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#Post#: 47--------------------------------------------------
Crawford's daughter attacks trend for celebrity adoptions
By: Montraviatommygun Date: March 12, 2011, 7:47 am
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(HTM) http://lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk/family/story/0,,2282148,00.html
Crawford's daughter attacks trend for celebrity adoptions
Elizabeth Day
Sunday May 25, 2008
The Observer
One of the first children to be adopted by a Hollywood star has
condemned the trend for celebrity adoptions as a
publicity-seeking exercise with 'profound medical and
psychological effects'. Christina Crawford, 68, who was adopted
by the actress Joan Crawford in 1939 when she was just two
months old, said the recent spate of high-profile adoptions gave
her 'tremendous concerns'.
Crawford claims she was physically abused by her adoptive
mother. In 1978 she wrote the bestselling memoir Mommie Dearest
about her experiences. It was later adapted into a film starring
Faye Dunaway and Crawford went on to become an influential
advocate for adoptees' rights.
'I have tremendous concerns about celebrity adoptions by people
like Madonna and Angelina Jolie,' she said in an exclusive
interview to mark the publication of a 30th anniversary edition
of her memoir. 'From the adoptee's point of view, it is vitally
important to know who they are, where they came from, or it can
have profound medical and psychological effects.'
Madonna's high-profile adoption of a baby boy, David Banda, in
2006 was back in the headlines last week when she presented her
documentary about the effects of disease and poverty on Malawi
at the Cannes Film Festival.
Angelina Jolie, who is pregnant with twins, has three adopted
children: Maddox, a six-year-old orphan from Cambodia; Pax, a
four-year-old Vietnamese boy abandoned at birth; and an
Ethiopian orphan, Zahara, who is three.
Crawford alleges that her mother, who was one of the biggest
film stars of Hollywood's Golden Age, adopted her four children
for publicity purposes, although many of her recollections are
disputed by her adopted younger sister. While their supposedly
happy family life was detailed in lengthy magazine spreads,
Crawford claims that behind closed doors her mother was an
abusive alcoholic given to unpredictable bouts of rage.
One of the most infamous scenes in the book and the subsequent
film depicted Joan Crawford launching into a tirade after
discovering that Christina had hung clothes on wire hangers. 'No
wire hangers!' entered the vernacular as shorthand for maternal
instability.
Crawford said: 'It was complete and total hypocrisy between the
public and the private. She adopted us for the publicity.' When
asked if today's celebrities are driven by the same motivation,
she replied: 'What do you think? Why are they so keen on getting
the maximum newspaper and magazine coverage?'
Crawford was informed by Joan Crawford that her biological
mother had died in childbirth, but discovered while researching
her family history in the early Nineties that both her parents
had been alive at the time. Her mother, a student, and her
father, an engineer who had been married to someone else, both
died before she could trace them. Joan Crawford died in 1977.
David Holmes, chief executive of the British Association for
Adoption and Fostering, said: 'I certainly agree that children
aren't accessories, but I also think it's quite a sweeping
generalisation. Just because someone is a celebrity doesn't mean
they couldn't be a good parent. People adopt for lots of
reasons, but the prime motivation is wanting to give a safe and
secure home to a child.'
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