Baby #4 for Brad and Angelina
My all time fave actress, Angelina Jolie, landed in Vietnam Wednesday night to complete the process of adopting a 3-year-old boy.
The actress, 31, was quickly escorted into a car with dark windows and driven from the airport, according to a photographer employed by the Associated Press.
After she receives the 3-year-old child – and participates in an adoption ceremony with officials in Ho Chi Minh City on Thursday morning – Jolie is expected to meet with U.S. consular officials who will then need to review the adoption before granting the child a passport.
The child has been living at the Tam Binh orphanage outside Ho Chi Minh City ever since he was abandoned at a hospital as a baby, according to adoption officials. Shortly after he arrived at the orphanage, staff attempted to locate the boy’s birth parents with no success. The boy is healthy, friendly and shy, they said. He also gets along well with other children and enjoys playing soccer, the AP reports.
Vietnamese law makes it difficult for unmarried couples to adopt so Jolie is applying solo – but she and her partner, Brad Pitt, had planned for months to welcome a Vietnamese sibling for Maddox, 5, Zahara, 2, and 10-month-old Shiloh.
I'm all for adopting, and I think it's great that she has the want and means to do so. However, it seems like all of her adoptions go through rather quickly and that's what I have a "beef" with. I know this one was quicker than some others because the boy is older and his records are more complete. (says a story I read yesterday). But I have a friend who is adopting from China and it has been a year already and the aren't anticipating being able to go get their daughter until the fall. I don't think it's fair that adoptions get expedited do to celebrity status.
ETA: I really don't know much about adoption and why things take so long, so I guess I really can't say. It just seems very unfair and unnecessary that it takes soooooo long for your average couple to adopt a child.
I've read that this adoption has been in the works for a long time, but they have only been publicizing it over the past few months now that certain documents have become public. Supposedly they've been in the process since just after Shiloh was born. Like you said, Joni, the process is often faster to adopt an older child, although there's still quite a bit of red tape involved.
"I will stay at home to help Pax adjust to his new life," Jolie told Friday's Ho Chi Minh City Law newspaper, according to a translation on the Associated Press. "I have four children and caring for them is the most important thing for me at the moment. I am very proud and happy to be their mother."
Jolie and her new son went through an emotional introduction at Thursday's formal welcoming ceremony, during which the 3-year-old Vietnamese boy started crying when his new mom knelt down to talk to him.
As for all the attention brought to her new son, Jolie tells the newspaper: "Photographs and press coverage will make him upset. I'm very worried about that. I would like to say I'm sorry for bringing this into Pax's life."
Since arriving in Vietnam on Wednesday, Jolie, 31, and her son, Maddox, 5, have been followed by a horde of photographers and reporters.
But in answering those who have questioned the adoption, Jolie says, "Everyone would agree that children need to have a family. I have the ability to help children fulfill that desire. Why should I say no?"
On Friday Adoptions From The Heart, the U.S.-based agency that helped Jolie with this adoption, released a statement saying that the actress had not received any special treatment.
"Throughout Ms. Jolie's adoption process, she received no preferential treatment from the Vietnamese government or Adoptions From The Heart, and, contrary to earlier reports, her application was not fast-tracked," said the program's adoption coordinator, Heidi Gonzalez.
Added Gonzalez: "As we do with all of our clients, Adoptions From The Heart celebrates the miracle of adoption, and wishes the Jolie-Pitt family much joy.
Pax, whose given name before he was adopted was Pham Quang, is the fourth child for the actress and her partner, Brad Pitt. Their brood includes Maddox, who was adopted from Cambodia, Zahara, 2, who was adopted from Ethiopia, and 10-month-old Shiloh, who was born to the couple last year.
Source
This is another one of those touchy adoption issues where I think you can never predict how the adoptee will feel. I'm coming at this from the point of view of a prospective adoptive parent. (We're not in the process or anything, but we hope to adopt a child or 2 in a few years.)
My gut instinct is to keep the child's name, but I know adoptees (especially those adopted as older children) who have suffered abuse and want to separate themselves from those who abused/named them. I know that's not always the case, though.
I would like to be able to name any child who comes into my family, but at some point it just seems wrong to me to change the name of a child who HAS a name, and an identity, and whose life is already being turned upside down.
If I do feel compelled to change an adopted child's name, I would definitely not keep their birthname a secret. I'd like to keep the birth name as part of his/her name, and let the child choose what to be called. That doesn't work so well if the child is an infant, I guess, because at some point you have to decide what to call the kiddo before the child can express a preference. *sigh*
Nobody said this adoption stuff was easy, right? I just hope I'm up for it.