On December 17, the State Duma Committee on Constitutional Legislation and State Building approved an amendment according to which US citizens will no longer be able to adopt children from Russian orphanages. On Wednesday, December 19, the bill will be considered by the lower house. Without going into a discussion of the political motives of the legislators, we decided to ask our experts about how the adoption of such a law will affect the fate of orphans.
Lyudmila Petranovskaya, psychologist, family organization specialist: Now there are about 100 thousand children in orphanages. According to statistics, up to a thousand Russian children are adopted by Americans a year. Previously, these figures were higher — about 4 thousand adoptions. The number of domestic adoptions is constantly decreasing — simply because no one is really doing this. So to say that we, they say, can handle it ourselves, is too presumptuous. In this situation, the refusal of a thousand children a year in the possibility of adoption is a direct and gross violation of the child’s right to live and be brought up in a family. Arguments that adoption by US citizens is dangerous do not stand up to scrutiny. Over the past 20 years, 100 thousand children have been adopted, of which about 19 died through the direct or indirect fault of adoptive parents. During the same time, an order of magnitude more did not live to adulthood in our orphanages. They did not survive for various reasons: hospital depression, failure to provide medical care, violence not only on the part of staff, but also on the part of peers, etc. The situation is horrendous. At the same time, the safety of children is measured not only by extreme cases (death), but also by whether the child will be able to live later, whether he will be able to adapt. Very many graduates of orphanages do not live up to 25 years — because of alcoholism, drugs. Safety in foster families is a priori much higher than in our children’s institutions. And to deprive children of the chance to find parents is savagery.
Galiya Nigmetzhanova, child psychologist: I don’t really understand what American or non-American parents have to do with it. Regardless of citizenship, indeed, to accept a child into your family is a very long and complex process of mutual recognition. Psychologists and curators should help parents and children at this stage. But be that as it may, one can say with confidence: staying in a family is certainly better than education in boarding schools and orphanages, albeit ideal ones (which, unfortunately, is rare in our Russian realities). In the orphanage, the child does not receive the main thing — personal attention. Not because all orphanage workers are so malicious, but even the best of them do not have the physical ability to give the child everything he needs. In a foster family, the child begins to function as a separate person, and this is fundamentally important for his growing up and development. If we cut off unhealthy options for violence (and this can happen in families with children of our own), it is important to leave children with the opportunity to be adopted. It is better to create an effective supervisory system that would ensure the safety and assistance of adoptive parents and children than to throw out the baby with water.