Meet the (extended) family

Adopting babies seems to be all the rage among US celebrities - Angelina Jolie, Calista Flockhart, Sharon Stone, to name but a few - and now Bruce Willis is the 'adoption tsar'. Oliver Bennett wonders why

It is slightly pass-the-sickbag stuff, but here goes – Bruce Willis is America's new "adoption tsar". At the White House on 23 July, the action- movie star and hardcore Republican was inducted by President Bush as the "national spokesman for adoptable children". "We all know that Bruce is a tough guy in the movies," said the President. "Truth of the matter is, he has a tender heart for children."

Aw, shucks. But should a celebrity be encouraging the populace to adopt more children? Well, it certainly seems appropriate, for there is a major celebrity adoption boom in the US, to the point where one sarcastic US commentator has called the current state of affairs an "adopt-athon".

The latest celebrity adopters are Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne, who recently took on their daughter's best friend, Robert Marcato, after his mother died of cancer. The family will put him through college and he will appear on the family's infamous TV show. Another prominent new adopter is the film star Angelina Jolie, who this year adopted a Cambodian child, now called Maddox, with the actor Billy Bob Thornton. "Last November we visited an orphanage in Cambodia and met a little boy we felt a connection to and that we wanted to be our son," the couple said in March – a sentiment that has been superseded by the break-up of their relationship.

Read the gossip rags, and you will find a growing roster of stars with adopted children. Diane Keaton has two adopted boys, Dexter Dean and Duke. Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman (now divorced, of course) adopted both Isabella Jane and Connor. Michelle Pfeiffer has her adopted baby, Claudia Rose. Sharon Stone, Calista Flockhart and Rosie O'Donnell are adopters. Cher has said that she is thinking of adopting a baby daughter, as has Celine Dion, and rumours even suggest that Julia Roberts has contacted a number of adoption agencies.

It's a bit crass to suggest that adoption is the new black for these celebs, but there's no doubt that it is booming and that it corrals mass sentiment in a powerful manner. So big is the phenomenon of foreign adoption that in the US, for instance, there has recently been an advertisement for digital cameras in which a proud couple in an aeroplane pose with their newly adopted Asian baby.

As for the celebrity adopters, well, on the surface it seems to make sense. They can give the kids the best romper suits that money can buy, and gain for themselves the elusive cachet of "giving something back" to the world. And it is a privilege. Around $20,000 is needed to adopt a baby, with foreign adoptions being even more expensive due to travel costs.

"There are a lot of high-profile celebrities adopting these days, and clearly their financial backing makes it easier," says a spokeswoman for the British adoption and fostering charity BAAF. But its chief executive, Felicity Collier, expresses concern that the typical celebrity lifestyle might be a little rootless. "When you consider that these children have already been through a difficult situation, it may be slightly distressing for the child to then lead a peripatetic lifestyle."

The celebrity adopters are an American phenomenon, forged by a legal situation that in certain states allows private adoption arrangements to take place – a situation that couldn't happen in the UK, which has stringent adoption procedures. "There is an independent sector in the US that includes agencies that work differently," says the BAAF spokeswoman. "Most adoption agencies find parents for children, but these places find children for parents in return for money, which raises issues about the buying of babies."

It is this that is causing observers to raise eyebrows. In the latest issue of Harper's Bazaar, Drew Barrymore lambasted the Hollywood non-biological mums thus: "Do you think they do it because of their bodies? That's so fucked up. I would never adopt because I was vain." Her inference is that celeb adopters might choose that route to parenthood to keep their figures: surely preposterous? "We've never come across it, but I've heard other people argue that it may be the case that they're scared of childbirth, or the disruption of pregnancy," says the BAAF spokeswoman. "What we would say is that adoption is a real challenge and you can't consider it an easy option."

Sadly, a feeling that a Battersea Dogs Home attitude might be at work niggles away. Angelina and Billy Bob's adoption of Maddox sounded like a gallant rescue from a Cambodian orphanage, but it has since been alleged that the little boy was brokered by an American baby trader, who sells children to American couples, making full use of a network of orphanages and paid parents, who may have only handed over their babies to the orphanage temporarily. With this in mind, the US has suspended the issuing of visas for adopted children.

And Calista Flockhart's baby boy comes through an odd route, being the fifth child of a Californian medical technician, who got in touch with the actress after reading in a magazine that she was thinking of adopting. It's the kind of process at which British agencies would look askance. "We don't think it's appropriate for children to be passed between adults as a result of private agreements," says Felicity Collier.

The Hollywood non-biological mums have their reasons, one of which may be that the biological clock was ignored until it was too late: Diane Keaton was 50 when she adopted her first child, and Martina Navratilova, an adopter, has said: "The time when I could have my own children has passed." And it may simply be fashionable.

The phenomenon will probably raise greater concern, then peak. But the greatest of the celebrity adopters are in the past. Few can top the extravagance of the singer and dancer Josephine Baker, who famously adopted a multiracial "rainbow tribe". Another serial adopter is Mia Farrow, who had four children and adopted 10 more from around the world, with all kinds of special needs including an asthmatic Vietnamese orphan, and a polio victim abandoned at Calcutta station.

The collision of lives in the process of celebrity adoption may be for better or for worse – but it is certainly the stuff of contemporary fairy tales.