Madonna opens up about Banda adoption

Pop superstar Madonna has opened up about her adoption of Malawian baby David Banda, revealing the series of humiliating tests she underwent -- including being fingerprinted.

"I have been fingerprinted about 20 times and undergone psychological evaluations," the singer, 49, said in an emotional interview on US TV.

"I've been visited every six weeks by social workers who make sure that you're being a good parent and that David's health is thriving and who ask you all kinds of invasive questions.

"We have not even been granted the full adoption - it's supposed to be happening in the next month - so I've been a foster parent for 18 months.

"I don't see how anybody who really understands how complicated it is to adopt a child could say that someone chose to do that as a fad.

"It's just too difficult - too traumatic."

The singer, who celebrates her 50th birthday later this year, has never spoken so frankly about the adoption process she embarked on with husband Guy Ritchie in 2006.

The star, who has released her new album Hard Candy on MySpace four days ahead of schedule, is in New York promoting her documentary about Third World adoption, I Am Because We Are.

And she revealed she is considering working in orphanages in other parts of the world, including Cambodia.

"I grew up as a motherless child," she said, referring to the death of her own mother when she was just five.

"I had a roof over my head and I had food and I had a school to go to. And I still thought that my world was going to collapse on me.

"So how could it be for these children who, most of them having lost both of their parents, having no roof over their head and no food to eat - how horrifying and frightening it must be for them."

The Material Girl also hinted that, like Angelina Jolie, she was preparing to start a "rainbow family". "You know, I'd do it again," she told The Today show. "Because David is amazing. He's brought so much joy to our lives. We love him."