ETHICS

Ethics

Ethics

Section A1

Introduction

Medical implications have increased a number of ethical issues throughout the society. Child adoption is one of such implications that have created a number of issues to be addressed (Dudley 2004, pp. 41). This section would cover the ethical perspective of marketing children and use adoption as a marketing service.

Discussion

Adoption

Adoption means to give a family's name to a child. This can be done by assuming the parenting responsibilities of a child and transferring all the rights and responsibilities of a child from his biological parents. There are a number of child adoption agencies that are responsible for marketing the children to the potential adopting parents. Child adoption can be done due to the following reasons:

Infertile parents

Hope for a gender, i.e. a family needs a boy to be added to the family but normally give birth to a girl; they may go for adopting a male child. This phenomenon is quite common in the under-developed Asian countries (Healey 2011, pp. 1)

Social service, i.e. many people adopt orphan children as a social service and just to give shelter and respect to the child

Similarly, children available for adoption have some reasons for their availability. Some of them may be;

Adverse economic conditions of the household;

Orphan children;

Children dropped at adoption agencies by unmarried women;

Single parent marrying elsewhere (Fisanick 2009, pp. 182).

Marketing a Child

Normally, the entire procedure of adoption is through adoption agencies. For instance, a family that is unable to feed a child due to the family's economic condition would never like to call people to their home and show their child as a product. This would be unethical and is likely to impose a negative impact on the psychology of the child for his entire life (Brazelton & Greenspan 2000, pp. 52). Agencies, as an intermediary and a 'sales shop' for children, perform activities to arrange meetings of children with their potential parents. These activities are accomplished according to adoption laws prescribed by the state governments. These laws may differ in altered states throughout the world. Marketing a child does not seem to be a commendable practice in any case. This statement is completely understandable by visualizing oneself as a child standing in line with other children, and a couple of people rejecting all but one. The impact of rejection could be rather fatal as far as the child's psychology is concerned (Brodzinsky & Palacios 2005, pp. 149). For instance, a child, say 'A', is standing in a queue, and the agent is marketing the child as a product to the adopting parents. The potential parents rejected the child 'A' and select child 'B' as their to-be child. Child 'A' would start thinking his incompetence against other children. He may curse his fate for two things, first being he not living normally with the biological parents; secondly he would critically start thinking his personality problems that even strange people are not considering him for ...