My feelings are, who cares? The child was in desperate need and in an orphanage, and someone wants to adopt him. I personally don't like Madonna, but if she wants to adopt this child, more power to her.
The article states that David's mother died several days after giving birth to him. Think about this - in a third world African country that doesn't have supermarkets on every corner selling baby formula (and hospitals are few and VERY far between), how is a father with a newborn supposed to feed his child?
Two ladies (RNs) from our church went on a short term mission trip to Mali a few months ago. They visited one such orphanage, and there learned that most often these kids are dropped off because their mother has died (or is incapacitated in some way) and the family can't feed them. At these homes, there are surrogate moms who nurse the babies. The families visit and then when the child is weaned a couple years later, the family comes back for him and takes him home.
I think it's entirely plausible that David's father did not want to give him up and saw the orphanage as a temporary solution to his problem, as do many African parents in his situation.
Actually, it does matter.
You see, children are put up for adoption for THEIR sake, not to please an overaged rock star.
In poor African villages, the children are loved by extended families. However, if a mother dies in childbirth or while the child is young, there is no milk and they can't afford formula, so if there is no mother with extra milk to feed the kid, the family will drop it at an orphanage so it won't die of malnutrition.
However, when the child is weaned (at age 3 or 4) and is over the danger period of dying, and can eat meat and solid food, then often the family takes them home.
When I was in Africa, the nuns found that kids raised in orphanages did a lot better if family kept in touch and then took them home.
Foreign adoption is the third choice for such kids. (first is family, second is in country adoption, third is out of country adoption).
Children who have family often still have issues of abandonment (For example, my kids had no parents,but did have an uncle who abused them which is why they were taken away from that uncle. I arranged the visit and reconcilliation because the uncle had found the Lord and stopped drinking...it helped with my son's despair that he was unlovable because the uncle didn't want him)...
It may not be "logical" that a child would resent living in a rich home, but love is more important. And how do you think the kid will feel when he is a teenager and finds he was adopted as a publicity stunt?
Now, do you think a child is better off in an extended family who loves him, or with a narcissitic rock star who will let nannies raise him and will only "care" for him when the press is looking?
I mean, she didn't even stay in the country to make sure he could be adopted. She skedaddled home and let him "come home" with the hired help.