Puss in Boots, Orphan

Zoe wanted to see Puss in Boots for her birthday, so off we go.  I knew there would be orphan themes, given the inclusion of the movie in Jeff Alexander's Time piece, Children's Movies Have Too Many Orphans.

*WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD*

The back-story for Puss is that a desert wind blew his basket (no explanation of how he got in the basket) right to the steps of an orphanage. He is taken in by the head of the orphanage, whom he later calls Mama. Mama is alternately proud of Puss and too ready to condemn him without listening, but she isn't an evil caricature of an orphanage head, nor is the orphanage a dark and depressing place.

At the orphanage, Puss meets Humpty Dumpty and they become blood/yolk brothers.  They have an idyllic childhood of hijinks until Humpty goes too far and drags Puss into his life of crime. Humpty is caught and goes to jail, and Puss now has a price on his head. In current time, Humpty tricks Puss into stealing the goose that lays golden eggs so that he can turn Puss into the police as revenge for Puss deserting him and letting him go to jail. 

In the end, Humpty and Puss reconcile and Humpty sacrifices himself for the greater good.

As one would expect, there are themes of abandonment and the meaning of family, though they are not very thoroughly developed.  There is much dialogue about Puss and Humpty as brothers, and how brothers should treat each other.  I don't think the word "adoption" was ever mentioned in the movie, and even in scenes after Puss calls the orphanage head Mama, both Puss and Humpty refer to themselves as orphans.

Also not developed but suggestive was Kitty Soft-Paw's back-story.  She recounts that she was taken in by a couple who fed her milk and loved her -- and then de-clawed her.  She expresses pain and grief over losing her claws. She doesn't know why they de-clawed her, but she says maybe she clawed the curtains or played too rough with the hamster.

Hmmm, I can certainly read some adoptee themes here -- that often adoptive families expect adoptees to change, rather than the family change to accommodate the adoptee, and the adoptee's self-blame when that change is presented as necessary. But, again, these themes were not really developed in any way.

All in all, it was pretty innocuous on the adoption front.  I think it helped that Puss is an animal (though certainly anthropomorphized) in a world of humans;  his adoptive mother is human, so it comes across more as "animal adoption" rather than "transracial (trans-species?) adoption" like in Kung Fu Panda 2, where panda Po is adopted by Papa goose.  The only problem my kids had with the film was that Humpty gets scrambled at the end.

So there you have it.  Do with it what you will!

Almost 11!

Tomorrow is Zoe's birthday!  Tonight we had a small celebration with friends and family after Chinese School.  It was Zoe's choice of restaurant, and she picked Chinese (what a surprise!).  I was just happy to have one last kid-priced meal -- tomorrow we can no long pay the 10-and-under buffet price!

Zoe's friends, all China adoptees, and the wait staff at the restaurant, all Chinese, sang her Happy Birthday first in Chinese and then in English.  The restaurant then played happy birthday in Chinese over the loudspeaker, and brought her a pretty plate of dessert.

I don't know how we're going to top this tomorrow, on her actual birthday!

Joan Didion: Adoptive Parent

This review of  Blue Nights, Joan Didion's memoir of her daughter's death, excerpts some parts of the book about the adoption of Quintana Roo:

What would have been Quintana's seventh wedding anniversary prompts a stream of reminiscences. Didion recounts that she was in the shower when Dunne told her that a doctor had just called to say there was "a beautiful baby girl" up for adoption. She burst into tears.

* * *

Quintana, as an adopted child, worried about abandonment: what would have happened if Dunne and Didion had not been home when that all-important phone call came, she asks. What would have happened to her if they had had an accident on their way to picking her up from the hospital?

Didion, a worrywart even in happy times, obsessed about things happening to her daughter. "All adoptive parents fear that they do not deserve the child they were given, that the child will be taken from them. Quintana. Quintana is one of the areas about which I have difficulty being direct," Didion writes.

Is Didion right, do "all adoptive parents fear that they do not deserve the child they were given?" Is that your fear? 

I heard an interview with Didion this week where she talked about her guilt that her daughter died, that she felt she had an added responsibility because of the adoption, that she was given the child to care for, and she felt she failed in that responsibility.  Do you have that feeling of added responsibility?  I remember a friend whose daughter adopted from China had broken her nose shortly after she came home.  When the mom called me, she said in despair, "I've had her for less than 6 months, and I already broke her!" 

