China-Sponsored Homeland Tours

From the Financial Times, Adopted Chinese Daughters Seek Their Roots:

We have all seen them: adorable Chinese girls holding the hands of their usually elderly, often overweight, but definitely doting) Caucasian parents, strolling the streets from New York to New South Wales, growing up in a white, white world, far away from the land and culture where they were born.

In some ways, they are a permanent blot on the image of China: surplus daughters
the country couldn’t care for, unintended consequences of the 30-year-old “one-child” policy that led to the abandonment of hundreds of thousands if not millions of female infants at birth. But now, as the balance of global economic and political power shifts subtly in favour of China, Beijing is reaching out to all these lost daughters – and welcoming them back home.

China has invited thousands of foundlings back to their birthplaces for government-sponsored “homeland tours” which, like last year’s Beijing Olympics or next year’s Shanghai World Expo, give the country a chance to show off to the world. On one level, what the Chinese adoption authorities call “root seeking tours” – filled with extravagant expressions of love and kinship and lavish gifts for the returning orphans – are a transparent public relations exercise aimed at raising money for Chinese orphanages, justifying the decision to export surplus children and countering decades of unfair international criticism that Chinese people “hate girls”.

But for the children involved – one of whom is my nine-year-old daughter, Grace Shu Min, who attended a 20-year reunion at her orphanage in March, along with two of her closest orphanage friends – their hometown trip was more like therapy. China put its best foot forward for the returning children (all girls), treating them like celebrities, showering them with presents, laying on magicians and puppet shows, kindness and warmth. It was the kind of mythical homecoming we all hope for – but few can ever achieve.

Elderly? Overweight? Doting? Oh, well, three out of three it is! I can live for that . . . but not for long, considering I'm elderly!

Still, interesting story of the value of homeland tours, sprinkled with snarky and cynical commentary, for those, like me, who like that sort of thing.

UPDATE: Be sure to read Jae Ran Kim's take on this article at Harlow's Monkey.

Beijing's Pets Are Beijing's Children

From China Daily:

Today, China’s capital is a city bustling with domesticated life, whatever shape or form it may take.

The “pet craze” in China’s major cities harkens back to the nineties, when pets became more popular among an increasingly affluent Chinese middle class. The once ubiquitous Pekingese dogs on city streets have been replaced by many exotic breeds, and species.

Among these pets on walks is Laifu, a big pot-bellied pig that lives in a high end district of Beijing.

[Li: His given name is “Laifu”, his nickname is “Handsome”, his courtesy name is “Smelly”.]

To his owner, he is a pampered and perfect child, and to him, his owner is his mother. For her child, his mother wants only the best. She hired a couple from Henan who had experience raising pigs to be Laifu’s nannies, who feed him as much as he wants to eat.

* * *

The booming pet industry in China is attributed to many social changes including the everyday stress in an increasingly competitive urban environment, the one-child family planning policy, a growing aging population, and improved living standards.

Click to watch the video. It's a hoot!

Have you REALLY told her she's adopted?

In the old days, social workers advised adoptive parents to keep the adoption a secret. The conventional wisdom today is that children need to be told they were adopted. So we adoptive parents, a bunch of eager-to-be-perfect parents!, comply. Or do we?

I hear it from so many adoptive parents -- "Of course, she knows she's adopted." But as we continue to talk, it is revealed that she doesn't know she grew in someone else's tummy. She doesn't know she lost her first family before she acquired her adoptive family. She's never heard the phrase, "birth mother" or "first mother" or "tummy lady" or "China mom."

All she knows is that she was born in China, that nannies took care of her until her forever family came and "adopted" her. You could have easily told her you "kerflummoxed" her, or "askewlated" her, or "droomextruded" her. These are just as much gobbledygook as "adopted" is, unless you REALLY define it.

And defining adoption requires TWO parts: 1) yes, the easy part for adoptive parents, that new parents made her part of their family and it is permanent; AND 2) the part that happened before adoptive parents entered the scene, the fact that she was born from and to another woman, who relinquished her.

Every child is different, and they are ready for more information at different ages. But I think it's never too early to tell them THEIR story, starting before birth -- "you grew like a flower in your birth mother's tummy until it was time for you to be born." There are lots of advantages to saying this earlier rather than later.

First, it gives us practice in saying "birth mother" or "tummy lady" or whatever words we decide to use. For some adoptive parents, especially those who suffered through infertility before adopting, it might be difficult to talk about. Starting by saying it to your child in infancy gives you the chance to mess up or choke up or tear up when it doesn't matter, and be more comfortable when your child is aware of what you're saying.

Second, it makes it a matter-of-fact thing, without baggage for anyone. Some parents seem to think they should wait to explain about birth parents until children can understand ALL aspects, including reasons for relinquishment, issues like abandonment and one child policies and social preferences for boys, and poverty and disability and war . . . . Sheesh, if you waited for all that, the child would be an adult! And if you've waited, no wonder you're scared to introduce the concept of birth parents! But by waiting, you take the risk that someone else will get to tell her. Not what you really want, is it?

Third, it gives our children the vocabulary they need to ask us more questions when they are ready. I've had adoptive parents tell me their child isn't interested at all in her birth parents, that she never asks anything about them. And then it turns out that they've never really explained adoption to include birth parents. No wonder she isn't asking any questions!

So have you REALLY told her she's adopted?

Two articles on one child policy from China Daily

From Saturday, Shift in family planning policy controversial:

When Lin Xu, an office worker, crams himself into a tight suffocating bus every morning, sometimes with his face pressed against a window, he can't see what could possibly be wrong with China's one-child policy.

The family-planning policy was introduced in the 1970s to encourage late marriages and late childbearing. It limited most urban couples to one child and most rural couples to two children. It is estimated that without the policy, the country's population would have ballooned by 400 million more than the current 1.3 billion, according to the National Population and Family Planning Commission.

But there is a price to pay. Recently, the aging workforce and its social problems have forced Shanghai into allowing eligible couples to have two children, a move that has triggered widespread speculation of a policy shift.

China's family-planning authority refused to make comments on the prospect of a policy shift, but some scholars are advocating change.

* * *

But Lin Xu doesn't care. Lin, a single-child at 25, interpreted the shrinking workforce as "less competition, hence more job opportunities and higher income."

"Chinese are used to dividing everything by 1.3 billion, and feel the pinch of everything 'per capita'," said [Professor of Social Sciences] Wang Guangzhou.

From Tuesday, Loss of a child sends families into crisis:

It has been eight years since her only daughter died, but Ke Bin still cannot talk about her "beautiful girl" in the past tense. "It is her 28th birthday this year," said the heartbroken mother as she stared into the midday sky above Shanghai.

