Retailers Stock the Shelves with Adoption

It looks as though one of my least favorite "adoption" products is headed back for another strong push this year: the Newborn Nursery Adoption Centers as a marketing gimmick for dolls, launched in 2002 and expanded to great fanfare in 2004.The Newborn Nursery Adoption Center where the mock-up hospital nursery is described as a "realistic setting" for adoption and children pick a baby to "adopt" from a line-up, bothers me for many reasons, including that it pretends to put children into the actual experience of "adoption," an emotionally charged adult concept that any placing parent will tell you is NOT simple and any adoptive parent will tell you is NOT easy to explain. In order to get around all that emotional stuff of adoption, it's just ignored and the whole thing is simplified to an absurd and distressing level ... in order to sell more dolls. And I'm not alone in really wanting this nursery thing to go away. The Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute has also made its view clear in a press release stating, "Among other issues the Institute raised about the concept were: * It implicitly eliminates key participants in the adoption process - i.e. the women and men who give life to the babies, and who in infant adoption today typically choose the new parents for their children. * It effectively suggests adoptive parents shop for babies as they do for products and perpetuates damaging myths about how adoption works - including a notion that adopted children are commodities. * By furthering such an inaccurate portrayal of adoption, it risks fomenting another generation of negative, uniformed attitudes toward adopted people, their parents by birth and adoption, and adoption per se."And in a letter sent to the retailers hosting these "centers." Institute Executive Director Adam Pertman writes, "Your concept of offering Middleton dolls for "adoption" is based on antiquated, discredited perceptions; today's practices are far more sensitive and child-centered, a reality not reflected in your marketing. Indeed, your campaign is insidiously offensive, stigmatizing and demeaning, and it should end."Part of the "adoption" process for these dolls is a checkup by the salesperson-dressed-as-a-nurse to make sure the baby is healthy enough to be adopted. Oh my. So if a doll didn't make it through the assembly line unscathed and the "nurse" finds something not quite right, what happens? Into the discards?I don't doubt that the experience is fun for kids - it's interactive: they get to participate, put on a hospital gown, learn to diaper and take care of the doll - but wouldn't it be just as much fun without including any reference to "adoption?"