2) Make up an additional list of words relevant to the problem of adoption.

3) Discuss the following.

1. Speak about the most common problems adoptive parents face in their relationships with the children they adopted. Comment on the scope of the problems.

2. Interpret the phrase “emotionally-bruised/ scarred children”. What experience can traumatize children so as to leave such scars?

3. Try to explain the causes of the “attachment problems” most adopted children have after being placed with a new family. Why do you think they take it out on their new parents? Why is adolescence the most difficult period for both adopted children and adoptive parents?

4. How does the factor of heredity affect rehabilitation of adopted children? Do you think that adoptive parents’ efforts can be hindered by hereditary disorders and tendencies (criminal, suicidal etc) which the birth parents passed down to their children? Give examples to illustrate your point of view.

5. Some parents prefer to adopt a baby and keep the child ignorant of the fact. Do you think they face the same problems as described in the article?

6. Should an adopted child be told the truth about his birth parents? What injuries can such a revelation inflict on him/ her? Express your own opinion on this aspect of adoption.

7. Comment on the saying Ignorance is bliss in connection with the issue of adoption.

8. Do you think parents should be specially chosen to be allowed to adopt or even foster a child? What can the criteria be?

16. Reading for detail

Read the text below and do the assignments that follow it.

How it feels to be raised in an orphanage

Many reforms have been made in Russia since the early nineties, however, most have focused on economic and political agendas, with little attention allotted to the social and health sectors. While citizens were once encouraged to hand their children over to the State in the hope of giving them a better education and rearing, such institutions are today bursting at the seams and are unable to support the orphans they receive. The many childcare institutions established by the State are now rundown and understaffed. They are often overcrowded, sometimes with as few as two babysitters for 60 infants.

The problem of the inadequate number of orphanages available was further exacerbated by the 1999 law prohibiting the operation of orphanages by non-state organizations. Yet this is only part of the problem, for even if a child is taken in by an orphanage, the very principles on which most of these establishments function are unsatisfactory and often provide little real benefit to the orphan’s chance of leading a normal life after release.

To start with, every child handed over to an orphanage is diagnosed for developmental delays. And even the slightest abnormality, such as a harelip or speech impediment, leads the child to a “lying down” room where he is kept in bed most of the day, devoid of any kind of stimulation and suffering further deterioration from neglect.

At the age of four, children are diagnosed again. At this point in time, they are labeled either as “normal” and subsequently placed in an institution providing education and healthcare, or oligophrenic. In the latter case the children enter a psychoneurological internat, where their rights to education, healthcare, and protection from harm are entirely discarded. The label of “imbecile” continues to haunt these children throughout their stay at the internats and beyond. At the age of seventeen they are most often transferred to another institution of this type where their life is further voided by neglect and abuse. Even if they are allowed to enter the real world and search for a job, all efforts will be futile, as they are permanently stamped as being worthless.

Unfortunately, these diagnostic tests which pre-determine the fate of so many children, are highly discriminatory and inaccurate, with a 30-60 percent chance of misdiagnosis according to several independent studies. Yet, even those awarded the states of “normal” suffer from a severely incomplete education. Due to the institutionalized (control-oriented) mode of childcare used in orphanages, even “normal” orphans learn little beyond very basic social and labor skills. Throughout their stay at the orphanages, the children are completely cut off from society, and education revolves almost entirely around academics. Even if the children are lucky enough to be placed in an orphanage that sends them to a regular school, their life outside of school remains enclosed within the gates of the orphanage. As such, these institutions not only instill a sense of false security by isolating them from the outside world, but also turn a blind eye to whatever problems these children bring into the institution.

Topics like drug or sex abuse are regarded as taboo and are altogether avoided because it is assumed that such problems could not possibly touch these children if they are under control. If by chance some efforts are made to provide the children with prevention programs, the curriculum revolves around scare tactics, which does not properly educate the students about drugs or sex, but simply presents this issue as something they should never be involved in.

However, according to Miramed, which conducts an Independent Living and Social Adaptation Center in Moscow, every year thousands of 16-17-year-old orphans are returned to the streets equipped with no understanding of how to live independently. Apart from that, a few million abandoned or run-away children roam the streets of Russia. And such a predicament makes them all gravely vulnerable to drug-abuse and crime. This is especially true of young girls who are likely to fall victim to “white slavery”, which in turn places them at a very high risk of contracting HIV/AIDS and other STDs. These children are also highly prone to suicide.

So, the fate of literally millions of children in the face of such statistics is grim. Certainly, children are better off in orphanages than on the streets, but at the end of the day, for there to be a real change in these children’s lives, radical changes must be made within the walls of these establishments to provide education and drug prevention to those who are at most risk of being swallowed up by society’s worst vices.

Assignments