Ke is 57 and one of a growing number of Chinese parents who have become unfortunate victims of the side effects of the country's one-child rule. She said she not only lost a daughter, but also her future.

Outliving a child is an unbearable prospect for parents over the age of 45 like Ke, the first generation subject to a family planning policy written three decades ago, as they must contemplate a life without the one person they would have traditionally relied on for emotional and financial support.

Adoption Goes to School ALREADY

I can't say that I'm surprised that Zoe is already drawing and writing about her birth family at school. Yesterday she only had a half-day, but today was a full day of school and the teacher gave them free time to draw.

Zoe sits at a cluster of desks with three other students, and when she drew her birth parents, the kids were all curious and asked, "So this is what your birth parents look like?!" (Like quasi-stick-figures would somehow capture that!). Zoe corrected them, "No, this is what I THINK my birth parents look like." That's why she wrote "THINK" in capitals and dark ink after she drew the picture. (And notice that her birth parents have glasses, as usual. She's convinced they have them since she does. And also notice that they are smiling -- she draws them with tears on their faces most of the time, since she thinks they are sad and missing her.)

On the back of the paper, she also made the "What I think/What I know" distinction, which I think is great. We are always talking about what we know and what we don't know, and what we think or what we guess; I'm glad to see that it's been making an impression. She's beginning to see what is fantasy and what is reality when it comes to her birth family. And she's come a long way from when she was so frustrated by what we didn't know that she couldn't get past that to do any imaginary thinking.

She's never before shared with me the I Think: "I think my birthparents had more children that went to orphanages. They look like me." We've talked about the fact that she MIGHT have siblings in China, that her birth parents might have had a child before they had her, that they might have felt they needed to have a boy child. But we've never talked about the possibility that other siblings might have ended up in the orphanage.

I wonder where that's coming from. It's true, of course. We've all heard of such cases of multiple girl children being abandoned, one at a time, as the family tries for the boy they think they need. I don't know if Zoe has figured that out on her own, or whether it's an idea that comforts her -- it has been disturbing for her to think her birth parents kept some children, but relinquished her. We'll be talking more about this in the days to come!

Zoe showed her teacher her drawing and writing, and she simply said, "Thank you for sharing that with me." No shock, no intrusive questions, no instructions not to think or to think in a different way about her birth parents. Good answer!

Huge costs of raising sons force Chinese parents to pray for daughters

From the Taiwan Sun, dateline Shanghai. a story with a promising premise, that on closer reading has "ick" written all over it:

Turning their backs on the age old tradition, expectant Chinese parents have begun to hope for a daughter rather than a son, considering the huge costs involved in raising a boy.

China's one-child policy has produced a calamitous glut of men. The country has 32 million more young men than women, a situation that is already leading to an increase in prostitution and sex crimes.

However, in the country's enormous cities, the huge cost of raising a son has meant that for many families, daughters now make more economic sense. In Shanghai,
government researchers questioned almost 3,500 prospective parents. Of those,
more than 12 per cent said they were hoping for a boy, while more than 15 per
cent wanted a girl, the Telegraph reports.

In most marriages, it is the son's family, which is required to buy a house for the couple - a ruinous expense in many cities. "I want my child to be a girl. Although I prefer boys, there are endless things to worry about, such as finding him a good school, helping him get a good job, and buying a house and a car for him. It's just too much trouble," said Yang Min, 32, an expectant mother.

Li Qian, a 27-year-old secretary in a private bank, said the economic crisis had left parents with sons having to provide for two families, their own and their children's. "Many would-be parents want to have daughters to reduce their financial burden. Girls can marry rich husbands," she said.

Summer Re-Runs: The adoption story

We're nearing the blog's one-year anniversary, and I'm feeling a little nostalgic. I thought I'd re-run some early posts while we're on vacation! If you come here looking for more than pretty pictures, I hope this will satisfy your appetite! And if you're new to the blog, it'll give you an idea of where we started.

The adoption story, August 15, 2008

The adoption story we tell always starts like this: "You grew like a flower in your birthmother's tummy until it was time to be born. Your birthparents couldn't take care of you, so . . . . " (I can't take credit for the "you grew like a flower" line -- it comes from one of our favorite books,
Over the Moon, by Karen Katz. I love to use stories to discuss "issues" with my kids!).

Well, for the first time, in June, Zoe asked WHY -- "WHY couldn't my birth parents take care of me?"

Like most of these things, the question came out of the blue -- we had just come home from somewhere, and Zoe and Maya had immediately fallen to the floor of the family room to play "Warriors," a game involving a cadre of knights and Polly Pockets standing in for the princesses. I followed into the family room a bit more slowly, and Zoe looked up at me and asked the WHY question.

I admit, I was surprised. We talk about her birthparents fairly often, she is sad that we don't know who they are, but she's accepted the "couldn't take care of you" line for years without question. But I guess it was about time. From what I've read, age 7 is a pretty common age for that big question.

I answered, "Well, sweetie, since we can't ask your birthparents, we really can't know exactly why they weren't able to take care of you the way a parent would want to. We can only make some guesses based on what we know about China. Do you want to look at your lifebook, and talk about what some of the reasons might be?"

(I'm a HUGE proponent of lifebooks -- more about them later, but look at Beth O'Malley's site for the BEST info about lifebooks.)

Zoe said yes, so we pulled out her lifebook and talked about China's one child policy and the social preference for boys. Zoe didn't have much reaction, but I knew we were no where near finished talking about this!

Family Planning Officials in China Forced Parents to Give Children to Orphanage

Shanghai Daily reports:

An orphanage in southwest China has been accused of taking children away from parents who can't afford fines for violating family planning policy and sending the kids overseas for adoption.The orphanage was reportedly earning US$3,000 for each child placed with a foreign family.

The allegations involve family planning officials in Zhenyuan County, Guizhou Province. They demanded that parents who violated childbirth regulations pay 10,000 yuan (US$1,460) for each extra offspring, according to Nanfang Metropolis Daily. Those who couldn't afford the fine were ordered to give their child to a local orphanage, the paper said.

Lu Xiande, a farmer in Zhenyuan, had his fourth daughter taken by the orphanage in June 2004, according to the report.Lu's daughter was born in February 2003. A family planning official identified as Shi Guangying approached Lu's wife, Yang Shuiying, and told her that the government would take her daughter because she couldn't pay the fine, the paper said.

Shi told the newspaper that the taking of the child was in line with county policies. Several other local residents reported similar experiences, the newspaper said.The orphanage was funneling the children into China's system for foreign adoptions, the paper reported.

