Elizabeth Larsen's latest article on Guatemalan adoption issues raises several points that I would like to address. First and foremost I would like to say that given the climate surrounding Guatemalan adoptions right now, and the fact that thousands of families and children are not being united because their adoptions are not being processed, if, like Elizabeth Larsen, I was asked the question "what will we tell our children" by two adoption researchers I would tell them that right now I’m focusing on the children that are stuck in limbo. There is something smug, self-centered and insensitive at this period of time to be having intellectual discussions about what we’ll explain to our children several years from now when they are old enough to understand.

But since Elizabeth brought it up I feel I have to respond. Let’s fast forward ten years from now when my daughter will be twelve years old, possibly a time when she will wonder why so many children were adopted when she was, and how it was done. I don’t have a crystal ball, but I anticipate that ten years from now, the world is not going to be a better place, and especially not in third world countries like Guatemala. I also fear that adoptions from Guatemala will be few and far between.

So I will explain to my daughter that her father and I wanted a daughter in our lives and chose Guatemala to make this dream come true. We worked through an ethical agency that ensured us that the lawyers were above board. But in the imperfect world that it was then, still is now, and always has been there were greedy people who did illegal things. Some coerced poor mothers into giving their babies up for adoption by offering them money, and some actually stole children.

I will tell her that by the time we adopted her, the US Embassy in Guatemala made the birthmothers do a DNA test with their babies to verify that they were indeed the mothers. In addition, each birthmother had to sign off on the paperwork four times, and was allowed to change her mind right up to the end when she signed the adoption decree. Her birthmother was interviewed by a social worker in Family Court and then by a lawyer in PGN to verify that she did indeed want to go through with this adoption.

I will also tell her that her father and I would never have willingly gone through an adoption if we knew there was something unethical going on, and that we believe that most if not all adoptive parents felt that way at the time.

Why Elizabeth assumes that our children will grow up “in the shadow of these stories and shortcomings” is another question. I don’t think that in ten years or even two years that people will even remember the chaos surrounding Guatemalan adoptions this year. Just go ask the average Joe about what happened with Romanian or Cambodian adoptions and they will probably not have a clue, or even know that there were adoptions from there at one time. So I doubt that there will be a dark "shadow" that our children will grow up under unless we create and perpetuate it ourselves.

Returning to the article, Ms. Larsen's comment that: “Guatemala has stepped up to the plate. Its’ time for other players in the debate to offer the resources needed to care for affected children and to give the new system a chance to succeed” is inaccurate at best. All Guatemala did was write a new law under pressure; they have never stepped up to the plate and taken care of the unwanted, unfed, homeless children. There are no state funded orphanages just generous foreigners, NGO’s and religious organizations who run and support them. And if Elizabeth took time to take a poll and find out how many adoptive parents send money to Guatemala to families, children, orphanages and various organizations she would be impressed.

Unfortunately the Guatemalan government and many of the country's population must first demonstrate respect for the indigenous population and stop treating them like inferior, second class citizens at best. Thirty years of Civil War that almost wiped out the indigenous population has scarred the country, and it will take years of hard work to gain the trust of the indigenous population, the population that put so many of their children up for adoption.

So I’m going to throw out what I consider to be a much more relevant question. What will we tell our children about the children born in their country who didn’t get the opportunity to have a family? That my friends, is my true concern. Are we doing enough?