Has anyone read the book yet? If so, let us know what you think.

Children's Movies Have Too Many Orphans

So says Jeff Alexander at Time Magazine, with the tag line, "Parental separation makes for a great plot point, but try telling that to a parent of an adopted child."

Consider for a moment some of our children’s greatest fictional heroes. Luke Skywalker grows up thinking his father is dead. Harry Potter: orphaned as an infant. Ditto Superman. One looks further into the literary pantheon for the pint-sized — Cinderella, Spiderman, Tarzan, Sleeping Beauty, Lemony Snicket’s Baudelaire children, Batman, C.S. Lewis’s Pevensie kids — and it’s hard not to spot a common familial theme: where the hell are all these kids’ folks?

Obviously it’s Mythmaking 101 to begin a hero’s journey with some initiating trauma. But does that trauma have to occur so frequently before the hero’s earliest memory? Maybe it does.

* * *

I hasten to add that Max is a happy, well-adjusted child. . . .

But some adopted children under less happy circumstances, like Harry Potter with his hateful relatives at 4 Privet Drive, struggle with abandonment issues and other psychological hurdles. Even kids who land with adoptive parents as loving and supportive as Jonathan and Martha Kent may wonder why they were “given up.” (Actually, the correct term is placed. Bridle against PC language if you will, but watch what you say in front of my kid). And as such, should parental separation be such commonplace story fodder for entertainment aimed at kids?

* * *

For plenty of kids, stories about young people with dead, absent or galactically evil parents are a novelty, a look into a different life. For other kids, they can be a raw nerve. Most raw nerves are treated with some sensitivity, but not this one.

Reactions?

Why We Tell the Truth

At Salon's advice column, Since You Asked, an adoptive mother essentially asks for permission NOT to tell her child she's adopted:

The only problem, Cary, is that despite being educated and well informed, I can not imagine telling my daughter that she is adopted.

* * *

From the start I started getting irrationally offended when friends referred to it. I cut off someone because she said “oh, she has really taken to you.” Like, why should she not, she is my daughter. I regret that this was shared with the whole family and I had a bit of a showdown where I made it clear that this is not something we discuss or even refer to whenever we meet or ever. Everything I read tells me that this information should be shared early. However, I also read that adopted children grapple with the issue, agonize over it. I mean, why should my lovely daughter have to deal with something her peers do not? Also, her birth mother cannot be traced. The information will really not help her get her genetic or medical information. If after a childhood of happy memories she does come to know, would it really shock her so much? Surely she would be strong enough to deal with it then.

* * *

I am going crazy, Cary, I can’t think straight. Isn’t love enough? . . .  I just want to be her mother, not her adoptive mother.

Even worse, after a few stabs at suggesting it might be a good idea to tell her the truth, the columnist gives her the permission she seeks:

What would you learn if you learned you were adopted?

You would learn that what you thought was true wasn’t true. It would be more a kind of unlearning than learning. It would be an acquisition of not-knowledge.

Maybe it would be like learning that most of the universe is dark matter and dark energy. You would have to start over. That might not be a bad thing. You might acquire a new, more flexible notion of selfhood.

For one thing, you would have to conclude that you are not your genetic origin, right? Ideally, you would learn that you are a unique being, much loved, who came to be in a particular family here through unique circumstances.

* * *

Let’s put it this way: What does it matter whose car we came in? We’re at the party now.

Wow.  I don't even know where to start. How about with birth-mother-as-car?  And if it's international adoption, I suppose she's an exotic foreign car?!  Now, I'm familiar with the whole birth-mother-as-medical-equipment thing, as merely a pass-through body, as the wrong tummy.  But this is my first exposure to birth-mother-as-car.  God.

So I guess we need to go back to the basics of WHY we talk adoption with our kids.

1. We tell our children from the very beginning that they are adopted because it is in their best interests that we do so;  whether it is best for us, the adoptive parents, doesn't matter.  It is good for us, too, but the only thing that really counts here is our children.

2.  It is every human's right to know their own story.  Our children's stories begin before we enter the picture, even with newborn adoption.  They have a right to know, we have a duty to tell.