The fact that this is reported in a Chinese newspaper seems HUGE. Shanghai Daily is "supervised by the Foreign Publicity Office of the Shanghai CPC Committee and the Press Office of the Shanghai Municipal Government," so this is Chinese Government-sanctioned news. I wonder why they are willing to publish to the world this story. . . .

UPDATE 7/02, 7:50 p.m.: Brian Stuy has a post up at research-china.org with some additional information, including info about the adoptive parent who helped uncover the story, and links to a variety of media reports. Brian also says he's hopeful that an English translation of the original, lengthy article quoted in the Shanghai Daily report will be available soon. I found this blog last night (early this morning!) when I was trying to check out the Shanghai Daily report, and it appears to be a bad English translation of a lengthy article, if you want to pick through it to try to understand!

Brian also reports the only potential bright spot here: "[T]he orphanage made no attempt to disguise the origin of these children -- the adoption paperwork lists the finding location as the birth parent's home. Thus many of Zhenyuan's adoptive parents have been given a direct line to their child's birth family."

"Girls are inferior . . . "

I wish I had kept track from the beginning of how many "they hate girls in China" and/or "your girls are so lucky" and/or "how much did it cost?" conversations I've had since coming home in 2001 with Zoe. How many times? I'd guess 3-4 times a month for 8 years. So maybe 300 times?

My latest was when waiting to pick up Zoe and her friends from China camp earlier this week. A Chinese grandfather waiting to pick up his grandson struck up a conversation -- I had Maya with me. He was an interesting gentleman. He told me about leaving China for Indonesia in 1950, after the Communists came to power. He was 15. He then emigrated to the U.S. in 1998 after anti-Chinese riots in Indonesia -- his son was already living here.

Then he wanted to talk about Maya, was she adopted from China? Was I her grandmother (!) or her mother? Gee, thanks! And then he asked the "how much did it cost" question. Yes, it is very expensive because you are paying many people to work for you to make the adoption legal, I answer.

He then proceeded to tell me everything he knew about adoption from China, starting with, "They think girls are inferior in China." I don't think Maya knows what inferior means, but I answered as if she did: Yes, in some parts of China that is true. But it is a changing attitude. We were lucky enough to live in China for part of 2007, and everyone we knew there loved girls.

He then told me about being at the White Swan Hotel one time and being so surprised to see all the married couples with Chinese babies, and not understanding what was going on. He asked them, and was delighted to meet all these good-hearted people. And he thought -- say it with me! -- that the babies were so lucky. I trotted out my usual answer, "No, we're the lucky ones."

I wasn't surprised to be having the conversation. I've found that Chinese in China and Chinese in America are no more likely to know about international adoption than anyone else. People in China were more likely to identify the "girls are inferior" attitude to the countryside, while Chinese in America seem to consider it the attitude in all of China, as do non-Chinese Americans.

No, I wasn't surprised. But wouldn't it be nice if we never had to have that conversation again?!

China's Excess Males, Bride Prices & the Commodification of Women

In response to this Wall Street Journal article about the male/female ratio in China leading to high bride prices, and scams by runaway brides stealing the bride price:

Thanks to its 30-year-old population-planning policy and customary preference for boys, China has one of the largest male-to-female ratios in the world. Using data from the 2005 China census — the most recent — a study published in last month's British Journal of Medicine estimates there was a surplus of 32 million males under the age of 20 at the time the census was taken. That's roughly the size of Canada's population.

Now some of these men have reached marriageable age, resulting in intense competition for spouses, especially in rural areas. It also appears to have caused a sharp spike in bride prices and betrothal gifts. The higher prices are even found in big cities such as Tianjin.

A study by Columbia University economist Shang-Jin Wei found that some areas in China with a high proportion of males have an above-average savings rate, even after accounting for factors such as education levels, income and life-expectancy rates. Areas with more men than women, the study notes, also have low spending rates — suggesting that many rural Chinese may be saving up for bride prices.

Blogger Kenneth Anderson writes:

[As] a moderate libertarian . . . my operating assumption has generally been that a shortage of females in a suitable place . . . would mean that women would be able to command a suitably high marriage price, and contract for favorable plural marriage conditions. . . . . Exposure to the wider world, however, has left me persuaded that abstract libertarianism must sometimes give way to the realities of cultures and actual conditions. My view today is that - drawing on conversations with [demographer Nicholas] Eberstadt - it was far more historically common, and almost certainly the more common direction of things today, that in a world with scarcity of women - especially in a world of scarcity of females and yet a cultural preference for male births - the result would be increased treatment of women as property. More valuable property, yes, but increasingly as property precisely as the perception of its value increased.

I, too, had speculated that the scarcity of women in China might give them more bargaining power. I've also thought that Confucian barriers to marriage (not knowing their family history or blood line) would disappear for orphanage girls as women became a scarce commodity. But I wonder if Anderson has the better of the argument -- increased commodification of women will further disadvantage them. Certainly we've seen one side effect in China already, women kidnapped and forced into marriage (remember the moving scenes from Lisa Ling's National Geographic documentary China's Lost Girls? (BTW, did you know that the Laura Ling who is being held in North Korea and tried as a spy is Lisa Ling's sister?)).

Anderson cites one book, Bare Branches: The Security Implications of Asia's Surplus Male Population, by Valerie M. Hudson & Andrea M. den Boer, that is immediately going on my reading list!

Adoption Book List

OK, here's my ultimate adoption book list! I've mentioned that I'm pretty OCD about adoption books for kids, right? Well, we actually own all of these books, which is completely ridiculous.

I thought it might be helpful to try to categorize them. I tried to come up with all the possible adoption topics, and then arranged the books accordingly. A lot of these topics are only mentioned, and if mentioned, I've included it. I've put a star if I think a book has done a particularly good job. Also, I've only put a hot-link the first time I mentioned the book, so if you see one under a heading that interests you, look up the list and you'll find a link to it.

Have fun! Tell us about your favorites, and let me know if you've got something that belongs on the list!

