Madonna and Child

When I first heard about how Madonna (no last name necessary) had arranged to adopt an African boy, I didn’t like it. Why? Not because he’s black and she’s white. A needy child is a needy child. My disapproval came from the fact that the boy is not an orphan. His father, indigent as well as overwhelmed at the loss of most of his family from illness, placed him in an orphanage out of desperation. When I heard this, my first thought was, ‘Why can’t she bring the father home with her as well? Give him a job or something so that he still has contact with his son.’

I can’t imagine how devastating it must be to allow your child to be taken from you because you are too poor to provide even the basics. I remember a TV movie with Mare Winningham that depicted this very situation about 15 years ago; and the final scene of that film, showing the mother sobbing her heart out as she abandoned her little girl in a park and watched from behind a tree as the DCF staffers she called picked the child up, remains vivid to me even today.

Then came the explosion. The father, perhaps having second thoughts about being so far away from his son, claimed he didn’t understand the details of the arrangement, that he believed his son would come home after X amount of years, having regained his health. Madonna, of course, was maligned in the press as trying to buy the child’s way out of the country quickly, three steps ahead of the law.

I don’t know how this situation will end. I just feel that if Madonna hadn’t attempted to break up this family, or if she’d arranged to adopt an actual orphan instead, she probably would be back home in London with the new addition to her family.