Adopting a child is, without a doubt, one of the most extraordinary moral excellences that a person can exhibit. One the one hand, there is nothing dramatic about it, in that adopting a child is not about taking on some great risk, or overcoming imminent danger or fear. On the other, it is a most magnanimous deed, in that one commits one to carrying for and raising a child as if the infant were one’s own flesh and blood. The case of adoption masterfully shows that blood by itself is not thicker than water. If any commitment can be said to transcend the differentials in blood-lineage, surely adoption does. To which watch such families interact is to behold love between parent and child in its most pristine form.
So by now, we in the West all know that Madonna has adopted or is in the throes of adopting a Malawian child, Malawi being one of the poorest countries in the world. Some will no doubt object to the fact that she is white and the child is black. I will not even dignify this line of thought with an argument. The objection is absurd; for parental love knows no phenotypical boundaries.
But the way of I have just put the issue does point to my concern. How is that we are told that Madonna has adopted the child, who is name is David? Should we not be told that Madonna and Guy Ritchie have adopted David? But then Mr. Ritchie has expressed concerns about her motives.
To be sure, I understand that it is Madonna’s name that is the media draw; and it does not phase me one iota that it is “Madonna and Guy Ritchie” rather than Mr. and Mrs. Ritchie or whatever. But presumably we are talking about a family. And if so, then the news ought be that Madonna and Ritchie have adopted David rather than that Madonna did so. And if Madonna wanted it that way, surely that is the way it would have been. This ought to be about family and not about Madonna. To be fair, I have seen one story that speaks of the two of them adopting. And I presume that there are other stories that report the event that way. But the overwhelming majority of the reports tell the story as if it were all about Madonna.
David Banda, the child’s full name, is a human being—not a trophy or a prop for Madonna.
Now, there is another reason why the matter has a morally unsavory odor to it. It is wonderful that David and Madonna seem to have bonded from the outset. But David’s father is alive. So, there is the issue of taking the child away from the father when it is far from obvious that this is the only option. Of course, we are told that the father is very, very happy for his child. And it is easy enough to see how this sentiment could be ever so genuine. The father’s very own reaction is quite consistent with being a loving parent.
Still, there is the issue of the child and father being separated, when it is far from obvious that this is the only option. Then, too, there issue of children with no parents at all. To be sure, David was in an orphanage. But imagine that you are about to adopt a child from an orphanage and take her or him to an entirely different when country when you learn that one of the child’s parents is alive. Would that not give you pause? Not to pause here would reveal that one is more than a little too self-absorbed.
For one thing, there is the issue of destabilizing the community. If a child with no parents is adopted, it is next to impossible for inappropriate feelings to get off the ground towards the children who go without be adopted. But what we have is the rather different case where everyone in the village knows that Yohane Banda son, David, has been adopted. There is now a living person who be the target of inappropriate feelings: envy, jealousy, anger, and so forth. To be sure, Yohane did nothing wrong. But there is the problem of what John Rawls (in A Theory of Justice, 1971) calls excusable envy. Why should Yohane’s son be the beneficiary of such extraordinary good fortune whilst the children of others are still wallowing in abject poverty?
The point I have just made is a philosophical point. But one does not have to be a philosopher to appreciate the proposed arrangement would make things awkward, as we say in common parlance, for Yohane Banda. After all, there is no prize that Yohane or David won in an open context.
Rather, things like this: Queen Madonna, in the name of displaying good will, simply chose one person’s child among all the children who still have living parents. And while strictly speaking there is no injustice here, what we have is a considerable impropriety.
Suppose that I merely walked into my large Ethics & Value Theory class of 400 students and gave $1000 to one of my students. It is my money; and there is a straightforward sense in which I can give my money to whom I please. This truth, alas, does nothing to militate against the impropriety of what I have done. There is a way of being kind that can, in fact, generate ill-will. When everyone is more or less equally in need, then a person who merely distributing a benefit arbitrarily to one individual can occasion considerable ill-will among the others precisely because there is no way for them to make sense of themselves not getting the award. This is why contests, even the silliest ones, can be so important; for they allow for differentiations between people that more or less clear to all.
I suspect that Madonna is a tad too besotted with herself to see that she has set the stage for such ill-will in the Malawian village from which David Banda comes.
My illustration of meagerly $1000 shows in no uncertain terms that even when we are committed to displaying goodwill, we must be mindful of the way in which we go about doing so. For the ideal should be to do so without creating grudges among others. Perhaps all the folks of Yohane’s village will be incredibly happy for him. But history shows that such magnanimity is rare among human beings, especially when the differential is so great.
I dare say that she could helped significantly helped the entire village without making a dent in her bank account.
But she went “shopping” for a child to adopt. And when I consider the manner in which she proceeded, I am struck by how much it resembles shopping for a commodity. When they wish to do so, high profile figures are quite capable of being discreet. They have the money, which affords them the means, to be discreet if they so choose.
So what were Madonna’s motives? Was it to show herself to the world as a marvelous humanitarian? Was it to call attention to the poverty in Africa? Was it to enhance her public image? It is known that Guy Ritchie was not at all thrilled about the matter, at least initially. Indeed, as I have already noted, precisely what he has worried about is the issue of her motives.
Adoption at its best is one of the most altruistic acts to be performed by one human being for another. It is an extraordinary expression of the power of human beings to love one another. And love at its best does not need a publicist. But Madonna did; and this tells me something rather unsavory about her motives. Had we all learned about the matter after the fact, there would have been a propriety to it all that would have sanctified her gesture. What we get instead is what looks like a self-centered woman using another human being to enhance her image while exploiting the impoverished standing of a village.