Children's Books About Adoption

Birth
The Mulberry Bird
Three Names of Me
Mommy Far, Mommy Near
Kids Like Me in China
All About Adoption
Over the Moon
Before I Met You
Let’s Talk About It: Adoption
Tell Me Again About the Night I Was Born
Made in China: A Story of Adoption
How I Was Adopted
Never Never Never Will She Stop Loving You
Did My First Mother Love Me?
An Mei's Strange and Wondrous Journey
Twice-Upon-a-Time: Born and Adopted *

Birth Parents

General
The Best Single Mom in the World
Three Names of Me
Mommy Far, Mommy Near *
I Love You Like Crazy Cakes
Kids Like Me in China
All About Adoption
Over the Moon *
Before I Met You
Let’s Talk About It: Adoption
Tell Me Again About the Night I Was Born
My Family is Forever
When You Were Born in China
Made in China: A Story of Adoption
How I Was Adopted
Adoption Is For Always
The Whole Me
You’re Not My REAL Mother!
We Adopted You, Benjamin Koo
Never Never Never Will She Stop Loving You
Did My First Mother Love Me?
I Wished For You Motherbridge of Love
At Home in This World
Every Year on Your Birthday

Twice Upon-a-Time

Grief
The Mulberry Bird *
Before I Met You
Never Never Never Will She Stop Loving You

Loss
The Mulberry Bird
Never Never Never Will She Stop Loving You
Did My First Mother Love Me?

Love
The Best Single Mom in the World
The Mulberry Bird
Mommy Far, Mommy Near
When You Were Born in China
Made in China: A Story of Adoption
Adoption Is For Always
Never Never Never Will She Stop Loving You *
Did My First Mother Love Me?
Motherbridge of Love

Birth Siblings
Kids Like Me in China
We Adopted You, Benjamin Koo *
At Home in this World *

Placement Reasons

General
The Best Single Mom in the World
Kids Like Me in China *
All About Adoption
Over the Moon
Made in China: A Story of Adoption
Adoption Is For Always
The Whole Me
Did My First Mother Love Me?
At Home in this World

Too Young
The Mulberry Bird *
Tell Me Again About the Night I Was Born
Adoption Is For Always

Twice Upon-a-Time
Never Never Never Will She Stop Loving You

Single Parenthood
The Mulberry Bird *

Twice Upon-a-Time

When You Were Born in China
Adoption Is For Always
Never Never Never Will She Stop Loving You

Homelessness
The Mulberry Bird

Poverty
When You Were Born in China

Child’s Illness/Disability
Kids Like Me in China
When You Were Born in China

Death/Illness/Disability of Parent
Before I Met You
At Home in this World
Horace

One Child Policy
Three Names of Me
Mommy Far, Mommy Near
Kids Like Me in China *
Before I Met You
When You Were Born in China *
At Home in this World *

Social Preference for Boys
Kids Like Me in China *
Before I Met You
When You Were Born in China
At Home in this World

Abandonment (Method of Placement)
Kids Like Me in China
An Mei's Strange and Wondrous Journey *
Before I Met You *

We Adopted You, Benjamin Koo
At Home in this World

Post-Placement Care

Orphanage
Three Names of Me
Mommy Far, Mommy Near
I Love You Like Crazy Cakes *
Our Baby From China
Kids Like Me in China *
All About Adoption
Before I Met You *
White Swan Express
Mama’s Wish/Daughter’s Wish
We Adopted You, Benjamin Koo
At Home in this World

A Quilt of Wishes
Every Year on Your Birthday

Foster Family
All About Adoption
Over the Moon *
Before I Met You
The Whole Me *

Twice Upon-a-Time
Emma’s Yucky Brother
At Home in this World

Adoptive Parents

Reasons for Adoption

General
The Best Single Mom in the World *
Mommy Far, Mommy Near
A Blessing From Above
I Love You Like Crazy Cakes
Our Baby From China
Let’s Talk About It: Adoption
Horace
Mama’s Wish/Daughter’s Wish
My Family is Forever
How I Was Adopted
I Wished For You
Motherbridge of Love

Infertility
Mommy Far, Mommy Near
Tell Me Again About the Night I Was Born *

Screening/Application

General
I Love You Like Crazy Cakes
Mama’s Wish/Daughter’s Wish

Agency
The Best Single Mom in the World *
All About Adoption
My Family is Forever
How I Was Adopted
Adoption Is For Always

Social Worker
The Mulberry Bird
All About Adoption *
The Whole Me
Emma’s Yucky Brother
We Adopted You, Benjamin Koo

Waiting/Preparing
Happy Adoption Day
The Mulberry Bird
Mommy Far, Mommy Near
All About Adoption
Over the Moon *
Mama’s Wish/Daughter’s Wish
My Family is Forever
I Wished For You
A Quilt of Wishes *
Twice Upon-a-Time

Referral/The Call
Happy Adoption Day
The Best Single Mom in the World
Mommy Far, Mommy Near
I Love You Like Crazy Cakes
Through Moon and Stars and Night Skies
Our Baby From China
All About Adoption
Tell Me Again About the Night I Was Born *
Mama’s Wish/Daughter’s Wish
How I Was Adopted
We Adopted You, Benjamin Koo
I Wished For You
Over the Moon *

Travel
Happy Adoption Day
The Best Single Mom in the World
I Love You Like Crazy Cakes
Our Baby From China
Over the Moon
White Swan Express *
Tell Me Again About the Night I Was Born
Mama’s Wish/Daughter’s Wish
My Family is Forever
We Adopted You, Benjamin Koo

First Meeting
The Best Single Mom in the World
Three Names of Me
Mommy Far, Mommy Near
I Love You Like Crazy Cakes *
Through Moon and Stars and Night Skies *
Our Baby From China
All About Adoption
Over the Moon
White Swan Express
Tell Me Again About the Night I Was Born
Mama’s Wish/Daughter’s Wish
My Family is Forever
How I Was Adopted
Adoption Is For Always
We Adopted You, Benjamin Koo
I Wished For You
An Mei's Strange and Wondrous Journey (meeting dad)

Returning Home
Happy Adoption Day
Three Names of Me
I Love You Like Crazy Cakes
Through Moon and Stars and Night Skies *
Our Baby From China
Over the Moon
White Swan Express
Tell Me Again About the Night I Was Born
Mama’s Wish/Daughter’s Wish
How I Was Adopted
An Mei's Strange and Wondrous Journey *

Meaning of Adoption/Permanence
Mommy Far, Mommy Near *
All About Adoption
Adoption Is For Always *
We Adopted You, Benjamin Koo

Adopted Child

Adoptee’s Feelings

Desire/Need for family
A Mother For Choco
Little Miss Spider
Through Moon and Stars and Night Skies *
Let’s Talk About It: Adoption
Mama’s Wish/Daughter’s Wish

Happiness
The Best Single Mom in the World
The Mulberry Bird
Three Names of Me *
We See the Moon
Mama’s Wish/Daughter’s Wish

Sadness
The Mulberry Bird
Three Names of Me
Mommy Far, Mommy Near
Before I Met You *
Let’s Talk About It: Adoption
The Whole Me
Adoption Is For Always
We Adopted You, Benjamin Koo

