According to various reports, it looks like Madonna is trying to adopt two more children from Malawi. Two of her children – David Banda and Mercy – were adopted from Malawi years ago. Those adoptions were actually pretty controversial, because at the time, Malawi didn’t have a foreign adoption system in place. Madonna basically had to go through a lengthy court battle to adopt those kids, and many people (myself included) believed that Madonna basically bought her way into the Malawi legal system. She seemed to spread around a lot of money and then BOOM, she was allowed to adopt those kids. Well, now she’s planning on adopting two more children.
Pop superstar Madonna has filed for the adoption of two more children from Malawi, it has emerged. The 58-year-old singer appeared before a High Court judge in the capital Lilongwe on Wednesday to make the application. It is now up to the court to decide whether to grant the adoption order, Malawi government spokesman Mlenga Mvula said.
Madonna appeared before Justice Fiona Mwale amid tight security, accompanied by two unidentified children and several other people, before being driven away in an SUV vehicle, according to local reports.
Madonna’s trip to Malawi last year was the first time in nearly two years that she visited the country, where she has at times been embroiled in controversy after her earlier adoptions. She was stripped of her VIP status by former president Joyce Banda’s government in 2013 and accused of being ‘uncouth’ and wanting eternal gratitude from the impoverished country for adopting the two children.
It’s true that Madonna is not anyone’s favorite person in Malawi – she was personally put on blast by the country’s president several years ago, and Madonna’s charity, Raising Malawi, has been mired in fraud, sketchiness and grifting since its inception. While I hate to put it in these terms… Madonna is actually guilty of all of the things people accuse Angelina Jolie of. Madonna flies into Malawi in her private jet, spreads some money around so she can adopt a child and then flies back to her penthouse and hopes that everyone will praise her for being such a humanitarian. All that being said… Mercy and David seem very happy. Say what you will about her, but Madonna loves her children. But does she still have the energy at the age of 58 to raise young kids?
Photos courtesy of Getty, WENN.
Let’s keep it real. She’ll have a team of the best raising those babies .
If she can give an unloved child a home, then I will support her in this.
She’s mostly plastic at this point, I figure she’ll be around after the nuclear winter. Like a Mcdonalds happy meal, plastic doesn’t rot.
After the problems, she had, she got rid of those on the board responsible for the misuse of funds, etc., and she then in 2012 smartly partnered up with an existing reputable group “buildOn” as far as building the little schools, and I think a hospital. So what you are talking about was many years ago, and much good has happened since she partnered with a group there on the ground who knew what they were doing.
“buildOn’s global school construction program is founded upon a core methodology produced from years of research. Our methodology’s true power resides in the fact that buildOn classrooms are constructed in partnership with the very people who will be benefiting from them. buildOn provides the funding, engineering, materials, skilled labor and supervision. The village provides a gender balanced leadership team, thousands of hours of unskilled volunteer labor and a promise that girls will attend the school in equal numbers with boys. After the school is completed, Malawi’s Ministry of Education will provide the teachers and run the curriculum in the classroom.”
And give due when it’s deserved, re the hospital unit funded by her charity.
“Madonna, who has adopted two children from Malawi, is scheduled to visit Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital on Sunday to view the pediatric unit where construction started in May 2015 and which is expected to open in early 2017.
“This new facility is the first pediatric surgery and intensive care unit in any Malawi hospital. It will have an enormous impact on saving the lives of children,” said Madonna, in a statement released to The Associated Press. “In addition to raising the quality and availability of health care, we are also preparing for the future by training more Malawian medical staff in specialized pediatric care.”
The children’s unit will include Malawi’s first pediatric intensive care unit, three operating rooms dedicated to children’s surgery, a day clinic and a 50-bed ward. It will enable Queen Elizabeth hospital to double the number of surgeries for children and will provide critical pre-operative and post-operative care.”
Yeah OK she’s doing good work. How does that negate the fact that the adoption was not according to Malawi’s laws? How does that negate the fact that she had a million things on her plate: a failing marriage, a grueling tour + her other 2 children which failed her to properly oversee Raising Malawi? It’s because of her hanger-ons she made the mistakes in the first place.
