We are accustomed to seeing photographs of American film stars with their adopted children. Madonna has four, Angelina Jolie has three and Mia Farrow has seven adopted children in all.
I think one reason why American celebrities seem more likely to adopt children is simple: America has always been more positive in its attitude to adoption. American pro-natalist values and optimistic outlook saw the adopted child as a warm-hearted benefit to the family, where many British and European attitudes to adoption were negative.
In Ireland, when I was growing up, adoption was sometimes regarded with suspicion, eliciting remarks such as “you wouldn’t know where such a child comes from”. Parliamentary debates reflected this suspicious attitude. In Britain too, I have heard prejudiced remarks against adopted children, and they have been made to feel, sometimes, that their adoptive family isn’t the “real” one.
The Catholic Church in Ireland has come in for strong criticism for arranging for Irish babies to be adopted in America in the 1950s and 60s. This is now sometimes called “trafficking”. If there were irregularities, that was wrong and they should have been addressed. But isn’t it possible that babies who found a new life in America did better than they would have done growing up in an Irish institution, or failing to find an adoptive family?
It’s sad to observe that a bias against adoption seems to be returning in Britain. Anthony Douglas, chief executive of the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service, says the growing success of conception by IVF means that fewer families are contemplating adoption. In 2017, there were 4,350 adoptions, down from 5,460 the previous year (in 1978, there were 12,000).
And children are waiting longer to be adopted, because the bureaucracy has grown so complicated. The expenses involved can also mount up.
Prue Leith, the cookery writer and Great British Bake Off judge, has written poignantly about the pressing need to speed up the adoption process – a year in a child’s life is huge. Her husband was adopted, as is her Cambodian daughter, Li-Da. Li-Da is now trying to adopt a child herself, but the procedure is interminable. Meanwhile, a child awaits.
In America, the attitude is much more “can-do”.
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“Vanity of vanities – all is vanity!” says the Book of Ecclesiastes, and the quotation came to mind at the weekend as I was doing a pre-Advent tidy of my bedroom.
The amount of cosmetics and make-up I found buried in the crevices and drawers of my dressing table really was shameful. Forty-six lipsticks, countless pots and potions of face cream, eye shadows, eye-liners, eyebrow pencils, mascaras, rouges, powders, balms, compacts, spot-concealers, day moisturisers, night-nourishers, hand lotions, every range of nail varnish, buffers, tweezers, implements for manicure and pedicure, brushes, puffs, sponges, and those very emblems of vanity itself: mirrors, by the half-dozen.
Two further quotations came to mind as I sorted through this copious pot-pourri: Hamlet’s disapproval of Ophelia “painting” herself, and his thoughts as he holds Yorick’s skull: “Let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come!” And Dolly Parton’s self-deprecating witticism about her own adornments: “You wouldn’t believe how much money it takes to look this cheap!”
Why do we resort to (and accumulate so much) make-up? My excuse is that I think it makes me look bright and cheerful (I recommend Rimmel’s Mayfair Red Lady, Lipstick 510, for an upbeat crimson hue). It adds a bit of colour to life. But deep down, I suspect Ecclesiastes is nearer the mark.
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The amiable George O’Dowd (the pop singer Boy George) has been talking on Irish radio about his mother’s Catholic faith (“she goes to Mass religiously”). He’s also been speaking about how he himself is a Buddhist. But a sort of Catholic-Buddhist, he explains. Being a Buddhist, he believes, doesn’t stop you being a Catholic (although I think the Pope might say that being a Catholic does stop you from being a Buddhist, strictly speaking).
Asked by Miriam O’Callaghan what Buddhism meant to him, he said it taught him that there were consequences to every act, choice and decision he makes. Miriam tactfully didn’t suggest that the same wisdom exists in Christianity: “As you sow, so shall you reap.”
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