Confusion/Nervousness/Fear
The Mulberry Bird
Through Moon and Stars and Night Skies *
All About Adoption
Before I Met You *
The Whole Me
Adoption Is For Always
Emma’s Yucky Brother *
We Adopted You, Benjamin Koo
At Home in this World

Loss
The Mulberry Bird
Three Names of Me
We See the Moon *
Kids Like Me in China *
All About Adoption
Before I Met You

Anger

Lucy's Feet
The Mulberry Bird
All About Adoption
Before I Met You
Adoption Is For Always
We Adopted You, Benjamin Koo *

Questions/Curiosity about Birth Family
The Mulberry Bird
An Mei's Strange and Wondrous Journey
At Home in this World *
Three Names of Me *
We See the Moon *
Kids Like Me in China
All About Adoption
Before I Met You
Let’s Talk About It: Adoption
My Family is Forever
Adoption Is For Always
The Whole Me
We Adopted You, Benjamin Koo

Search for Birth Family
OwlCat
The Great Call of China (young adult book)

Non-Traditional Families/Adoption

Trans-Racial

Lucy's Family Tree *
A Mother For Choco *
Little Miss Spider
Horace
OwlCat
A Blessing From Above
Chinese Eyes
I Don’t Have Your Eyes
You’re Not My REAL Mother!
Happy Adoption Day
Three Names of Me *
Kids Like Me in China *
All About Adoption

An American Face *
Made in China: A Story of Adoption
We Adopted You, Benjamin Koo *
I Wished For You
Motherbridge of Love

At Home in this World
Every Year on Your Birthday

Single

The Little Green Goose (single dad)
I Love You Like Crazy Cakes *
White Swan Express
The Best Single Mom in the Whole World *
A Blessing From Above
White Swan Express
Mama’s Wish/Daughter’s Wish
I Wished For You
Motherbridge of Love

Gay/Lesbian
White Swan Express

Non-Infant Adoption
Through Moon and Stars and Night Skies *
All About Adoption
The Whole Me
Emma’s Yucky Brother *

Siblings, Adopted and Bio

Waiting for May *
Made in China: A Story of Adoption
A New Barker in the House
Emma’s Yucky Brother
We Adopted You, Benjamin Koo
My Mei Mei *

China's Stolen Boys

From NBC Nightly News tonight:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

"China's Excess Males"

The British Medical Journal has published the results of a study done by two Chinese scholars. The study confirmed the widely-reported fact that there are more males than females in China, and analyzed the disparity among various age cohorts.

One of the most interesting facts reported was on the gender skew based on birth order:

The sex ratio at birth for first order births was slightly high in cities and towns but was within normal limits in rural areas. However, the ratio rose very steeply for second and higher order births in cities 138 (132 to 144), towns 137 (131 to 143), and rural areas 146 (143 to 149), although the numbers of second order births in cities were low. These rises were consistent across all provinces, except Tibet, with very high figures for second births in Anhui (190, 176 to 205) and Jiangsu (192, 174 to 212). For third births, the sex ratio rose to over 200 in four provinces, although third births accounted for only 4.3% of the total.

The researchers have concluded tentatively that sex-selective abortion, though illegal in China, is likely the cause of the sex imbalance. They think that it is sex-selective abortion, rather than unregistered girls, that skew the figures, and that sex-selective abortion is also the culprit in the skew in second births:

[T]he dramatic increase in sex ratio with second births that our data document, shows that couples are selecting to ensure a boy, the so called "at least one son practice." In urban areas where few couples are allowed a second child, the high sex ratio for first order births (110, 95% confidence interval 107 to 113) suggests some sex selection occurring with the only child. This pattern of dramatic increases in sex ratios for second children is not unique to China. In both South Korea and parts of India, where overall sex ratios are high, the sex ratio increases dramatically for second and higher order births, which has been attributed to sex selective abortion, as couples try to ensure the birth of male offspring while limiting their family size.

The researchers also conclude that provinces which allow couples a second child after a girl -- rather than provinces that strictly limit families to one child or provinces that don't enforce the one child policy -- result in the highest sex ratios for second order births and the overall highest sex ratios.

Interesting to see hard figures to support what many have reported anecdotally. And it's an important part of the story for abandoned Chinese girls, since second daughters are more likely to be abandoned than are first daughters. It looks like they are far less likely to be born in the first place.

I've long wondered whether the reported gender skews in China were taking into account unregistered girls, so it was good to see a study that corrected for that phenomenon, but it's still unclear whether children in SWIs are counted in census surveys. Are they "unregistered?" Anyone have any specific information about whether they are being counted?

Don't Want to be Born a Rural Child

Interesting opinion piece in China Daily, highlighting the economic divide between rural and urban families in China, recounting a trip to Fujian Province with the author's young daughter:

The elementary school in the village was built with donations from an overseas Chinese originally from the area, with only three teachers and 25 first and second graders. Other graders have to attend schools in another village or town.

Though tuition is only a couple of hundred yuan, most village children have to drop out either after elementary school or junior middle school because of poor academic performance or because their families are too poor to support several children in school at the same time.

In the villages we visited, many 15- and 16-year-olds have already left home to work in cities. Many women in their early 20s have already become mothers, some to two or three babies.

The village has no Internet access, making us urban folks addicted to life in cyber
space feeling totally isolated from the rest of the world.

After doing a bit of calculation, both of us believe that an urban child, like my daughter, would spend more in a day than what a rural family of three earns by picking tealeaves for 12 hours.

And the entire sum of money spent on 50 village students would be much less than the amount earmarked for a student in a top middle school in Shanghai.

A lack of education and other resources simply means that rural children are left behind since the day they are born.

Growing Up in China

From USA Today:

GUANGZHOU, China — The White Swan is empty. The five-star hotel here that
historically has housed American couples looking to adopt Chinese babies now only sees a slow trickle of would-be foster [sic] parents after the Chinese adopted a raft of stricter rules a few years back. The cribs and baby strollers the hotel lends out sit idle. The tables in its 1980s-era lounge overlooking the Pearl River are gloomily vacant.

None of this bodes well for American couples looking to adopt here, but it highlights the progress China has made as social mores here shift for the better.

Since 1989, China has sent more orphans — over 70,000 — to the United States than any other country. American couples flock here because its system is far smoother and more transparent than most. And China's one-child policy has resulted in millions of baby girls left abandoned, not to mention millions more aborted. The likelihood that your adopted girl is an actual orphan and does not suffer from, say, prenatal alcohol syndrome, is greater in China than most places. And let's face it, Chinese babies are cute — something the authorities here play up. (Why else would they pick a cute girl to lip-sync the Chinese national anthem at the Olympics?) But adoptions are down dramatically, as a result of the restrictions imposed in 2007: just fewer than 4,000 Chinese babies were adopted by American couples last year, about half the total in 2005.

