No matter what people say, I admire Angelina Jolie. For maintaining a great body after two pregnancies, being a humanitarian, and for adopting three babies. Sure, a lot of people say she’s crazy and that it’s bad for the kids because she’s so busy, but would a kid be better off in an orphanage? And when you think of all the people living in big cities like New York, it’s not as if they’re spending a lot of time with their children either. I seriously can’t understand why people of judgmental of people who do good- criticizing that they should do better.

Anyways. I just read an article on Korea’s adoption plans and I don’t know whether I am happy about it or not. At least, I was glad that it pointed out how hard it is for Koreans to adopt Korean kids. A few years ago, I thought about adopting a kid- not a baby, but an older kid, like middle school or high school. I had a stable income, my company would pay for all education costs (even college) and my work hours were flexible enough so I could spend time with the kid at home- what with afterschool activities, we sould come home around the same time.

Unfortunately, I could not even consider an adoption, because I found out that singles were not allowed to adopt (that law has changed since then) and my parents were absolutely horrified, saying that people would “gossip” about my “true relationship” with the kid. Bah. I ended up sponsoring this kid from a family that defected from North Korea; her parents had abandoned her and her sister with their grandparents and they lived on government support. It wasn’t the same, however. That’s how it is with money. It feels cold.

Wanting a big family but not wanting to be pregnant for several years, I think about adoption and how it would be to have a mixed family- one with my birth children and adopted children. How hard would it be for the kids? Would they feel discriminated? Even when I was young, I remember being jealous of my biological sister. Would those feelings be amplified if I had been the adopted one?

I suppose it is useless thinking of adoption since it has to be mutual agreement between husband and wife. It does not encourage me that most of the young Korean men I know (like friends and former colleagues) are not enthusiastic about having children at all, let alone adopt them. I believe these common sentiments are driven by the fact that Korean men (at least those raised in Korea) are extremely self-centered and don’t like attention being taken away from them. Or maybe all men are like that- only in Korea, it is still socially acceptable for men to strut around boasting their ego-centric ideals.

I will not pretend to be objective, but I hear so many depressing stories from my girl friends in Korea, and am disillusioned and disgusted by the activities of my guy friends to the extent that I want to be part of a more ethically conservative society where people still value hard work, don’t shirk responsibility, and have traditional family values. Where could I go to find that? Maybe I should become Amish- but then I couldn’t use the Internet, right? Sigh.