3.  Openness and honesty are FUNDAMENTAL to healthy relationships, and that includes the relationship between parent and child. How would you feel if someone you loved kept a big secret from you "for your own good?"  Once trust is destroyed, it will be nearly impossible to get back.

4.  Keeping secrets is hard.  All the psychic energy put into keeping adoption a secret takes a toll on the adoptive parent and the parent-child relationship.  If you have to be so careful NOT to reveal the secret, and guard against anyone else telling the secret, where's the room for a genuine relationship?

5.  It is almost impossible to keep a secret that anyone else knows.  I remember walking in on an adult discussion as a child and learning a BIG family secret.  Children eventually find things out, and one social worker has written that adoptive children, who often feel the presence of secrets, are more likely to snoop in order to discover those secrets.  How do you think a child would react to learning the truth from someone else, rather than from her parents?  See breaking trust, above!

6.  Don't you want your child to hear it from you instead of someone else?  Who do you think would do a better job of telling your child she's adopted -- you, or her cousin taunting her about it?  Face the fact that it is inevitable that your child will find out.  Let it be from you, who can be gentle and supportive, not from near-strangers.

7.  We keep bad things secret.  So if you are keeping adoption secret, once your child finds out, she will learn from your previous silence that adoption is bad, shameful, something not to be discussed.

8.  Biology matters.  It isn't safe for an adopted person to assume they share the same genetic heritage as their adoptive family.  Filling out medical history forms, needing a blood transfusion, any number of reasons make it important for adoption information to be shared.  This is the case EVEN IF WE CAN'T SHARE INFO ABOUT BIRTH PARENTS BECAUSE WE DON'T KNOW IT!

Can you add to the list of WHY we must disclose early and often in the comments?

Oh, and you might want to check out the reaction of first mothers to the Salon piece at Birth Mother, First Mother Forum. And check out this piece in the Australian Family Relationships Quarterly about late-discovery adoptees and their issues.

I've always thought that the WHY of telling is a no-brainer.  Harder is the HOW of telling, which is why I tend to blog more about that.  Here are some previous posts that I hope are helpful on the HOW of telling:

Ten Commandments of Telling
Talking Adoption Tips
Planting Seeds
Have You REALLY Told Her She's Adopted?
"Let's Play Adoption"
Telling About Abandonment
Crafting Your Adoption Story
Should You Talk? Should You Wait For Questions?

Wary of International Adoption

From Christianity Today's Her.meneutics blog, the blogger shares her experience of signing on with an adoption agency just before it was revealed they were engaging in child trafficking:

It wasn’t too long before the Department of State warned that Ethiopia’s Charities and Services Agency had revoked BFAS’s license to operate in Ethiopia due to alleged “license misuse.” That’s the nice way of putting it. The less-sanitized words used in the letter from the Charities and Services agency were “child trafficking”—including falsifying documents to make children look like they were abandoned who, in fact, still had biological parents. (Under Ethiopian law, it’s illegal for a child with living parents to be adopted.) We were stunned and grateful that we hadn’t signed with the organization, as the State Department was urging parents with dossiers in progress to “seek legal aid.”

News like this has made many Westerners wary of international adoption. A few months ago, a Nation article unflatteringly described the resurgence of interest in adoptions among evangelicals as a “crusade,” inspired in large part by Russell Moore’s popular book Adopted for Life. In the article, Kathryn Joyce positions Christian adoption enthusiasts as blustering, blundering consumers who could care less about the ethical dilemmas surrounding international adoption. Yes, I’m slightly uncomfortable when Moore says that adopted kids “don’t know the flags of their home countries” but “know ‘Jesus Loves Me, ” but I’m willing to take that statement along with careful and ethically reasoned perspectives Moore and other evangelicals offer. Jedd Medefind’s response in Christianity Today was, I thought, a gracious one: Learn from the criticism. The ethical dilemmas surrounding adoption—and inter-country adoption especially—can’t be avoided by loving Jesus, loving kids, and hoping for the best. But, as Medefind, writes:

“we dare not turn from sacrifice and hard decisions and return to comfortable homes and lives simply because the cost and complexity are too great.”

"Child of my own"

Zoe had her first experience of that phrase, "child of my own," that people use to mean biological children and to distinguish biological children from adopted children.  No, she didn't hear it from me;  she is my own child!  It happened at school, when the class was discussing the vocabulary word "labor."  Though the teacher tried to avoid any connection to pregnancy, not wanting to talk about THAT in the classroom, that's exactly where the students went!