Much is fair game to disqualify prospective parents: Age (nobody under 30), marital history and sexual orientation all matter now. Even issues of health — being overweight or taking antidepressants — can nix a couple's application. That has Americans frustrated.

* * *

But China's new adoption rules, while onerous, simply reflect its evolution into a more modern society. After all, Beijing is well within its right to decide its own rules and weed out unhealthy parents. Why shouldn't it try to prevent its orphans from inhaling secondhand smoke? China also appears to be relaxing its laws on the number of children Chinese families can have. . .
.

As income levels in China rise, more couples are just breaking the one-child policy and paying the fine (about $5,000). Adoptions by Chinese couples are up. And social attitudes are evolving, too, resulting in fewer parents discarding their daughters. Half the Sky Foundation, a U.S.-based nonprofit, reports that fewer healthy babies are entering its orphanages in China.

Of course, data are difficult to verify, but these anecdotal trends are positive. What's more, the notion of American foster [sic] parents rescuing abandoned orphans from Dickensian state-run institutions, while romantic, may be somewhat overblown. "Unfortunately, this story is largely fiction," E.J. Graff of Brandeis University wrote recently in Foreign Policy.

Most orphans are older than 5, sick or disfigured — not the kind most Westerners want. Think of the baby in the newspaper staring up at readers with a cleft lip.

Even so, it seems unfair: At a time when a California woman makes headlines for giving birth to octuplets, there are thousands of infertile American couples for whom foreign adoption remains their best — and least costly — option for parenthood. Their prospects are only exacerbated by China's tougher regulations.

But it signals good news for Chinese society, which is becoming more welcoming toward its newborn daughters and domestic adoption. Were the White Swan to close, nobody in China would probably mind.

It would be harder to find a more offensive piece highlighting a positive trend, I'd think. Can't wait for this guy to get inundated with hate mail from the parents of cleft-affected children, for example!

Add the internal inconsistencies -- there are fewer children in orphanages, but the reason adoptions are down are because of stricter standards imposed on adoptive parents? Huh? And China is imposing draconian rules to weed out adoptive parents but enticing them with cute girls lip-synching at the Olympics?! Then there are the inaccuracies -- the references to adoptive parents as "foster parents" suggest the author knows little about adoption -- that's pretty basic terminology to screw up.

Then there's the stuff glossed over or deliberately obfuscated -- yes, the Graff article in Foreign Policy debunks the myth of millions of healthy orphan infants waiting for rescue, but she says barely anything about China! Indeed, in talking about this myth, she says quite clearly, "The exception is China." We have a mention here that Half the Sky has seen the numbers decline in its orphanages -- how many orphanages is that exactly?!

I can be pretty hard on adoptive parents with a rescue mentality, or who feel entitled to adopt from China; and I've said before that I'm pleased that trends suggest fewer abandonments and increased domestic adoption in China. Nonetheless, THIS opinion piece is just awful! It's so easy to poke holes in the piece that it does more harm than good to his message that fewer international adoptions from China is a good thing (a sentiment I largely agree with!).

Not Funny

Usually, the Onion is a hoot, but this story isn't funny at all -- it actually makes me cry:

Son, It's Time We Have A Talk About Where Babies Go

Now, Xiu, you're getting to be a really big boy, and I know you've been asking a lot of questions about Mommy and why she's been so sad lately. Well, your mom and I have been talking and we think you're finally old enough to learn where babies—where babies go.

No, the stork doesn't take them away, Xiu. Please, son, just listen to Daddy, okay? Do you remember when Mommy had a big tummy? Yes, you put your ear next to it, that's right. Now, do you also remember around that time, when that letter came in the mail? The one Daddy ripped up and threw all over the ground? And Xiu, a few months after that, do you remember that man—that tall man in the shiny coat? He came to our door and there was all that screaming?

No, he's not where the babies go, either. Not exactly. Please Xiu, just wait a second…. It's a little more complicated than that.

You see, when a mommy and daddy love each other very much, but they're being pressured by the People's Republic of China and they have nowhere else to turn, sometimes they will walk miles away to a place where nobody knows who they are, and they'll—wait, no. Hold on. Let's start over. Can Daddy just think for a moment here?

Play with your toys for a bit. Why don't you take out Mr. Bear and Mrs. Giraffe and play with them for a little while? It's all right, Daddy's okay. He just needs to go splash some cold water on his face.

Okay, this might make more sense. You know how sometimes I complain about there being too many toys in your room, and how I say that they're making a mess, and in order to not make such a mess, you might need to throw some of your toys out? Well, China is kind of like that, too. What's that? You're right, I've never told you to throw any of your toys away. Because that would be very mean—yes—you're right. Xiu, my son, please don't cry. None of your toys will have to be thrown out.
Nobody should have to get rid of anything they love.

* * *

How can I—you're so young and so ...You know what? It's the stork. The babies go with the stork, Xiu. Giant storks come and take the babies away and that's where they go. Make sense? Good.

I'm not even sure it was intended to be funny -- it strikes me instead as one of the most trenchant criticisms of the one child policy I've heard in years.

Higher Fines for Violation of One-Child Policy

From China Daily last month:

Beijing authorities will also introduce measures later this year that include greater penalties for those who break family planning rules requiring most couples to have one child.

"As the public feels strongly against those who have more children just because they can afford to pay the fines, we are thinking of collecting much higher social maintenance fees from those who go against the policy," Deng said.

In Beijing, the fine for those who break family planning rules is computed based on the average income per capita, usually about three to eight times of that figure. The per capita income in the capital was 24,725 yuan ($3,600) for urban residents and 10,747 yuan for rural residents last year, official figures showed.

To date, Guangdong and Hubei provinces have taken the lead in the country to impose expensive fines on violators of family planning rules. In 2007, an entrepreneur from Xiaochang county of Hubei was fined 760,000 yuan for having a second child.

The article also quotes Deng Xingzhou, chief of Beijing's family planning commission, as saying that "family planning as a fundamental national policy will exist for another 20 years."

One Child Policy, Research Ethics, and the Undoing of a China Scholar

Several readers have pointed me to a fascinating article by Steven Mosher that paints a vivid picture of how China's one child policy impacts lives, apparently updating work he did in a rural Guangdong village in the early 80s. I became increasingly fascinated by the story of Steven Mosher, the scholar, a figure with in ambiguous background. Maybe that's because I'm a scholar. But in digging into it, I learned tidbits about China that I thought were worth passing on.

