Pound Pup Legacy

That article is indeed EXCELLENT!

Disturbing, upsetting, but excellent.  I was especially moved by the following, because it reminded me of the The Wise Men, bringing gifts to the baby Jesus, only to abandon him when something better and smaller was found back "home":

"A concrete example; Ms. and Mr. F. made three years ago a double request for adoption, both national and international. The second request moved faster, and was rewarded by a black skinned African child of three years. The future parents have travelled twice to the institute to get to know the child, in its home country. They have carried gifts and stayed days to play with him.

In the meantime news has arrived from the other side, the one of national adoption, that they could have a newborn Italian baby. The couple F. renounced the African child and chose the Italian. Smaller, therefore better.
For certain this has been a difficult choice for them, but that is how it went. The guilty one, as all stories will need to find immediately the guilty person, as in this case, is often the system, thus nobody in the end.

A confused mechanism, a general executive manager of the factory of adoptions does not exist, every unit travels for its own account, the competences are divided over four ministries in one Tower of Babel/Confusion and small jealously guarded powers are often overlapped.

In the law of the jungle governs the individual arbitrator: better a white newborn than a black toddler. It makes thousands of persons happy, too. In its fuzzy way it works.

Let us look from close at this gigantic 'factory'. Take the year 2006, it gave birth to five thousand new children. In six years, from 2000, it brought 25.000: 18.000 foreign, 7.000 Italian. The population of a small city.

The first thing one sees is that the factory of the children is fed by poor countries. Children from the United States and Italy are not adopted by Spain or vice-versa. The abandoned children are an indicator of the uneasiness of the countries they live in. They find themselves in: Ukraine and Colombia, in Vietnam and Bolivia. Parents of richer countries adopt children from poorer countries. In some cases, in the country of origin the abundance of offer is seen as a shame.

The imperial Russia of Putin has rendered the export of its children much more difficult: For a long time it kept the borders closed. For a super power to have overfull orphanages is a shame. Developed countries keep their children, they do not abandon them and when it does happen its assistance net makes sure they find another home.

In Italy it is like that. In the sixties institutes were full and the wheels of charity functioned in full. Ten years later, the amount of abandoned children is small and constant in number: more or less thousand every year. Many of them, especially since 2000, are children of foreign women. The Italians hardly abandon their babies anymore. As a consequence, (2006) confronted with more than 16.000 requests for adoption - the demand -, the adoptable Italian children - the offer – turns out to be 1200: less than one for every ten couples, nine couples to be destined to remain without child.

Moreover the Italian children are older, nearly always school age. The practice to define the adoptability are –correctly- long (must clearly be that nobody will claim that child, that is effectively alone in the world), the verifications of compatibility between the couple and the future children are meticulous and sometimes debilitating. Time passes, when adoption is a fact, years have passed by. The Italian market is therefore asphyxiated: few children and who are already older, long waiting times.

If the offer is remained stable the demand has been doubled in ten years.

The couples that introduced adoption requests were 8.000 in 1995, and are 16.000 today. Says Melita Cavallo, head of the department for Child Protection, an undisputed authority and a true guru in matters of adoptions, 25 years of experience in all the childcare institutions of the country and author of tens of publications, among which "Finding children" the bible of adoptive parents. "It started with Moses, and ever since then, mothers abandon their sons placing them in a basket, other mothers save them from the water.

Augusto adopted Tiberio in order to guarantee the family line. The reasons of abandonment and the reasons for welcoming children change with the living conditions and the culture of time. In Italy in the post-war period there were many prejudices to adoption: sons of prostitutes were not gladly taken into the house, children of nobody with "who knows what kind of character written in their “DNA”. Now after ten years the curve of demands is in constant growth: with prosperity sterility increased, the medium age in which women try to have the first child went up. Ninety percent of the children are adopted by couples without children. In richer North and the Centre of Italy, there are not enough children to adopt, hence the boom of the international adoptions ".

If there are none to adopt in Italy they search outside: there the three requirements of the market - availability of the goods, rapidity of delivery, quality (are better). The children who arrive from the foreign countries are smaller, arrive in average after two years of waiting, and are thousands. In six and a half years for 15.000 requests for international adoption 18.000 children entered the country: more than one per couple.

One needs to entrust oneself to an agency, one of the 72 associations authorised by the Government to work with the foreign countries. The problem is the costs. While the national adoption has zero cost, for a child from a foreign country the family pays an average of 15.000 euro. One must have this money. It is also true that the State, for those on incomes under the 70.000 euro per year, reimburses a part or couples can deduct from their tax income. But the couple must first advance this payment and then have two months of holidays (of lacked income, another time) in order to go to the country and to perfect the practice."  http://all-children-have-rights.blogspot.com/