Taiwan: Financial woes lead more parents to consider relinquishing children

From the Taiwan News, dateline Taipei, 12.14.2009:

More and more parents have considered putting their children up for adoption over the past five years, mainly because of financial difficulties, a child welfare foundation reported Monday. Nearly 90 percent of the parents who phoned the Child Welfare League Foundation to ask about putting their children up for adoption between 2003-2008 did so due to financial problems, foundation spokesman Chen Ya-hui said, citing statistics compiled by the foundation.

The number of phone calls made to the foundation for this purpose posed a significant 55 percent rise over the past five years, increasing from 495 cases in 2003 to 770 in 2008, according to Chen.

For the first 10 months of this year, the foundation accepted 511 phone calls on the issue, an average of 1.7 calls daily, the statistics show.

Eighty-seven percent of those who made the calls did so because of financial difficulties, representing a remarkable surge from 50 percent in January 2008 to 96 percent in September of the same year, with the percentage reaching 100 percent in January, March and June 2009, according to Chen.

According to data collected by the foundation, another reason for children being given up for adoption was because they were born to underage parents. About 23 percent of children put up for adoption had one parent under the age of 20, Chen said.

FYI, during that same time period, 2003-2008, adoptions from Taiwan to the U.S. rose from 107 to 266, according to the State Department.