In any event, the article starts like this:

Li Aihai, happily married and the mother of a 2½-year-old girl, had a problem.
She was four months pregnant with her second child. Sihui county family-planning officials had come to her home and told her what she alreadyknew: She had gotten pregnant too soon. She hadn’t waited until her daughter was four years old, as Chinese law required of rural couples. The officials assured her that, because her first child had been a girl, she would eventually be allowed a second child. But they were equally insistent that she would have to abort this one. It was January 2000.

She pleaded that she had not intended to get pregnant. She was still wearing the IUD that they had implanted in her after the birth of her first child, as the law required. They were unsympathetic. Report to the family-planning clinic tomorrow morning, they told her. We’ll be expecting you.

Aihai had other plans. Leaving her little daughter in the care of her husband, she quietly packed her things and went to stay with relatives in a neighboring county. She would hide until she brought her baby safely into the world. Childbirth-on-the-run, it was called. When the county family-planning officials discovered that Aihai had disappeared, they began arresting her relatives. . . .

The officials descended on the village with a wrecking crew armed with crowbars and jackhammers. These fell upon Aihai’s home like a horde of angry locusts. They shattered her living-room and bedroom furniture. They ripped window frames out of walls and doors off of hinges. Then the jackhammers began to pound, shattering the brick walls, and knocking great holes in the cement roof and floors. . . .

Aihai came back to find her family in prison, her home destroyed, and family-planning officials furious that she had thwarted their will. . . .

If you want your relatives released, they now told Aihai, you must pay a fine of 17,000 Renminbi (about $2,000). . . .

No sooner had she paid one fine than she was told she owed another, if she wanted to regularize her son’s status. He was currently a “black child,” family-planning officials explained to her. Because he was conceived outside of the family-planning law, he did not exist in the eyes of the state.

I've heard similar stories, as I'm sure many of you have as well. I have no reason to doubt the truth of the stories recounted in the article, though they probably don't paint a picture that is universally true, but the kernal of truth is why I'm sharing it. But I feel I have to add a caveat about the author and his research methods.

According to the website of the Population Research Institute, of which he is the president, Mosher "is widely recognized as one of the world's leading authorities on the population question. His writings demonstrate that overpopulation is a myth, and that the efforts of population controllers to reduce human numbers have led to massive human rights abuses and undermined the health of women and children." OK, I absolutely agree that population control policies in China and elsewhere have led to massive human rights abuses (and that seems a remarkably clinical description of some of the cruelties of the policies). Forced abortions, forced birth control, forced sterilizations, even the basic role of government in controlling the reproductive lives of women is anathema to me. But "overpopulation is a myth?" Not sure I buy that. And if his writings do, in fact, demonstrate that, it isn't evident in the writings on the website which I have perused fairly carefully.

So what about his educational background? What makes him "one of the world's leading authorities on the population question?" The website says he was "the first American social scientist to live in rural China in 1979-80," but it doesn't say what kind of social scientist he is. In digging into this, I discovered that his field was anthropology. Intriguingly, the website goes on to say, "Steve returned to his studies at Stanford University and wrote about the population control horrors he witnessed in China. Bowing to demands of the Chinese government, Stanford expelled Steve Mosher rather than grant him the PhD he had earned."

Does that sound plausible to you? That a major American university would bow to the demands of China and expell a PhD candidate? I don't think it could happen today, but that was in the early days of research opportunities in China. China could very well pressure a university in those days, and have a pretty good stick to use -- we'll shut you out and no one connected to you will be allowed to do any work in China. It could happen, I suppose, but reading that self-serving blurb, I figured there might be another side to the story.

Mosher was expelled from Stanford, and China was definitely unhappy with Mosher, but was China's unhappiness the reason he was expelled? Proving or disproving that causal link is the hard part. According to TIME, reporting at the time:

Mosher left China for Taiwan in June 1980, and in May 1981 took a step that angered Peking and appalled many anthropologists as well: he published an article
in the Times Weekly magazine in Taipei that described the mandatory birth control program in Chinese villages. The article was illustrated with photographs of women in advanced states of pregnancy who were about to have abortions. Peking saw the article as anti-Chinese propaganda. Zhao Fusan, a top official of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, warned Kenneth Prewitt, president of the Social Science Research Council, that if Mosher were not disciplined, there could be "negative consequences" for scholarly exchanges. In February 1982, Fusan asked Stanford to "deal with this matter sternly."

The university set up a fact-finding committee that looked into all the accusations against Mosher, including those by his exwife, who independently charged that he had acted unethically. After hearing Mosher's side of the case, twelve members of the anthropology department voted unanimously to expel him for "behavior inappropriate for an anthropologist." Mosher, who plans to appeal the decision to the Stanford administration and may take the case to court, insists: "I was expelled because Stanford chose to believe the charges brought against me by the Chinese and chose to believe that by publishing articles and photographs in Taiwan that I gravely endangered innocent villagers."

Mosher now admits that he was foolish to have published the article. Many leading U.S. anthropologists believe that it violated the profession's code of ethics by failing to disguise the women pictured and to protect their privacy. In addition, officials who allowed Mosher to take the photographs were exposed to possible punishment by higher authorities. Says Prewitt: "What Mosher discovered is an important contribution to anthropology. How he reported it is a tragedy for the field."

So, he might be an unethical researcher -- I can easily accept that publishing identifiable photos of those women endangered them and those who cooperated in getting the photos. And I can see that anthropologists are supposed to be neutral observers who follow a non-interference policy. I doubt that was China's concern in seeking to have Mosher disciplined, but I'm sure Stanford was concerned. Expelling him -- the nuclear option -- seems draconian, but Mosher also seems to have been unrepentant, not really recognizing that he violated any ethical obligations. I can understand a scholar becoming caught up and emotionally involved in the plight of his subjects, but I'm afraid that academic truth does not allow for it. He lost his objectivity, an unforgiveable sin for a researcher.

Then there are the questions about the accuracy of his work, which might also be explained by the loss of objectivity. Another social scientist, working in China at the same time as Mosher, questioned even the factual assertions we find in this article, criticizing Mosher's book on the same subject:

[Mosher's] writings on birth control policies seem to [suggest] that both late abortion and female infanticide are sanctioned practices. From my own daily readings of the Chinese press, and my own fieldwork in China in 1979-80 (at the same time Mosher was there), I would have to disagree. At most, I would say that in some localities, including the commune where Mosher was resident, national policies and recommended strategies to implement policy goals were disastrously misinterpreted by orverzealous local cadres. Mosher could easily have compared notes with Jack and Sulamith Potter, who were doing fieldwork in a nearby county at the same time, [The Potters ended up writing a fascinating book about China, China's Peasants: Anatomy of a Revolution] and/or read the national and provincial press to discover that something odd was going on in his area. In Shandong province, where I was working, rural couples were indeed under pressure to have no more than two children. The penalties for going over the recommended number included private payment (rather than collective coverage) for prenatal care, delivery, infant immunization shots, and eventual school fees. It was further stated that a family could not request expanded housing or an increase in private-plot lands to accommodate an additional child. Nor would it receive its additional grain at the brigade-subsidized price of .28 yuan per kilo, a threat that became meaningless within a year when grain production was transferred from the collective to household contracts. The other penalties that Mosher mentions in his book, Broken Earth, were not raised at all. And third-trimester abortions were out of the question.

