It's not a given that growing up in luxury is going to give you a happier life. Adoption is a great thing for kids who truly have no family, but plucking a kid who has broad extended family ties out of their culture just because you think that living with money in the west smacks of the worst sort of cultural imperialism.

I've reached the conclusion that the more money you have, the more you think you need to be happy. I'm currently teaching in a developing country (one of the ones that Angelina Jolie adopted a kid from), one of my classes is full of fairly well-off college kids who's parents are mostly professionals, another class is made up extremely impoverished ethnic minority students who are from areas where people still live in bamboo thatched houses and who wouldn't even be in college if the government hadn't set aside slots for them. A few weeks ago, I asked both of those classes whether they thought money could buy happiness. The kids who grew up just a step above those kids Madonna's trying to get in Malawi are the ones who by and large answered that no, money isn't going to buy happiness, family and relationships were more important. The rich kids? They're the ones who thought a lot of money would make them happier.

That's not to say that people who are living in extreme poverty couldn't use more money and better living conditions, just to say that it's extremely presumptuous of those of us who are sitting there living better than 95% of the world's population to think that just because they're poor, it's better for their kids to be raised by rich white Americans.

notauniquesnowflake: I'm saying people in this thread, yourself included, are being awfully judgemental of all the Malawians involved. It seems no one is even beginning to consider any extenuating circumstances that could be involved. Your leap to "oh look, they have a much lower life expectancy" smacks of a superiority complex. Having wealth and living longer does not guarantee a happy life. Neither does having a family. In fact, most people do not have a happy life. Saying Madonna should be allowed to adopt because we have a higher life expectancy is a simply ridiculous statement. There is so much more to life than how long you live.

As I mentioned earlier, I teach students who come from families who are among the poorest of the poor--less than $2 a day type poor, I asked them whether they think that money can buy happiness, and these kids who are 17-18 years old and who grew up in conditions that I couldn't imagine living in all said that things like family and friends were more important for happiness than money. Not to say that they don't appreciate the idea of having money to buy things, and they're acutely aware of the things that their villages don't have, but if they had to pick, money is low on the list.

It's presumptuous to act like we know what's best for people in those situations, they're just as capable of evaluating priorities as those of us in developed countries are.