Adoption Fever

By RICHARD CORLISS

Late last year Woody Allen made history. The epochal event was not his affair with Soon-Yi Farrow Previn, an adopted daughter of Allen's companion Mia Farrow. That sort of escapade is common enough in the long, tawdry life of this planet. But on Dec. 17, 1991, in the Surrogate Court of the State of New York in Manhattan, Allen became a separate but equal adoptive parent of Moses and Dylan Farrow, whom Mia had previously adopted. Each adult was given parental rights. Never before in New York, and perhaps in the U.S., had an unmarried couple been allowed to adopt a child. "As far as I know," says attorney Paul Martin Weltz, who devised the arrangement for Allen, "it's a first."

Because the court did not write and publish a decision, the magnitude of the case was not immediately appreciated. Reporting on the custody battle over Moses, Dylan and the couple's biological son Satchel, last week's tabloids trumpeted the more lurid aspects of the rumpus -- such as the offer by Farrow's lawyer to show the court a sheaf of "pornographic" photos that Allen had taken of Soon-Yi -- before Judge Phyllis Gangel-Jacob sensibly called the two stars into her chambers and told them to shut up. But the December ruling has consequences beyond the front page. It sets an implicit precedent for unmarried couples, including homosexuals, to adopt children. Notes Weltz: "Any two single individuals, whatever their persuasion, can now say, 'Look, you did it for Mia and Woody. Therefore do it for me.' "

At the time, Weltz had ambitions no greater than to legalize the care of two children in a solid, if unconventional, family. "It was the happiest day I ever had in court," he says. "A wonderful event. The judge gave the kids lollipops." But ask Weltz how he feels now, after the family has been riven by charges of betrayal and abuse, and he sounds like a morose King Solomon -- one who cunningly offered to split a child in two only to hear both putative parents say that was fine with them. He muses, "I knew not what we had done."

This may be cold comfort, but when it comes to having children, nobody knows what is in store. For biological parents, kids are a roll of the DNA dice. Adoptive parents face greater risks, for their children carry a knapsack of genetic and cultural imponderables. Yet there are couples who heroically try to create a home, a family, a rich life for orphans from the U.S. and, increasingly, the Third World.

The glare is on these families now because Farrow, who adopted three children when she was married to Andre Previn and added four more as a single mother, has been accused by Allen of manipulating and abusing her kids. "I hate to see large families get tarred with that brush," says Californian Bob DeBolt, who with his wife Dorothy adopted 14 disabled children and was the subject of a documentary that won an Oscar in 1978. "We can't generalize on large families any more than we can on family values."

Experts estimate that about 5,000 U.S. couples have adopted five or more children. Barbara Tremitiere, a consultant on child-welfare issues (and the mother of 15 children, 12 of them adopted), knows of several families that have taken in more than 30 kids. Rutgers University psychology professor David Brodzinsky observes in these parents "a tendency toward missionary zeal -- a reaching out, in a spiritual or religious sense, to those more needy." Many of these parents are children of the '60s who adopted Asian kids instead of the most wanted Gerber babies. "They were committed to causes," says Tremitiere. "And this is a very great cause."

There are looming worries. "In multiple-child placements, children can get lost in the shuffle," says Brodzinsky, who adds that adopted kids have a higher incidence of learning disabilities. And as has been alleged with Farrow's children, they can get into trouble with their adopters, their siblings or the law. But adopted children in large families are no more likely to be delinquent than biological kids from small families -- a fact that indicates the beneficent power of adoptive parents' love.

Couples who keep adding to a large family are called gatherers. "These people have big hearts," says Debra Smith, director of the National Adoption Information Clearinghouse in Rockville, Maryland. "They think, 'One more plate on the table is not such a big deal. We have something to offer, and the child needs us.' " Farrow fits the definition. "But she's not a baby snatcher," Tremitiere says. "If she were, she'd have 50 kids and not just 11. She's very selective in the children she puts into her family, so that they fit in age-wise and with handicaps that she knows she can be of help to." Farrow has recently taken in Tam, 12, a blind Vietnamese girl, and Isaiah, an American crack baby. "Mia herself had polio," says Tremitiere, "so she's tuned in to children with physical difficulties."

Any modern parent could turn Tolstoy's famous maxim on its head and say, "No families, happy or unhappy, are alike." But as Judge Gangel-Jacob ponders the evidence to determine whether Mia is a fit mother and Woody any kind of a father, she may conclude that the Sesame Street brood of Farrow's is like every other family. Only more of them. And more so.

With reporting by Georgia Harbison/New York