But I find Mosher's account puzzling on further grounds. In one of his publications, he states that his community of 8,000 persons had a quota of no more than seven births a year. 1 find this totally unbelievable when the stated goal is a 1 percent birthrate, not rapid decimation. The quota in my area was twenty births per thousand population. Moreover, Shunde county, where Mosher worked, has a high percentage of households which are "overseas Chinese," meaning either families that have returned from overseas or that are supported by remittances from kinsmen (including husbands of women in the childbearing age groups) who are working in Hong Kong, Macao, and other parts of Southeast Asia. Until July 1983, overseas Chinese were exempt from the two-child limit. Mosher, married at the time to a Hong Kong resident from the village, could not have been unaware of what the official policies were in regard to overseas Chinese.

How accurate are these criticisms? Hard to say. The criticism seems to be two-fold: 1) Mosher extrapolated what he saw to make conclusions about general policy throughout China, and 2) Mosher made fundamental errors about the quota numbers, though he was clearly in a position to know the truth. The first criticism doesn't deny what Mosher saw, just the conclusions he drew. But accurate scholarship is more than reporting, it is also making judgments about observed events. The second criticism goes directly to accuracy, and is, therefore, much more troubling. He seems to have either accepted uncritically what he was told about the quota number, without checking with other counties to see if the number made sense, or he was simply mistaken. The first possibility suggests lack of judgment, the second was correctable, but wasn't corrected.

In conclusion (FINALLY!!! I hear you cry!), I find it difficult to rely on Mosher as a researcher. I'd say as narrative the article is very much worth reading. It includes in one place just about every horrible thing I've heard of family-planning officers in China doing to enforce the one child policy. But I don't want anyone to think that my linking to it constitutes an endorsement of any conclusions reached! (There, that's very stuffy and lawyerly, isn't it?!). Take it all with the proverbial grain of salt.

Why the Wait?

Commenter LAH asks:

Malinda, I'm wondering if you want to address this sometime in your blog. What
are the real reasons wait times are so long?

Very good question -- why have wait times for international adoption from China to the U.S. lengthened from one year to three years? I wish I had an answer! All I can do is add to the rampant speculation. But that won't stop me, it seems!

I do think that there are fewer non-special-needs children available for adoption from China. There are definitely fewer traditional abandonments, and mostly that's a good thing. The reason it's not a 100% good thing is that some children are being sold on the black market rather than being abandoned in the traditional way, and it's hard to know where these children end up. It's likely that some end up in the sex trade, others are sold into slavery to work in factories and on farms, others are "adopted." Those adoptions may well be to good families, but of course we can't know since they are not being screened. Some of those adoptions may be to acquire a daughter-in-law to raise to marry a son of the family -- an ancient Chinese practice that has not died out. And some end up in orphanages who are paying "finding fees" for "abandoned" children, and are adopted domestically and internationally according to CCAA rules.

I think the main reason for fewer abandonments are economic -- Chinese people are simply better off now, and able to afford more children. There's also some change in attitude, especially in the cities, about the value of girl children. Add to that some steps family planning authorities are taking to incentivize the parenting of girls -- additional benefits for keeping girls, like higher oil rations, increased school subsidies, etc.

Another reason is that the one child policy is actually WORKING in many places in China. People are stopping after one child, regardless of the sex of the baby. And a lot of the reason for that is not coercive policies so much as it is belief in what it takes to be economically successful in China today. When we were in China in 2007, I was amazed by the unanimity of opinion among college students and faculty at Xiada -- the only way to have economic success was to limit yourself to one child. Raising children is simply too expensive in modern China. Success = One Child.

Of course, that attitude is not necessarily gaining traction in rural areas, but the number of people making a living by farming in China is slowly decreasing, and movement to the cities is growing.

When we visited Zoe's and Maya's orphanage, Guiping SWI, the director told me frankly that they had less than half the children they used to have. She said that in the old orphanage building, they were very overcrowded with over 60 children. She was chagrined that they had built a grand new orphanage and had less than 30 kids -- and most of them in foster care.

So yes, there are fewer children available for adoption. And then there have been increases in domestic adoption -- and there would probably be more increase if SWIs weren't interested in hard-currency infusions from foreigners.

But does that mean there are too few to meet the number of domestic and foreign applicants? That's harder to know. I think there are probably more children in Chinese orphanages than we know about or see. There are thousands of rural orphanages all over China. At one time, there was a brisk "trade" in children from these orphanages to the larger orphanages that do international adoptions. The Hunan scandals that shone light on a variety of this kind of transfer pretty much shut down all transfers, even legal ones, because SWI directors were afraid of misstepping and being accused of trafficking. I don't think the transfers have resumed, or if they ever will resume. The CCAA promised new policies for transfers, but as far as we know, they have not materialized.

And it doesn't seem that there are a lot of domestic adoptions from these smaller orphanages -- most adoptive parents in China are interested in children from the "better orphanages," just like international adopters are, for reasons of physical and mental health of the children.

So, will wait times increase, decrease, remain the same? No idea. If they do increase or stay the same, I hope it is because children are staying with their birth families. THAT'S a real adoption success story!

I know there are prospective adoptive parents who are probably saying, "Easy for you to say, you've already got your children." Yes, and I understand the frustration -- it's hard to consider that the best interest of the child might be not to be adopted by you when you have so much love to give. And wanting what's best for a child is hard to figure when the child is an idea, an abstraction to you. I wish I had an answer for you, but I don't.

One Child Policy Warning

When we were in Guilin in 2007, I saw this sign written on the wall of a small village outside Guilin. When I asked our guide what it said, she said casually, "Oh, it's just a warning to follow the one child policy or pay a big fine." Wow. The most surprising thing is how casual she was about it -- like that's just how things are, no big deal. But by the same token, she didn't point it out to us, a group of adoptive parents and children on a homeland tour. Surely she would have realized we'd be interested. Was it face saving not to point it out? A puzzle. . . .

Anyway, I knew THIS group of adoptive parents would be interested!