Dear Ms. Jolie,

I can remain quiet no longer.
I have been reading news reports about your adoption pending in Viet Nam. I have been holding off any judgement or opinion spouting until I hear as many facts as I can. Today I hear you are in VN to adopt your little boy, and that you will have the GR ceremony on Thursday. Granted as I have not talked to you, this is all hearsay. However if it is true it saddens and angers me. You see we have been hoping to adopt from VN as well, a process we began in April of last year. My husband was born there and it is the only way we can add to our family, as I'm unable to conceive. You however as far as I know have no other reason to adopt other than "you just want to". We may differ in our opinions on adoption. I do not see Mia Farrow as a role model for parenting, maybe you do. I do not believe that going into adoption with the intent to rescue or simply to provide better means are good enough reasons to pluck someone out of their country of origin and surround them with odd looking faces, not to mention the added stresses of living in the shadow of a parent's celebrity. No, I don't think I will be rescuing a child, nor do I think that by my family becoming an adoptive family that we are setting a precedent that others should follow. I don't think that a blended family is the best family, I don't think that I will be able to provide the best home for a child. I simply felt in my heart that this is the best that we can make of a less than ideal situation. It's not ideal that we cannot have our own child, and it is tragic that any child be born to a family that is unable to care for it, even more tragic when that child is also born in a country too ill equipped and too poor to be able to care for children given up.
Here we are already a Vietnamese American family hoping to adopt, and that choice has led us to the country of my husbands birth. We do have one child already, and yes we could stop there, but being an only child myself I have never ever imagined only having one, there's so much to learn from a sibling. Believe me I have considered not adopting. Staying a 3 person family. And we may just end up doing that. Our adoption has been wrought with complication from the beginning, unlike any of yours(I assume). The latest of which was when my husband lost his job and we are now having to sell our home. Not to mention the road to adoption was a long rough one involving things I told myself I'd never do, like take shots in the thigh to stimulate ovulation.
We all do a lot of things to have a family, we do things we'd never dream of. However, we need to stop and think where do I stop? You may want to have 10 kids, but at what point does having or adopting kids become not about the children but about feeding a need in yourself? When does a self-less act become selfish? I personally think it starts when you amass a collection, as opposed to a family. And it's beginning to look like a collection. It's beginning to sound like a collection too when you speak of your family. Needing matching genetics so that each feels welcome. Well, you should have thought of that before, not after. There are so many many families trying to adopt from VN right now, that child would not have gone long in that orphanage, there would be a loving family for him at any time. You did not rescue him. You did him no favors. Unless of course he was a 'waiting child' with disabilities, in which case I would commend you, but as far as I can tell he is not. You have more money than most and WOULD be able to provide great services for the child that even another family may not be able to. But they could. And that's my point, as an adoptive parent you need to be humble and realize that you did no favors and don't assume that had you not adopted him he'd be languishing somewhere.
Did you know that the average wait time for a child is months after your dossier is sent to the DIA, not weeks Ms. Jolie. And that the average time to travel is 4-6 weeks after approval, not days Ms. Jolie. And that average time in country is 2 weeks, not 5 days Ms. Jolie. Also, we the average adoptive parent are NOT ALLOWED to visit orphanages in order to procure a child Ms. Jolie, our children are chosen for us by strangers in a room by committee.
Now, Ms. Jolie I need to state that ignorance is no excuse, I've read enough to know that you have and could be very educated if you'd only try. So unless and until you start educating yourself on the rights (there are few to none) of adoptive parents and advocating for Us the adoptive parents who have to wait, go nearly bankrupt and jump through hoops you have apparently never even seen, I will not see a movie you or your partner are in, I will not donate to a charity you represent, I will not buy a Magazine you are on.
So, Ms. Jolie, please join the yahoo groups I will list here and read, read as much as you can, there has been so much posted on the trials adoptive parents face when adopting, it's is not sunshine and roses, it is not a glorious and joyous process, it's trying and often heartbreaking, soul searching work. I'd take pregnancy and child birth over it any day (on the pain and annoyance scale). So the fact that you are willing and able to adopt so soon after giving birth leads me to believe that you have had nothing near an average process. And that is your own fault for choosing to remain ignorant of the REAL process of adoption.

Good luck, God bless, and I hope that you do all that you can to right the wrongs perpetrated by the "trend" of celebrity adoption you are part of.

Feel free to reply.

The Barlow Family

Yahoo groups:
a-parents-Vietnam (APV) : the main 'go to' group for VN adoptive parents

LovingVietnamschildren :a very active group of adoptive and adopting parents

VietnamTravelTalk : for the issues/questions of traveling to VN to get your child

Adoption_Agency_Research (AAR) : excellent, especially if you search the archives and learn why VN was shut down in the first place. Reading the files on adoptions gone wrong is an eye opener.

Discuss_IAT : discussion for adopting parents, good for info and many adoptees post as well.