A boy in Zoe's class said he felt sorry for women, since they had to go through labor.  Zoe informed him smartly that women didn't HAVE to go through labor, they could always adopt!  The little boy responded that he wanted a "child of my own."  Zoe understood that right away to mean that he didn't want to adopt, he wanted to have a biological child. She asked him why he didn't want to adopt, and he just shrugged.

That usage, "child of my own," to mean biological child is something that adoptive parents rail against.  We're driven crazy by statements/questions like this:

Would you rather adopt or have a child of your own?

[P]ersonally, if I do not get married nor have a child of my own around the age of 25, I am adopting.

And whether we adopt or use a surrogate, or have our own natural child. . . .

Now that you’ve adopted you'll probably get pregnant and have a child of your own.

It even makes this list of top 10 things not to say to adoptive parents, in the number 1 spot even, with the appropriate response:

Is it difficult to love a child who isn’t your own?

My children are my own — both of them. Yes, I know what you mean. And I repeat: both of my children are "my own."

Of course, one could object to either adopted or biological children being termed "a child of my own," with its connotation of ownership.  But if you're going to call one a "child of my own," then by golly, call both that!  Any other usage brands adopted children as second-class citizens, Plan B, the last resort.

I was really surprised that the little boy, aged 10 or 11, already knew that phrase, and had already internalized the heirarchy of biological parentage over adoption.

As she usually does, Zoe did a good job standing up for herself and adoption.  It's just too bad she has to.

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween from the two cutest '50s girls in the world!  Mimi made their skirts, and they just love them.  Zoe is sure she can wear it to school on her birthday, since she gets to be "out of uniform" that day.  I can't seem to convince her that "out of uniform" means regular clothes from this century! At least now that Halloween is over I don't have to try to talk them out of sleeping with them for fear of messing them up. . . .

Hope you and yours had a safe and happy Halloween!

Korea: Should overseas adoption continue?

That's the question asked by the Korea Herald, and they offer both pro and con arguments:

YES:Homeless kids deserve a better chance
I strongly believe that inter-country adoption, or ICA, needs to continue indefinitely in Korea because the children have a fundamental right to grow up in loving families, whether they are adopted in Korea or overseas. Every effort should be made for birth families to raise their own children, and the next priority should be given to place them in homes domestically, and the remaining children should have the chance to have their own families overseas. I also believe that the ICA needs to come to an end someday, but now is not the time as there are so many children growing up in institutions who need homes. The ICA should only be discontinued when there are no more children to be sent abroad.

* * *

NO: Single moms need support
As a Korean adoptee who has grown up in a Western country, I acknowledge that war and poverty are good reasons for international adoption. Based on my upbringing in Sweden, I find it hard to accept discrimination toward unwed mothers and the lack of a social welfare system as good reasons for why Korea still is one of the biggest providers of adoptees, especially since Korea today has one of the world’s strongest economies.

Not really plowing new ground, but good to see discussion on this important issue.

LGBT Adoption: Every Child Deserves a Family Act

From the Advocate:

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York introduced legislation Friday that would help almost half a million children in foster care find homes by ending the far-reaching discrimination against LGBT adoptive parents.

The Every Child Deserves a Family Act would eliminate state laws, policies and practices that exclude prospective adoptive and foster parents because of marital status, sexual orientation or gender identity. More than 400,000 children await homes in the nation’s foster care system, and some 100,000 are waiting to be adopted.

According to a news release from the senator’s office, “The Every Child Deserves A Family Act would prohibit an entity that receives federal assistance and is involved in adoption or foster care placements from discriminating against prospective adoptive or foster parents solely on the basis of their sexual orientation, gender identity, or marital status. Congress annually invests more than $8 billion into the child welfare system, and many of these children could be adopted by LGBT couples if the bans in local jurisdictions were removed.”

The Centralia Orphans Chime In

Remember that post a while back about the Centralia (Ohio Illinois -- thanks for the correction, commenter) High School with the mascot name of "the Orphans?"  Well, someone with lots of friends from Centralia High School posted it to facebook, and they've been commenting on the blog post.  The comments are pretty predictable, but you should check them out -- you know me, I want everyone to have their say!  I figured since the post was a couple of weeks ago, regular readers would miss the recent comments unless I mentioned it here.

