Adoption in Hollywood

Once, in the heyday of Hollywood, it was a soft-top pink Cadillac. Now the evidence of screen success is a far smaller - and not necessarily pink - bundle of joy. But, like the oversized car, it can be easily purchased and driven straight back to the sprawling Los Angeles mansion. Now the off-the-shelf symbol of stardom is an adopted baby.

Last week, Angelina Jolie was pictured with the nine-month-old baby she and her husband had plucked from a life of Asian penury and little promise to a new luxury home in Hollywood. Twenty-seven-year-old Jolie, an Oscar-winning actress, had been introduced to the little boy last November in a Cambodian orphanage with her actor husband Billy Bob Thornton, 46, by her very beautiful side. Jolie joins a dynasty of overly endowed mothers who have bought rather than begat. Michelle Pfeiffer adopted baby Claudia Rose; Diane Keaton adopted Dexter Dean and Duke and Calista Flockhart adopted Liam. Now rumour has it that Pretty Woman Julia Roberts has contacted a number of adoption agencies.

Adoption in the US is not nearly as strictly regulated as in Britain and the laws vary from state to state. Although you cannot technically purchase a baby, large amounts of money exchange hands in the form of living costs and expenses. It can cost up to $20,000 to adopt a baby, with foreign adoptions coming up even more pricey due to travel costs and reams of paperwork. Age restrictions and marital status, which are all taken into account in Britain, do not need to be so in the US where you are still permitted to come to a private arrangement with a pregnant woman.

We tend to be cynical about those who can so easily take the waiting out of wanting. We believe their maternal relationship is indelibly tainted by the exchange of dollars. We worry that there is one rule for the rich, another for the not. Pfeiffer and Flockhart didn't wait for Mr Right before becoming a parent, both adopting while they were single. Nor do these women need to pay attention to nature. Keaton was 50 when she adopted her first child. But why shouldn't they be applauded for providing such an opportunity for those born underprivileged? And how are we to know what is really going on in what is essentially a very private matter?

One aspect that seems unsettlingly strange is that many of these women, by their own admission, do not need to adopt. Jolie swears fertility problems did not force her to become an off-the-shelf mum. "I never wanted to become pregnant," she has said. "I have always wanted to adopt." And when the on-screen Lara Croft and her husband Billy Bob's eyes fell on their little boy, whom they have called Maddox, they just knew this baby was the one. "We felt a connection and wanted him to be our son," the couple announced.

This off-the-shelf path to parenthood is radically different to that of a mother emerging battered and bloody from the maternity ward. Mothers who give birth usually have children for no other reason than because they want to. Reproducing your biological self, however beautiful, is very rarely done for reasons of altruism. But foreign adoption can be dressed up as just that - something undertaken not for the would-be parent's pleasure, but for the good of the abandoned child. Gill Haworth, director of the UK's Overseas Adoption Helpline, says: "People feel that children in overseas countries are more needy than children here, and they want to find a home for a child who needs them. That may be an element in every application."

Mia Farrow has taken this role of self-sacrificing earth mother to extremes. In addition to four birth children, she boasts a 10-strong adopted family from all corners of the globe, and with a range of disabilities. In 1973, she adopted a Vietnamese war orphan with asthma. Then came Isaiah, a crack-addicted baby; 12- year-old Tam, who was blind; Gabriel, a paraplegic; and Thaddeus, a polio victim who had been abandoned at a Calcutta railway station. Farrow had suffered from the same disease as a child. "Having polio at nine made me feel like a pariah, which gave me an early sense of responsibility and compassionate empathy. It left me with the desire to relieve suffering," says Farrow.

Calista Flockhart, 37, explains part of her motivation as a determination to do good for others: "I will have children naturally when the time is right but I want to give an opportunity to a child who needs a mom right now," she says. In a world where appearance is just about everything, and scratching the surface might reveal a huge void, an adopted child gives a chance to make pampered lives feel meaningful. Tennis star Martina Navratilova, 45, who last week announced she was ready to become a mother agrees: "The time when I could have my own children has passed. I could adopt a brother and sister or two sisters. There are too many kids out there who want a home."

While ordinary mothers agonise over their potential parenting skills, there seems little self-doubt among some celebrity mums. Questions most parents ask themselves ("Will I be able to control myself when they draw a picture of Postman Pat on the sitting room wall?"; "When they bawl through the night, how can I stop screaming from my sleeplessness, 'shut up you bloody brat?' "; "Will I really learn to love the far-from-fascinating task of making little cakes out of cornflakes and melted chocolate?") are no doubt absent in the dollar-induced euphoria of the adoption process. The movie star mums presume they will be as successful at their home job as they are at their day job. "I'll be a good, fun mother," says Navratilova, with unabashed confidence.

But will these children, in the warmth of the Californian sunshine and in the shade of their ultra-comfortable homes, necessarily flourish? (Even in the UK, where there are about 400 closely monitored adoptions from abroad each year and private adoptions are illegal, there is currently no long-term study of their success.) The fact is, many of these celebrity families wouldn't get past an initial assessment with a British adoption agency. Last week, Jolie and her former-drug-addict husband - they wed in 2000 and wear a pendant containing a sample of each other's blood round their necks - were busy fighting off rumours that their marriage is over. Jolie is Billy Bob's fifth wife.

Of Maddox's adoption, Felicity Collier, chief executive of British Agencies for Adoption and Fostering, says, "This would raise some question marks here. Children that are adopted have already lost one family and experienced a lot of disruption. We need people who are making a permanent commitment. We don't want children to be exposed to further breakdowns."

It is difficult for an ordinary mother not to feel pique. To have a boy or a girl, your very own choice, with no morning sickness, no labour pains, no stretch marks, no leaking breasts... To adopt, without all those agonising hurdles that a British adoptive mother would have to endure... Acquiring a child may be easy for these celebrities, but in the fickle, all too strange world of Hollywood, raising them might be a different matter.