Brazilians only adopt healthy, white babies
Photo by christine [cbszeto/Flickr"
Quoting data from the Tribunal of Justice of the state of São Paulo, the news agency says that almost all of the Brazilian couples refuse to adopt children that are black, native or that have mixed blood, while 77% of the foreigners that come to the country willing to adopt are indifferent to the kid’s ethnicity.
Also, kids of parents who have the HIV virus are rejected by 48.9% of Brazilians adopting and by 27.4% of the foreigners. Children born due to incest are avoided by 55% of the Brazilians and 48.5% of the families from abroad. On the other hand, foreigners are less tolerant to babies born after a rape (85% of rejection, and 61% for Brazilians).
These demands explain why the national register of adoption counts 31,000 couples and a little over 8,000 kids. Most children and teens in the list are not considered “adoptable” because they don’t fulfill all of these exigences.
Last year the UN published a study that shows this is not exclusively a Brazilian problem – although it seems to be particularly acute in the country. The international report indicated, for instance, that the number of kids adopted is at least 60 times smaller than the number of orphans. This estimate doesn’t even include abandoned children. The reasons for that, according to the UN, are the bureaucracy normally involved in the adoption process and the excessive demands mentioned before. Worldwide, adopting parents tend to prefer healthy little girls of their own ethnicity. Girls are, apparently, perceived as being a lessen source of trouble and also willing to care for aging parents. Of course, in orphanages, kids with this profile are rare as platinum.
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How easy is it for an American (or anyone from another country) adopt a Black/Brown skinned baby or toddler from Brazil?
I would love to adopt from Brazil, but is it possible to get a Black/Brown infant/toddler from there without problems or an overly long wait?
I wish I had an answer for you Natalie. Mechanisms to avoid parental abuse and child traffic are getting stricter, which is good of course, but it also makes it tougher for the good people out there to build a family. I know several couples (both Brazilian and foreigner) that had trouble adopting – but they were looking for (you guessed) white babies. Also, part of the problem is not related to color or genre, but to the age of the kids. There is a big number of kids over five out for adoption, and I believe it might be easier to adopt those.
There’s a similar problem in the U.S., too. Meanwhile, most foreigners coming to Brazil to adopt are hardly likely to be white supremacists. Given this, the story seems to create a false dichotomy where “foreigners” are “less racist” than Brazilians. Maybe the foreigners coming to Brazil toa adopt, yes. Foreigners in general? I have my doubts.