The madonna/jolie effect

'Madonna effect' sees poor families put children up for adoption hoping for a wealthy family
By STEVE DOUGHTY - More by this author »

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.

Setting the trend: Madonna with her Zambian baby David Banda

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

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I just post the stories, for interest.. for everyone

Lord, what fools these mortals be!
- A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act III, Scene ii

Voltaire said: "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."

H.L.Mencken wrote:"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. Albert Einstein

Ya know what? I am SO tired of hearing about these celebutards. Who cares? Why does the media think this is newsworthy?

Shouldn't these "beautiful people" be off somewhere having a meltdown or in rehab drying out?

Ick.

Poor-country parents are fast buying into the crap that celebrities are fairytale princes and princesses out to rescue their wretched spawn.