Despite Angelina Jolie admitting that parenthood is taking its toll on her relationship with Brad Pitt she wants to adopt another child.
In 2002 actress Angelina adopted Maddox, now 5, from Cambodia after her split from second husband Billy-Bob Thornton. A second adoption followed in 2005 this time from ethiopia a little girl Zahara who is now 2. Angelina gave birth to Shiloh in 2006 in Namibia her first and only biological child with partner Brad Pitt. A third adoption took place earlier this year of a little boy Pax aged 3 from Vietnam.
Since this the actress has in Prague filming her latest movie Wanted and according to The Sun mewspaper reports she has been making regular visits to a Catholic orphanage.
Over the last few years Angelina Jolie has become the poster girl for inter-country adoption which has led to others following in her footsteps. But is this recent rise in celebrity adoption a distateful trend to hog the media spotlight or genuine genorosity and compassion.
The most recent adoption that caused controversy world-wide was that of Madonna and baby David in Malawi. It was suggested that by many human rights campaigners that Madonna had donated large amounts of money to the country to avoid any red tape surrounding her adoption of the child, as adoption of Malawi children is only given to Malawi citizens. The singer had been working with charity Raising Malawi and had given £2m towards the building of a new orphanage.
It was human rights activists who raised the loudest protest to the adoption especially Eye of the Child, a child right's group, threatened to seek a court injuction to halt the child leaving the country. Despite protest here in the Uk and in Malawi Madonna and husband Guy Richie were granted an 18 month interim custody.
But others argued that Madonna was giving the child a better future than his father could provide. Despite not being an orphan baby David was in an orphanage because his father could not afford to look after him. In Malawi 3 out of 10 children die before they are 5 years old. 48% are stunted, 5% severly malnourished and 22% are underweight and malnourished. And a staggering 400,000 children are orphaned due to AIDS.
Despite adopting left right and centre Angelina Jolie has had her fair share of contoversy when in 2004 she faced the possibility of losing her son Maddox. The FBI closed down Seattle International Adoption Inc, which was used by the actress, when it was discovered that some of the children were not orphans. It was later revealed that some of the children had been sold by their birth mothers in an attempt to escape their poverty stricken lives.
Similarly Jolie almost had toface Zahara's mother in court after she came forward thanking the actress for giving her baby a new life. The mother was origionally believed to be dead and under Ethiopian law the paper needed to be refiled. However the judge ruled that Jolie had done nothing wrong and the child was legally hers.
Last year also saw adoptions by Meg Ryan of a daughter Daisy from China and Ewan McGregor and his wife adopting a 4 year old Mongolian girl. And actress Mia Farrow has 14 children, only 4 of them are biological, she has adopted from Vietnam, China and Calcutta.
But with Renee Zellweger, Eva Longoria and Jennifer Lopez rumoured to be interested in adoption and with inter-country adoption numbers in the US trippling in 15 years this is an issue that will stay in the media spot light and cause controversy.
Helen Earnshaw
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