Zoe, why do you say procreate instead of have children?
Whatever the reason for the child's red hair, she's their child. Clearly there are at least two other children in that family who have similar colouring to Maria in Greece. As well as that, the mother says that Maria is hers and that she sold her as she had no money and couldn't cope. Exactly what the Greek Roma family said.
In the last few days a second fair-haired child was removed from a Roma family, amidst suspicions that the family she was with was not her own. This time the child and family were in Ireland. Next thing we knew, the Irish authorities had to do an about-turn, when DNA tests proved she was with her own family and the dark-haired couple were indeed her own parents.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/o ... turned-dnaThis whole scenario opens up one of the biggest untold and hardly-known areas of racial prejudice, against the Roma, the gypsies. They suffer widespread discrimination from so-called "civilised" communities. Western-type civilisation seems to have a complete dislike of them and a determination to treat them as the lowest of the low, almost as outcasts or sub humans. Remember that Hitler sent the gypsies into the gas chamber as well as the Jews.
I for one find this kind of covert racism to be highly objectionable. It's everywhere. There are many Roma who are actually fair-haired. I know that; some are in this area. One characteristic of the Roma is in fact their love of children, and the kind of cynical response that implies that they want children just for begging (which was in I be but of news coverage) simply won't do. It is untrue, and it's racist.
Finally, I am reminded to point out the facts of genetics. Two brown-haired parents can give birth to a fair-haired child if the genotype is autosomal recessive. If the parents are both Bb ( B=Brown, b= blond) then the children can be BB, Bb, or bb. The B gene is the dominant gene, so only the bb children will show as fair-haired, or blond.
Great injustice was done to the gypsy family in Ireland, and it seems very probable that great injustice was done also in Greece. If Maria had spent most of her little life with that family, then they are the parents she knows.
Yes, I know child-selling is wrong, but it doesn't happen only among the Roma. It happens everywhere, sometimes among the wealthiest people, and is it any better because it happens in a Western society to a family with money? Or worse because those involved are among the poorest and the most despised?