Why not do all of these things for Malawi without adopting a child there? And then her disgusting photo ops as the saviour of Malawi, shining a light on HERSELF and buying the government so they have no choice but to allow her to do her work? Her performative adoption on top of everything else was really just too much. International adoption is rife with corruption at the highest level and Madonna is one of these shining examples of it. If she wanted to adopt so bad, she could have done national adoption or picked another African country so no, her current success with Raising Malawi won’t make people forget her criminal actions.
Oh and she brought David into a shitty marriage that was about to collapse and multiple anonymous sources confirmed Guy didn’t want to adopt David because of the poor state of their marriage. Then she wanted to adopt another child (which turned out to be Mercy a year later) at which Guy started the divorce and bolted with her money. She was always needy and flexing her power to get what she wants and it came at the cost of thinking through what is best for the child(ren). Malawi and her divorce is where she truly lost the plot and went off the rails.
People’s lives aren’t perfect. I dare say Malawi doesn’t have to eat dirt to keep alive now, at the very least
She talks about being reduced to a sum of her parts and here it is, no matter what she says about her struggles to become a pop icon in a mysoginist music industry or wanting to give two orphaned children a home, her “plastic” appearance is mentioned.
Depressing.
This is true, I’m a bad person for being a b about her caving to societal expectations about a woman’s worth and ageing.
I just don’t find her very genuine, and I don’t like the precedent extensive plastic surgery in celebs presents, while I do recognise their individual right to decline being a role model. Basically I don’t like her, so I suspended the rules.
It’s always exciting living as a hypocrite.
It’s always like that though. Anytime there is a post about a woman that isn’t well liked, or has done something that isn’t well received (or even something wonderful like Madonna has done here), people attack her looks, her body, her clothes, her age, or what plastic surgery she may or may not have had instead of talking about the actual issue. I totally agree that it is depressing.
It happens here a lot with some celebrities and at the same time people around here critcize when it happens to others.
NOOOOOOOOO! She is a monster. No more buying children – NOOOOOOO!
I agree. I don’t open anything that has princess Kate, Amal Clooney or a few other women. People go berserk like they’re the worst people on earth. Depressing.
I love to see an “older” woman having children when men can have babies forever. With Mick Jagger and Mel Gibson’s latest additions this news comes as a breathe of fresh air.
False equivalency in this case. Old men still need a young(ish) woman so those children will have a at least one parent who is young and healthy enough to care for them. Madonna is old (sorry she just is, she can get piority seating on a plane or the seniors menu at a restauraunt. Not hating just old is only a bad word if she wants it to be and damn does she!) does not have a partner, young or not, so all of the parental duties fall to her. Nannies are not parents and the first duty as a parent is recognizing whether you are doing something for them of for yourself.
She’s 58 — and in better shape than many people half her age. Sure, aging is biological but to be “old” as you put it (to be eligible for priority seating or senior’s discounts) is a social construct. The way you dismiss her based on her age is insulting. If she’s able to provide love and security for 2 children who need it why would anyone knock her for that?
Age is not a social construct, I don’t care how fit she is. At best she will die when her children are early 20’s, at best. My comments about seniors benefits was an attempt at levity. She can tour, she can march, she can make unwise decisions for herself just not for more children.
But she also wants to keep working? Child-rearing is stressful. Her work ethic and workload are stressful. Why bring in TWO more children?
The whole Rocco custody debacle made it clear that Rocco wanted a more traditional mom/home life which is why he ran from the craziness of his mother’s (tour) life . Madonna herself has said he asked if she could just cook him meals etc.
It’s one thing to work a lot, it’s another to be surrounded by handlers and people demanding your time in your spare time when you have a child/teenager begging you to just be a mother for once. Madonna can rail against the system and her ex-husband as much as she wants, she would never touch upon the fact that she couldn’t give her child what he needed the most.
Or maybe she is slowing down and not touring in the upcoming years? but I feel like bringing in children this late when she already has 4 (2 of them still children) has more to do with her dwindling fame and A list friendships than true craving for mothering 2 more children. It’s no secret her once tight friendships have all but vanished since her divorce and there’s more than 1 account of her selfish ways that alienated those friends. Children are not a cure to fight going into old age with only hanger-ons and yes-men. And her music isn’t getting any better yet she keeps going.
