By Edward L. Barner

As the father of three grown, adopted children (who now have children of their own) and having served as an adviser to adoption organizations on four continents, I believe that I can speak with some authority when I say it's time to destroy the myth surrounding adoption, namely that it is a negative reflection on a society.

Adoption exists all over the world, be it in the Czech Republic, Korea, China or South America, and that fact alone does not — and should not — reflect on any particular country, culture or individual.

A parent who gives up a child for adoption is not necessarily a bad parent. For a mother to recognize she is incapable of caring for a baby or an older child is a difficult acknowledgement. Many think that these parents want only to be free of the responsibility of raising a child, and in many cases that is the truth. But it is also a fact that in many situations this mother is doing the very best for her child by giving it the opportunities and advantages that she could never provide, while also allowing herself the chance to face up to her problems and perhaps improve her own life.

The real tragedy is that parents today receive more instructions for their new mobile phones than they do for raising a child. This is true around the world and is where we really need to focus our attention next.

The desire to adopt or have a child does not qualify one for parenthood. The desire to love and nurture does not, necessarily, make you a good parent. A parent must decide, very early on in the process, if the need to be their child's best friend is greater than their responsibility to raise a productive member of society. It is not possible to do both. The most important word a parent will learn to use, oft times with pain and trepidation to both parties, is "No." Parenting offers great challenges and heartaches as well as many opportunities for real joy and satisfaction. In spite of our mistakes as parents we seem to continue to produce new generations of improved and exceptional people.

In my 40 years of experience with adoption, I have learned one very important fact: The primary responsibility of any government around the world is to protect an adopted child from any potentially harmful situation. Any child that is warehoused and neglected for longer than a few months will become a child with special needs. Even with the best will and intentions, it is impossible to give nurturing love to babies and children in the environment of a group facility.

Therefore, the first line of protection is to develop an adoption system that allows these infants to be placed, immediately, in a qualified home at birth. It is equally important that older children be placed as soon as possible with families wherein they'll be loved and can regain their feelings of being wanted and needed.

The saddest situation I have encountered is when parents have, for whatever reason, given a child up to a state or private facility only to have that child escape and make his way back to the home — and to parents that have clearly abandoned, abused or discarded him.

This family, regardless of how abusive or dysfunctional it may be, is the only family that the child knows, and the child would rather return to horrible conditions than remain in state or private custody.

Having faced this dilemma in several countries, I call on authorities to strike a balance between the protection of children and the implementation of a reasonable system for adoption. What the Czech government is pledging to do right now by placing more scrutiny on foreigners who want to adopt Czech children is not the answer. There are no guarantees that an adoptive family will be all it should be. In most cases, I can say that the worst adoptive family is better than warehousing a child in the best state facility. The answer is not to make the adoption process more difficult, as this will guarantee nothing but more damaged children. As we all know, many children are abused and damaged by their biological parents. The answer to this is not to make having babies more difficult, or even stop the procreation process, but rather to spend time monitoring conditions and being more responsive to negative reports of family conditions, regardless of whether it involve natural-born or adopted children.

I am appalled at the government's racism and prejudice in singling out Romany and handicapped children for adoption by foreigners. While I fully understand the prejudice that exists within many societies against some subcultures, it is not an excuse to blatantly develop a system that furthers the serious societal flaw of prejudice. There are more than 20,000 children in Czech facilities under the age of 3 and nearly 40,000 in total available for adoption.

The cruelest and most unacceptable torture perpetrated upon these, the most defenseless of our society, occurs in state-operated or sponsored orphanages, foster care and pre-adoption programs. This is not only true in the Czech Republic, but around the world. The real objective is to move these babies out of hospitals at birth or as soon as possible thereafter. Months or even weeks of neglect in a care facility render these children as serious candidates for a broad range of physical and emotional problems. If the books were opened and the truth were known, it would be clear that more abuse — emotional, physical and sexual — takes place in these state-affiliated facilities than in adoptive families.

The incident that occurred in Sweden, in which a Romany boy from the Czech Republic died mysteriously soon after being adopted, once again demonstrates the uselessness of the set of regulations and requirements imposed on adoptive parents. It is imperative that families who wish to adopt be properly screened. It is not necessary that they be subjected to the ridiculous confusion of bureaucracy for which the Czech Republic has become infamous.

I want to be clear that it is possible to properly pre-qualify families wishing to adopt without the proposed overkill. One need only look at other countries and systems to develop a reasonable program that would see children's interests properly protected. If the State is really so concerned about protecting these children, someone must push aside the politics and racism and give these children homes where they are wanted, loved and respected.