The State's Legitimate Interest: An Open Letter to Matthew Engel

Abstract

In May 1999 the journalist, Matthew Engel, published a feature article in the Weekend section of The Guardian about his personal experience of being assessed as an adoptive parent for a child from Siberia. He described his social worker as friendly, caring and conscientious, but he was highly critical of the law, practice and procedure relating to adoption:

This country has turned the adoption of a child into something very close to a crime; the perpetrators are harried, if not actually punished … British adoption practice has become so obsessed with finding the perfect parents that the best has become the enemy of the good.

He commended an American agencies' approach to home studies which he suggested resembles more of a chat over coffee and carrot cake.

Engel rightly questioned the state's legitimate interest here and raised some very important social issues about the nature of adoption in the natural cycle of parenthood and childhood. We do not know if his views are unique or widespread. The jury has been out for some time on how a good society should respond to the children orphaned by poverty in another nation or how a responsible profession can achieve the right balance between preparation and investigation in adoption work.

The following letter by Charlotte Stevens was originally written as a private response to Matthew Engel's article. We publish it here since it highlights many of the core issues and enriches the debate about the role of the state in the lives of the world's most vulnerable children.