I recognize and respect that every person's adoption situation is different.  However, I am really taking exception to BIRTH families being referred to on this site as "Natural" families.  Just how "unnatural" is it that my mom and dad (the not-"rich", average middle-class couple who desperately wanted to have children but could not biologically conceive) love me and have cared for me in ways that my birth mother (who later married, had 3 sons and then abandoned them to be left with their abusive alcoholic father) would not have. 
As far as international adoption goes - I believe, celebrity or not, that if a person wishes to adopt a child from another country, every effort must be made to determine that there are no living relatives left to care for that child before any further actions to adopt the child can begin.  Furthermore, adoptive parents must understand and make every effort not just to educate their child on his/her birth culture, but to allow them to experience it as well.  Visits to that country, making connections with that culture through organisations in your own community, are just the tip of the iceberg, but an important start.  Simply buying a book about that country will do nothing.
 
 

As an adoptee, I think we pay a high price to be raised in a home with more financial advantages. For those coming from third world countries I think the price is way too high. To lose one's country, language, culture, foods, community, relatives, extended family, seems unreasonable. I remember asking an adoptive mother who was raising a child from India how she would help him with his Indian identity. She was living in a mostly white community, but replied that it would not be a problem because she had bought a book about India. I was appalled.

Because many of the families in the foreign countries dont have a choice to keep their children due to starvation and lack of resources to help themselves. I believe the celebrities would show more care to fund the foster system/orphanage  so that the families could stay near their children with the hopes to one day have their children come back to them.... Or why dont the celebrities adopt a family instead.  It was hard enough having to give my child up without a say, I couldnt imagine the lack of control in these foreign areas when not only do they find themselves surrending their children, their children are taken to far away places and the parents feel they will never have see them children again.  I would think there is a feel of defeat with these families and a slap as a human.   If the celebrities can spend the money and time in visiting these countries, why not just stay home and send the money directly to the resource areas for these families to get back on their feet, and support their children till they can.. 

We don't know what is happening behind the scenes - perhaps there is a relationship with the birth family (wishful thinking?).  It would certainly be helpful if the adoptive families were open and vocal about the losses sustained by the birth families or the warm loving connection between the two parts of the family that might have occured through these adoptions.

I'm surprised at the use of the word "natural" to describe birth families.  It implies that adoptive families are "unnatural" in some way.

International adoption can be especially traumatic to children who can lose connections to their country of birth and their heritage.  I haven't noticed any discussion about this in the celebrity adoptions.  As prominent public personalities, they should consider what the world sees in their every move - it's an unfortunate obligation to explain yourself, I'm sure, but part of being a star.

Celebrities and everyone who adopts is better off finantially than the subjects of their desires...a child that will hopefully love them in some unique way that is not available to others (not to mention as a substitute for an inability to have children in the first place).

The current economic downturn will allow rich people to do pretty much what they want, but even more so than than usual.  So, we can expect celebs to trot out there and get even more children.

However, I think that we should be using our current economic meltdown to pry  loose adoption as the "poster child" of our once market driven economy.  Adoption has been a perfect fit for a business model and designer focused method for the distribution of the children of poverty or neglect etc. to people with money.  Since we are now all technically "socialists" economically, maybe we can become truly social and more society orientated in the future :-)

In future, maybe we will be able to view adoption as a radical psychic surgery, similar in seriousness to the surgeries that are conducted on our hearts, livers, etc.; and that we will then also give adoption recovery the same careful consideration as heart surgery recovery.

Until we get celebrities out of the "awwww Isn't she cute helping those poor children" mode, adoption will endure in its present form for at least another generation :-(   

The issue of adoption needs to be revisited in the context of the year 2009.  Outdated beliefs that persist from the past must be examined and changed.  While the individual child adopted by a celebrity is very fortunate, he will still face the same problems that his less fortunate fellow adoptees - issues of loss and rejection, to start.  It would be more appropriate if these celebrity adoptive parents would donate their time and money to raise funds to have therapists trained to specialize in adoption issues for all - the adoptee, the adoptive parents and the birth parents.  Until then, adoption is just carrying on the mistakes of the past and making adoption the "in" thing to do!