I think you are making a lot of assumptions about Rocco. A lot of people have 15-16 year old kids with issues. I think issues and rebelling kind of go hand and hand with being 15-16 years old, just depends on the kid how deep they go. Even “traditional” parents, whatever that is, have kids with problems. As far as the custody issues also not unusual for his age. A lot of children gravitate toward the same sex parent at that age in the first place. The other scenario presented by the gossip sites is that Madonna is stricter than Guy and doesn’t approve some of his extracurricular activities, i.e. his partying and drinking, etc. Assuming the gossip sites have the story correct either way is a bit crazy. We just don’t know.
Now I don’t know if she should adopt two kids at 58 either, as that does seem a bit old to me too. However, I don’t know how old the kids are or her real family situation at all. Just the public version which I am sure is woefully incomplete.
No. Besides being a rebellious free-spirited teenager (both Guy and Madonna were stubborn and rebellious youths so the apple – tree and all that), Madonna has talked about her parenting herself. It is known that she schedules in everything to the minute, even time with her kids which when on tour is limited. This was obvious in her 2004 documentary wherein both Rocco and Lourdes appeared and Lourdes being older and able to express her feelings around having a busy mom, said they both wanted to see their mom but Rocco really demanded it thus he got more.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTKX_iXa_XA
Madonna herself has been quoted saying Rocco wasn’t impressed with her career: “He just wants me to cook for him. I’m like, ‘okay, I’ll get to that. I promise you when this tour is over with, I’m gonna cook for you”
This was before Rebel Heart tour started.
They were always very close and Rocco seemed like a mother’s boy but several sources during her last tour have talked about their fights as she was not very available for him and when she was, she was too controlling. Hence the ‘Madonna took his phone away’ probably had much deeper meaning for their relationship and he ran off to his father. The way it happened is terrible but you could tell Madonna was not accepting of the fact she couldn’t give her son what he wanted and it took her 9 months to actually come together with Guy to do what’s best for their son. And gosh, her public outcries for her son must have been horrible for him, dude clearly ran off too because of the attention he always got when being with her and she goes off and drags him back in the public eye. I don’t think she’s a bad mom but I think she’s selfish.
A message to aging female ( well, male, too) celebrities:
STOP filling your cheeks! The thickness of your facial flesh is bizarre looking. It is unnatural, obvious, and laughable.
This I totally agree with, and I want to know the plastic surgeon who thought this procedure up to, cause it looks dumb to me at. Also, who sold this as beauty. Yuck!!!!
Your oldest son rejects you, and spends his time doing drugs and ditching school, in a foreign city? No problem, just get some new ones…
+1
*im not gonna type what I wanna say about her using her black children in specific to parade when controversy strikes I am Gonna say that predictably she is going back to the same well* Don’t @ Me
Thank you for saying this. This woman has used the “n” word and fetishized black people as objects in her work over the years. It makes me feel ill, Black children aren’t toys for other’s amusement. It’s as awful as the couple from Duck Dynasty that adopted a Black child. How will these children be prepared to deal in an adult world that sees them as less than human?
Why two? Are they siblings? Just curious.
Probably the same logic as getting dogs and cats: You should get two so they aren’t lonely when you can’t give them your full attention.
My grandmother’s plan was to have two kids, then take a break of about ten years, and have two more. They lived on a farm, and so to have a playmate, the child would need a sibling.
I expect being Madonna’s child also involves a bit of isolation from other kids.
Malawi is so impoverished and in dire straits . If she gives those children a safe home even if nannies raise them – it will be a better future then growing up an orphan in a country with such limited resources . I am from south Africa and the Malawi people who come here to work speak of the poverty back there .
This is what people always miss on these things. They act like the children have a choice between a good life and Madonna as their older, crazy publicity seeking, mom. Reality is for some of these kids their life would be a very poor, no love, and lonely existence. Madonna may not be ideal because of her age and the publicity she engages in, but being her child is most likely better than their situation if she doesn’t adopt them. Yes she may be publicizing her donations too much and putting herself on a pedestal for it, but they do get the money and the benefits from her donations.
Why not support children in Malawi financially instead of supporting four in total by adopting them and not only taking them out of their country but as I remember neither David nor Mercy were actual orphans. Even the money spent on raising four children in the US as a millionaire would do a 100 times more spent in Malawi on a hundred children.
I read Madonna is denying this but now I can’t find where I read it.
She’s adopting two more kids must have a new album coming out soon:(