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       #Post#: 5--------------------------------------------------
       'Madonna effect' sees poor families put children up for adoption
       By: Montraviatommygun Date: February 27, 2011, 9:25 am
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       'Madonna effect' sees poor families put children up for adoption
       hoping for a wealthy family
       By STEVE DOUGHTY
       Last updated at 23:47pm on 7th April 2008
       Celebrities such as Madonna who adopt children from poor
       countries are doing more harm than good, researchers claimed
       yesterday.
       They said that demand for children from wealthy Westerners means
       large numbers of families in the developing world are sending
       their children to orphanages in the hope that they will be
       adopted abroad.
       The report by a team of psychologists from Liverpool University
       called for controls to curb international adoptions, stop the
       "market mechanism" affecting children, and "uphold child
       rights".
       Their view is likely to upset couples in Britain who are trying
       to adopt children from overseas because of the difficulty of
       adopting a child in this country.
       The study said that adoptions from abroad are too much of a
       trade and do harm to the children involved.
       It said: "This process has been labelled the Madonna effect,
       so-called after the singer's adoption of a young boy from Zambia
       in 2006."
       Study author Professor Kevin Browne said: "Some argue that
       international adoption is a solution to the large number of
       children in institutional care but we have found the opposite is
       true.
       "In fact, we found that parents in poor countries are now giving
       up their children in the belief that they will have a better
       life in the West with a more wealthy family.
       "Some celebrities have unwittingly encouraged international
       adoption, yet it has been shown that 96 per cent of children in
       orphanages across Europe and probably across the globe are not
       true orphans and have at least one parent, often known to the
       local authorities."
       He added that governments and orphanages made substantial
       financial gains from the process.
       The report said orphans were better with foster carers in their
       own country and that international adoption should be a last
       resort.
       Madonna is not the only celebrity to have adopted a child from
       abroad. Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt have a 'rainbow family'
       with two adopted boys, Maddox from Cambodia and Pax Thien from
       Vietnam, and a girl, Zahara, from Ethiopia
       Few babies and young children are available for adoption in
       Britain because benefits for single parents and changing
       attitudes mean mothers rarely want to give their babies away,
       and widespread abortion means that fewer unwanted children are
       born.
       Couples who want to adopt must pass stringent tests.
       Social workers have turned down applicants because they are the
       wrong race, they are too old, they smoke or even because they
       are too middle class.
  HTML http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=557860&in_page_id=1811
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