Welcome to this week’s edition of FacePalm Friday.
This is where your hosts will list their top picks for this week’s FacePalm moment—something they learned or read about this week that caused the FacePalm to happen (you know, the expression of embarrassment, frustration, disbelief, shock, disgust or mixed humor as depicted in our Rally FacePalm smiley).
We invite you to add your FacePalm of the week to our comments. Go ahead and add a link, tell a personal story, or share something that triggered the FacePalm on the subject of child welfare or adoption.
Your Host’s Selections:
(1) Why not tell the world everything
The Heartbeat star, his wife and the woman their children call ‘egg mummy’: Couple treat fertility donor like a member of the family
[Daily Mail 5/27/12 by Sara Nathan]
While we are for contact and involvement with biological parents, the excruciating details about the fertility issues are TMI. 
(2)Another story of an adoptee told by the AP with a happy ending even though he is only 8.
Joe’s Story [Adoption Voices 5/25/12 by Sandra Kazarian]
Which is more laughable: the “vigorous homestudy” or that she thought it was great that he cried for her, so therefore he is attached and end of story? My vote is for this:
” I was so HAPPY! My son was crying and I was over the moon. He was crying which meant that he loved me and we were attached. I called my husband, my mother, my sister in law, and shouted to God in Heaven. Thank you! Thank you for this blessing. Now you know why little moments of entanglement on the couch are so meaningful.” 
(3)Have you ever read what DOS has on their adoption page?
http://adoption.state.gov/adoption_process/why.php
“Why Adoption
“The child, for the full and harmonious development of his or her personality, should grow up in a family environment, in an atmosphere of happiness, love and understanding…Intercountry adoption may offer the advantage of a permanent family to a child for whom a suitable family cannot be found in his or her State of origin.”
-Hague Adoption Convention, Preamble
Every child benefits from a loving home in deeply profound ways. Intercountry adoption has made this permanently possible for hundreds of thousands of children worldwide. When children cannot remain with a relative, and new parents within their communities cannot be found, intercountry adoption opens another pathway to children to receive the care, security and love that only a permanent family can provide.”
Yeah, there’s so much happiness, love and understanding in all adoptive homes in the US. 
(4) The “Nonprofit” adoption awareness/law firm/agency called 200 Million Flowers.
Good Lord are we now marketing 200 Million orphans now! Of course they are not in it for the money at all…
[MC Herald 5/31/12 by Terricha Bradley-Phillips ]
(5)Adopting from Guatemala at ages 64 and 62!
Another real life imitating REFORM Animation Studios Adoption Menopause story! 
[Go Up State.com for Herald-Journal 6/1/12 by Joey Millwood]
(6)Hat tip to a reader/guest blogger in her own words for this mind-boggling facepalm
“[In urgent need of new clients??? – Who would ever think that???]
A German Adoption Agency announces adoptive parents can now apply for a second adoption from Ethiopia within six months after bringing home the first child.
Of course, this change is solely on behalf of the convenience of PAPs, who would otherwise have to wait for too long to add a new child, now that adoption procedures in Ethiopia take a lot more time than they used to.
In order to fulfill the informed public’s expectation as to PAP education, this same organisation frequently publishes travel reports (“Gottcha day”- reports) of (happy) clients (in a phase commonly known as “the adoption honeymoon”).
They still have two reports on Mali online, which is a country currently practically closed for adoptions, due to the political situation and travel warnings, as they themselves state on their website, dat 04/16 2012: http://www.elternfuerafrika.de/aktuell.htm
Never mind that – Africa is Africa, and the reports sure are of general interest and educational value for transracially adopting families!
The reader is informed on the poor quality of the hotel this family had to stay at, the mentality of African people as it shows in their appearance in the city center, dense smog in the city and the chaotic traffic. Somewhere and somehow in between this “gigantic traffic situation in which you constantly fear never to arrive”, the family meets their new child for the first time. And because they slept so little the night before (see topic: poor quality of hotel), they subsequently had to make up for that loss of sleep that night.
After signing their adoption contract the next day, “in the afternoon, we visited a market because we wanted to buy a wooden statue for our daughter, which should serve her as a deputy for her biological parents. After all, we are very grateful that, due to the fact her biological mother gave her child up, we are now enabled to welcome her to our family.”
The next day, the family went on tour to visit some sights. The driver who was a Touareg (!) unfortunately spoke almost no English (SURPRISE!!!), and the roads were unfortunately extremely bumpy, thus the tour very inconvenient.
What a relief that the hotel was better during their next stay. But, believe it or not, this infant really needed a bottle every two or three hours !!! Who would have expected that???
But rest assured, PAPs, on applying for the Kenyan Program of that same agency, there is no hotel inconvenience, because the agency owns a luxurious housing facitity for the parents. Future parents can enjoy a 20 minutes walk to the beach and a car with driver, available whenever they feel they need to go out and take leave from the guarded precinct.
Note that Kenya is among the poorest African countries.
From a Parent report:
“We have immedetely felt at ease in the EfA village in Kinindo, close to the Indian Ocean: We are enjoying ourselves and we enjoy being parents. And how uncomplicated all of this is! We are living our every-day as a normal family, in a dreamlike atmosphere. Sun, beach, sea – this special way of life, but also the typically African circumstances – all this is just the way we like it …”
This is where PAPs can really benefit when using this agency: Adoption faciliator and travel agent are one and the same person …
Education, Resources? Nope.
If insight of this quality is offered on a private blog, one may either frown or smile, depending on the state of mind you are in when you start reading. As a part of an official website of an adoption agency, this is simply devastating, and a disgrace.”
This makes Rally want to do this:
And then there are the charming APs who choose the moniker “Chief Serial ADopter” (!!) when entering a contest to win an iPad for the daughter they recently adopted from Ukraine:
http://krebskids.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/contest-for-marta-mae.html
The amom also seems to brag a LOT about how much weight the newly adopted girl (who did not look the least bit chubby at the time of adoption) has lost since getting afopted. The girl is all of 8 (!!!) yrs old.
I read “Joe’s Story” very differently. I don’t think the author was suggesting that her work was finished at that point. I don’t think any of us as parents can really say that our work is ever “finished” until our children are grown – regardless of how they join our families. Maybe the mother’s wording in this story could have been better (perhaps she should have said “We were bonding” or “He was becoming attached” rather than “He was attached”), but why attack her for celebrating what many people would agree is an important emotional milestone in the attachment process? She was clear about how much hard work was involved, how love alone wasn’t enough. I understand the concern about “happy ending” adoption stories – but anyone who took the time to read that whole article surely couldn’t come away with the idea that this is all “happily ever after” once the child comes home. I enjoy reading this website, but this criticism seemed a little harsh IMO.
Beth, the main reason for this inclusion is that the “happy ending” is told completely from the APs point of view and specifically it was “happy” due to the child crying. That crying does NOT even mean that he is attached nor is a milestone-he could just be fearful but no one would know because the adoptee is not asked (nor would it be appropriate at this age to ask a child to be interviewed about this). Where does this concept of “crying for the AP as a milestone” come from? The adoption industry. The whole concept of this type of story is what we are trying to speak out against. This story is purely what the AP THINKS the child is feeling told BY the AP as if it was the child speaking. Replacing the child’s feelings with what the AP *thinks* is the child’s feelings is a concept that we have heard many adult adoptees speak out against and we want APs to really think about what “good” this is doing.