance to adopt the girl. But more important, they argue, is that it damaged Tiffany, who was taken away in March 1992 crying, "I'm sorry, Mommy.