The following is an excerpt from a Christian Alliance for Orphans blog by Jedd Medefind:
"Following the controversy over the American woman who sent her adopted son back to Russia last month, the Washington Post ran a compelling op-ed on the plight of orphans in Russia (Adopted boy's return highlights problems in Russian orphanages.) The author, chief of pediatric cardiology at the University of Massachusetts, Darshak Sanghavi, does an excellent job explaining why debates that focus narrowly on potential problems with international adoption miss an issue of far greater importance to most Russian orphans: the reality faced by children in Russian orphanages every day.
As I’ve often seen firsthand, many orphanages in Russian and Eastern Europe do an entirely adequate job providing food, shelter, clothing, and other physical necessities. What most fail to provide, however, is the very thing children need more than anything else: consistent love and nurture.
Sanghavi describes a Russian orphanage visited by a colleague: The problem wasn't that the children were neglected: They were kept fastidiously clean and were well groomed and well fed. The problem was that they were bereft of normal human contact.
