Madonna: Media Interfering with Motherhood

Madonna wants everyone to know that we are living in the media's world and she's just a maternal girl.

In an interview with Oprah Winfrey that aired Wednesday on the talk-show maven's chatfest, Madonna worked on setting the record straight about her seemingly sudden decision to adopt a one-year-old boy from Malawi. The Confessions on a Dance Floor singer spoke to Winfrey on Tuesday via satellite from her home in London. 

Madonna said that she and hubby Guy Ritchie had been contemplating adoption for more than two years before she first saw her future child, David Banda, in a clip from a documentary she's producing about the poverty-stricken African region, and felt an immediate connection. An HIV-postive eight-year-old girl was holding the baby in the scene Madonna saw.

"I became transfixed by him," the top-earning female singer of 2006 said. "But I didn't yet know I was going to adopt him. I was just drawn to him."

Madonna said she couldn't have been more surprised by the media's reaction to her announcement or by the ensuing controversy, which ranged from chatter that the Material Girl was merely seeking attention to criticism for not donating money to David's father so that he could raise the child.

It was only when she returned to England, she said, that she realized everyone had an opinion.

 "I'm disappointed because it discourages other people from doing the same thing," she said, "for anybody who has the idea that they, too, would like to open their home and give a life to a child living in an orphanage who might possibly not live past the age of 5."

The pop icon described meeting with Yohane Banda, who sent David to live in an orphanage when his wife died, a week after their son was born. He said he tried looking after the boy alone for a month but could not ultimately provide for him. 

Banda told Time magazine this week that he felt that, as opposed to keeping his child in an orphanage, it would be beneficial to David to live with "a rich, respectable lady" but that neither the Malawian government nor the orphanage informed him directly that this was a permanent move for the boy.

The 32-year-old farmer and part-time scrap-metal worker said that while he will not try to take David back and feels it would be wrong to demand it, what he originally believed was that "good Samaritans want to help raise my son by sending him to school and looking after him. When he finishes school, he will come back home to stay with us." 

Madonna accused the media of putting words in the man's mouth. "I sat in that room, I looked into that man's eyes," she recalled. "I believe that the press is manipulating this information out of him."

Banda also told Time that both he and his relatives will be staying out of the legal stew stirred up by the activist group Human Rights Consultative Committee, which is miffed that Madonna was able to take charge of David so quickly, with such a minimal amount of red tape. 

A hearing to review the adoption process is scheduled for Friday. Meanwhile, Madonna and Ritchie have been granted an interim adoption order and expect final approval in 18 months.

"It's not like we are blocking the adoption, but we want laws followed to the letter," HRCC chairman Justin Dzonzi said. "We want these issues clarified."

On Thursday Banda voiced his frustration over the HRCC's actions, telling the Associated Press that he hopes Madonna isn't going to change her mind when all is said and done.

"I am afraid Madonna may get angry and frustrated and decide to dump my son because of these people," Banda said. "These so-called human rights activists are harassing me every day, threatening me that I am not aware of what I am doing. I'm afraid David may be sent back and the orphanage may not even accept him back. So where will he end up? Here? He will certainly die."

Addressing the cries that she got special treatment, the soon-to-be mother of three told Winfrey that she went through all the proper legal channels, securing "both oral and written approval" of the adoption. 

"I assure you it doesn' t matter who you are or how much money you have, nothing goes fast in Africa," Madonna said. "There are no adoption laws in Malawi. And I was warned by my social worker that because there were no known laws in Malawi, they were more or less going to have to make them up as we went along. And she did say to me, 'Pick Ethiopia. Go to Kenya. Don't go to Malawi because you're going to get a hard time.'

"I feel like the media is doing a great disservice to all the orphans of Africa, period, not just Malawi, by turning it into such a negative thing."

Madonna explained that David had pneumonia when she first met him, and that she and Ritchie got permission to transport him to a medical clinic, where he was given antibiotics and a bronchial dilator.

"She really wanted to help this little boy [who] had no chance of surviving," said audience member Jody Goldstein of Atlanta, relating the part of the interview in which Madonna said David had also suffered from malaria and tuberculosis while living at the orphanage. The now 13-month-old boy, who was flown to London last week to live with Madonna, Ritchie, 10-year-old Lourdes and six-year-old Rocco, is still recovering from his maladies. 

"It was about her loving her kids and wanting to be a mom," added Robyn Radecker of Indiana.

As for Lourdes and Rocco, who are half-brother and sister, "they just embraced him," Madonna said. "That's the amazing thing about children. They don't ask questions. They've never once said, 'What is he doing here,' or mentioned the difference in his skin color, or questioned his presence in our life. That is an amazing lesson that children do teach us." 

Madonna also revealed that she would be returning to Malawi with David once or twice a year so the boy could see his biological father. Banda is also free to visit David whenever he wants, the Material Mom said.