Celebrity Adopters still making headlines

Madonna adopted from Malawi twice

The following Yahoo story is further evidence that Hollywood has NOT got the message: Stop adopting other mother's children...

Take a look at any celebrity news outlet these days and — among the stories about baby bumps and luxury delivery rooms — another parenting theme has emerged: adoption. Dozens of stars, from Sandra Bullock to Katherine Heigl to Charlize Theron, have all famously adopted children recently, often going out of the country to do so.

International adoptions were indeed on the rise for years, but despite the fact that half the members of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt's brood of six hail from foreign countries, or that Madonna and her two adoptions from the African nation of Malawi made headlines, the number of Americans adopting from outside the country has actually plummeted recently, thanks to a variety of complicated factors including the enforcement of an inter-country adoption treaty, which has forced some agencies that can't comply out of business, as well the uncovering of corruption in certain nations.
Of the approximately 130,000 or so adoptions that took place in America last year (of which, more than a third consist of a stepparent adopting a stepchild), surprisingly, less than 10,000 involved children from overseas. The majority of the remainder, according to Adam Pertman, executive director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, are adoptions from foster care, and — despite the little ones we see celebs taking home — those children are rarely babies.
Over just the past year, stars including Denise Richards, Kristin Davis, Viola Davis and her husband, actor Julius Tennon, and Mariska Hargitay and her husband, actor Peter Hermann, have introduced the world to their newly adopted infants. So does that mean they received special treatment because they're rich and famous? Indeed, celebrities may wind up with an advantage when it comes to adoption, but the benefits usually stem from being rich, not famous.
"Adoption outside of foster care, particularly so for infant adoptions and international adoptions, has come to be quite expensive and that locks a lot of people out," explains Pertman, who is the author of Adoption Nation. "Does power, influence, money make a difference? Yeah, it does in every realm that we're aware of, but a wealthy surgeon probably gets the same sort of treatment as a wealthy movie star, just that nobody's following the surgeon around with cameras."