'Ampon'

PINOY KASI
'Ampon'
By Michael Tan
Inquirer

Last updated 00:06am (Mla time) 11/22/2006

Published on Page A15 of the November 22, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer

MADONNA, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie. Ask people on the street and there's a good chance they've heard about these celebrities' adoption of children, and the controversies around Madonna and the child she wanted to take from Malawi.

There have been questions raised about Madonna's adoption: Should she have adopted a child who still has a father? Why the ease with which she could adopt -- would this make it easier for people with less noble intentions, for example, child trafficking? Couldn't she have adopted one of the many orphans and abandoned children in the United States or in England?

When you think hard about all these questions, they all boil down to a core issue: there are motives and power relationships underlying each adoption. Celebrity parent or not, in New York, London or Manila, those motives and relationships have to be sorted out.

Uniquely human

Adoption, in which a child is taken in and raised as one's own biological offspring, is uniquely human. There are some animal species, notably female cats, wild and domesticated, that sometimes adopt each other's offspring, but for most species, the mothering instinct is reserved only for one's own offspring.

But not all adoptions are entirely altruistic. In many countries, the Philippines included, children from poorer families are sometimes taken in -- even bought -- so they can become unpaid servants.

A more benign but still questionable motivation for adoption sees the child as a form of old-age insurance. It's really an extension of biological reproduction: in poorer countries like our own, people have more children because they want to be sure someone will care for them in their old age. I've even heard of parents who already have their own biological children but will adopt a few more because they feel that these children will have a greater sense of obligation to care for the people who adopted them.

What we're seeing today, in developed countries as well as in more economically stable households in developing countries, is a move away from this concept of the adopted child as a future caregiver. Instead, the trend is to take in one of the many deprived children in the world and give them a better chance in life.

I have friends in the States, England and the Netherlands who have taken this option, some even deciding not to have biological children of their own and adopting instead. It's an intriguing, if not noble, idea: there are enough children in the world that need a home and parents, so why not take them in?

During a recent trip to Hanoi, I was billeted in a hotel where, every morning, our dining room would fill up with French and American parents who had just adopted Vietnamese babies. I asked some of my Vietnamese friends how they felt about such adoptions and most were quite accepting, but would smile and add: "Guilt." What they meant was that the adoptions were, in a way, making up for France's colonial occupation of Vietnam in the 19th and 20th century, and America's bloody debacle in Vietnam during the 1960s and 1970s.

Which isn't a really a bad thing. In a way, I think we need more of that guilt too in the Philippines, seeing adoption as a way of making up for previous generations' neglect of social problems, including poverty.

Secrecy

Adoption is quite widespread in the Philippines, often done informally: unmarried aunts taking in a nephew or niece, grandparents taking grandchildren, even neighbors taking the kids next door. In this age of the Filipino diaspora, more kids are probably being raised by several sets of caregivers and calling all of them "mama" and "papa."

In some cases, the process may be more complicated. I learned recently from some doctor friends that some women will go through "simulated birth," a legal term referring to an alteration of the birth certificate to make it appear that someone gave birth to a child they had adopted.

I suspect one reason this is done is that adoption, despite its being so widespread, is still stigmatized. "Ampon lang," people will whisper, meaning "only adopted." Many adoptive parents will try to postpone, for as long as possible, telling the child that he or she is not their biological child. Some parents wait till the child reaches adolescence before disclosing the adoption. Given that adolescence is such a difficult time for many children, having to deal with their being adopted could lead to a major crisis.

We will need to change this practice of keeping adoption a secret. Child care experts now recommend telling the adopted child as early as possible and explaining that an adopted child may actually be loved more than a "natural" one.

All ours

Another reason why adoptions are often done without going to court is that the process is tedious and time-consuming. Besides, one urban poor mother told me once, legal adoptions are there for inheritance purposes, and with the poor, there's nothing to inherit.

Except maybe a lot of love. I recall an American tearjerker movie when I was a kid called "All Mine to Give" in which the eldest son has to give away his seven siblings after their parents die. In our urban poor communities, there are similar cases happening all the time, a brood of siblings suddenly orphaned, or abandoned. In these cases, it isn't the eldest child who has to look for homes; instead, the neighbors come in, no questions asked, distributing the kids among themselves. Someone should make a movie titled "All Ours to Give."

All that says a lot about our Filipino term "ampon," which isn't quite like the legalized process we think of. Jose Panganiban's Tagalog dictionary defines "ampon" as more of a process of taking someone in to protect.

We're bound to see Filipino adoptions changing in the future. A friend of mine, Boy Panganiban, is vehemently against this idea of adopting a child so you'll have a caregiver when you're old. A banker by profession, Boy says that if you want security in old age, work out a good retirement plan. The children? You give them the best opportunities in life and raise them to be good people. Later they can "pay back" by being good parents to the next generation, maybe to include adopting as well.

Four gods

The other week, I wrote about research conducted by Baylor University on the four different types of God that Americans believe in. Reader Goldelino Chan wrote to point out that I had described only three. I'm afraid I did delete the description of the fourth one while editing. Here again are the four Gods:

Baylor University says 31 percent of those surveyed see God as an Authoritarian God, who influences global as well as personal events and is often angry. Another 24 percent believe in a Distant God, who sets the laws of nature in motion but doesn't intervene in the world. Following closely are the 23 percent who believe in a Benevolent God, who is equally active in daily life but less likely to be angry or punish people. Finally, 16 percent see a Critical God, who watches rather than interacts with the world but will mete out justice and punishment in the next life.