Some areas of the world are definitely worse than others. For instances, @canadian-coconut's reality is bad, as she described on some posts, but there are even areas where this is more blatant as child protection services actually get a commission out of each child they apprehend in order for interested parties to "adopt".
Human Trafficking tier of bad...
There's still a long way to go in western society, but fortunately these cases aren't so common and severe as in some other countries where law is lawless and buying someone is $2.50