When Children are Traded: An op-ed Blog~

~ This blog is based off of the article ' When Children are Traded ', written by the New York Times ~

What happens in many international orphanages? Often times, children are extremely neglected. They are denied the immediate attention necessary for a developing child. They are often malnourished, some orphanages only serve one main meal a day. They are psychologically trained to grab what they want, otherwise it will not be given to them. Children are treated, in many cases, like animals. They have very little supervision, they have to fight for themselves, and they experience no love. All of this happens at a very early age for these children, and it has a profound impact on their psychological development.  When 'western' families adopt from impoverished countries, they are taking a child who has been trained to not cry and to fight and to grab, and try to assimilate them into the 'normal family'. Many families fail to comprehend that the child they bring home could (and will most likely) have a very different psychological mindset then the rest of the family. For this reason, it has become more and more common for families to 'un-adopt' their adopted child. When the adopted child is brought home, or grows up a bit, they begin to lash out violently, act differently from the other children, shut down emotionally, and yell and scream when they do not obtain what they want. Parents of these children become frightened for the emotional and physical safety of their families, and they become exhausted at trying to care for the needy child.  Frustration sets in as to why this child, who has been given love, a home and a family, will not 'behave'. Hate stems from that, and many families who 'un-adopt' state that they no longer want to see the child ever again. The legal process of renouncing of international adoption, is long, laborious and expensive. Foster care is usually not an option, as the foster care system usually will not allow internationally adopted children to enter to program. For this reason, 'trading' these children is becoming more and more common. Families will, in essence, use the internet to sell or give away their adopted child. Since this is not a legal practice, the children are traded in parking lots, garages or secluded areas. This adopted child trade is becoming an even larger issue as more families choose this as their 'way out', and as this network often attracts very abusive and perverted 'parents'. 'Child recycling' is a problem that is very rarely addressed or looked at, which has enabled it to begin to grow larger and larger as a network within the United States, a network that needs to be shut down.

Child trading is a very secret, very 'hush-hush' operation, almost as if these children were objects on the black market.

market.

"This is “private re-homing,” something that once meant finding a new home for a dog that barked too much. Now it refers to families recycling their adopted children, often through Internet postings.

There are commonly no courts involved, no lawyers, no social service agencies and no vetting of the new parents. There’s less formality than the transfer of a car." (when children are traded)

These children are being sold like objects. One of the websites that had some of the most 'child relocation' adds, was Yahoo. Parents would post descriptions, nationalities and other personal information on message boards, in hopes of attracting an interested buyer. Once a response was given to the parents, the trade would happen quickly and quietly, and the child would never again see their original adopted family. Most of the children being traded were between the ages of 6 and 14.  Attracted to these troubled children most are abusive and perverted adults. Some will take these children for sexual reasons, others will trap them and abuse them. With this process being outside of legal knowledge, the people that take these children are not inspected or investigated, so abuse can happen much more easily.

"A Chinese girl crippled by polio ended up in a home where a woman with an explosive temper was eventually overseeing 18 children. The girl says that the woman confiscated her leg brace, which she needed to walk. And, according to court records, the woman, as a form of punishment, once ordered her to dig a hole in the backyard — for her own grave.  'You die here and no one will know,' the Chinese girl quoted the woman as saying. 'No one will find you.'" (when children are traded)

This injustice done to these children is horrific and heart-breaking and must be stopped. Not only does this process violate laws regarding international adoption, it also violates these children’s rights and safety. Without a wide scale intervention, this already swelling network will continue to grow. The United States must not be willing to tolerate this type of practice within the borders of their nation, and thus the calling for the destruction of child recycling must be heeded.

It must be acknowledged, however, that the families who choose to participate in this adopted child trade, often use it as a last resort.  

“The families handing over the children are at wit’s end. They typically adopted children with serious emotional troubles who, they say, brought fear, chaos and sometimes violence to their homes. Parents of one adopted boy said they felt they had to lock him in his room every night for the safety of everyone else.” (when children are traded)

Even though this practice is cruel and often extremely damaging to the child, the families who give their child up often feel like they have nowhere else to go, that for the emotional and physical safety of the rest of their family, this is the decision they must make. So while this practice is horrible, the families often do not see another way out.

It is estimated that between 10-25% (approximately 20,000 children) of international adoptions do not work out. Statistically, this means that up to half of these ‘non-working adoptions’ are terminated illegally. With the number of international adoptions always increasing, the number of adopted children being traded rises in correspondence. Without a legal clamp-down on adoptions and child re-locations, this issue will continue to grow, and the number of children being exploited and abused, within the United States, will sky-rocket.

Source:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/21/opinion/kristof-when-children-are-traded.html?_r=1&

Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 19, Not the hope we were searching for~

In chapter 19 of The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck utilizes the rhetorical strategies of pathos, sentence structure and evidence to establish the connection between California’s past and present. This chapter discusses how California originally belonged to Mexico. However, American squatters began to settle the land, feeling that they had the right to own and farm it. Now, with the migrants from the dustbowl moving west, these Californians are fearful that what they did to the Mexicans (take Mexico’s land as their own), will be what the migrant do to them.  

This chapter is littered with the accounts of migrant families whose children grew extremely hungry due to lack of food (stemming from their families lack of money).  Steinback evokes pathos in the reader as he vibrantly depicts how the families attempted (and often failed) to provide for their children. He illustrates this when he says: "They streamed the mountains, hungry and restless-restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do-to lift, to push, to pull, to pick to cut-anything, any burden to bear, for food" (chapter 19, pg 233). The migrants worked in whatever way they could, not for luxurious objects or the most recent model of a car, but for a basic human necessity: food. This chapter accounts how some of the migrant families would attempt to grow a small garden on the lands of the wealthy Californian farmers, but the greedy and suspicious land owners would hire surveillance to eliminate any families attempting to do such. This all evoked pathos in the reader as when the chapter concludes, the reader is left feeling sorry for the poor starving migrants, and angered at the greed of the Californian farmers.

Steinbeck also utilizes the rhetorical technique of small and quick sentences. The application of this form of sentence structures arouses a sense of desperation in the reader. Much like the migrant families are frantic to find food, Steinbeck composes this chapter in a such a way that makes the chapter read very quickly, almost as if in a rush.  This effective strategy assists the reader in feeling the sheer desperation felt by the migrants, which aids in the reader developing a sympathetic relationship with the families. Steinbeck engages and fascinates his audience through the utilization of a short-sentence structure.

Finally, chapter 19 presents the application of factual evidence as a rhetorical strategy. Steinbeck’s writing is unique in this book, as The Grapes of Wrath is a work of historical fiction. However, every other chapter (on the odd chapters), Steinbeck transitions out of the fictional life held by the Joad family, and reverts into describing the scene in the actuality of the time period. For example, in chapter 5, Steinbeck writes about ‘the monster that is the bank’, not through the perspective of the Joad’s, but rather through the perspective of the general population living at that time (in essence, these chapters are non-fiction).  Steinbeck accounts how the migrant families searched for work out of their desperate need for food. He describes how the Californian farmers would obliterate any attempt to harvest anything off of their lands. He depicts starving children and rapacious Californians. He describes the hope that the families obtained during their journey to California, and the crushing reality that they witnessed upon their arrival.