Saturday, October 21, 2006

African Adoption and Madonna

In all of the business about Madonna adopting a Malawan child, one theme that has been ocnsistently sounded is why she adopted a kid with a living father, instead of an orphan, with the implication (a) that she would have done more good the latter way, and (b) that she is using her money to rip kids away from their biological families.

However, the father says hee is okay with this adoption.

What no one has yet considered (as far as I know) is the issue of low paternal investment in Africa. That is, in much of Africa, men do not provide for their wives and children, because marital fidelity is considered much less important in much of Africa and therefore men do not have much confidence that their kids aren't the product of cuckolding.

This would go a long ways to explain why someone might not have hte same motivation to want to be the one to provide for his children.

Perhpas that is not what is going on here, but it should at least be considered as a possibility.

That is all.

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