The wish to deny the facts

I liked this blog post (as always, read the whole thing!) about adoptive parents' persistent denials about trafficking in adoption from a German adoptive parent's blog, Eth.i.A:

As many other adoptive parents, I was once deeply convinced, and I believed from from the bottom of my heart, that the institution of adoption is a proof for the good in people, and an act of humanity. I was also convinced that it would be helpful not only for the child himself, but for his entire community.

What I have learned throughout the roughly five years I was involved in an adoption process and the building of an adoptive family, is, that apart from all these whishes, there is a reality hard to bear:

For some, adoption is a business they make a living of. Not a frugal one, that’s for sure.

For some, adoption is a natural right of infertile adults, consequence of an entitlement to be a parent, no matter what.

For some, adoption created circumstances in their lives that are beyond imagination.

For some, adoption is a fact of life they will have to deal with throughout their lives. They see themselves as survivers.

For some, adoption simply hurts.

For some, adoption is something the Lord has told them to pursue, not only to support orphans, but to „spread the Word.“

For some, ethics in adoption is a term to ridicule – mentioning it means interfering with the Lord’s plan for each child and with the personal dedication the PAP has.

For some, ethics in adoption is a contradiction in terms; they believe there are no „good guys“ in adoption.

For some, adoption means to save lives.

For some, adoption means to create a family with life long relationships between the two families of an adoptee.

For some, adoption means to take over responsibility within their childrens’ country of heritage.

All of these very different concepts of adoption are something that one learns to see as a given variety of views.

There is one reality in the concept of adoption I have been finding hard to accept as a reality. It is that of trafficking into adoption.

Pumpkin Patch!

 The girls were out of school on this chilly (well, chilly for Texas!) but beautiful Friday, so we headed to the pumpkin patch.  They had a great time with the hay ride and the hay-bale maze, and were happy to pose anywhere I put 'em!



Sensitivity to Adoption in the Classroom

On Twitter, I found this link to a blog for the Master of Arts in Teaching program at USC, with a student, who is also an adoptive parent, posting about sensitivity to adoption in the classroom:

Last week I was in a 7th grade History class doing my weekly observations for the MAT@USC program. The lesson was about matriarchal lineage in West Africa. Homework was a triple-generational family tree due the following day. Lineage has to do with tracing blood lines, explained the teacher, “but if you are adopted and don’t know your blood lines you can use the blood lines of whoever you live with.” I was taken by surprise by her comments. Sure, a literal translation of lineage is the trace of ancestral blood lines, but adopted children should be secure in their family whether they know their actual blood lines or not. Calling a student’s family “whoever you live with” is highly insensitive and completely inaccurate in the case of adoption. Adopted children may face challenges other children do not, but I am sure that to many adopted children hearing that they are the exception to the rule when it comes to a simple family tree may be disheartening. Adopted students may never have thought about their relationship with their family in those terms. I don’t think a 7th grade History teacher is the person that should point out how they are technically different from their classmates.

Hmm, I'm not sure he's identified the real issue here!  I would have hoped for more from a student getting a degree in teaching. Here's what I said in response in a comment to the post:

Actually, true sensitivity to adoption in the classroom would be to recognize that adoption is in fact different instead of pretending that it is the same as biological relationships.

What the teacher in this classroom should have done was not to pretend that adopted children don't have biological relatives in addition to adopted relatives, but to modify the assignment to allow space for BOTH families on the family tree.

There is actually quite a lot of literature about sensitivity to adoption in the classroom. Have you looked at it? Take a look at the following link to links for a starting place:

http://chinaadoptiontalk.blogs...

I kept it brief.  What else should I have said in the interest of being helpful to a budding teacher?

Reunion for Kidnapped Child

I've posted before about Carlina White, kidnapped from a New York hospital at 19 days old and raised by the alleged kidnapper. New York Magazine has a long piece about the difficulties in the reunion and Carlina's apparent feelings of split loyalty, which remind me a bit of similar issues in adoption:

Netty Nance is 24 but can seem much younger. Her hair dangles in long, wild braids over enormous gold medallion earrings. On her hand, tattooed in thick script, is her daughter’s name, Samani. “She’s my miracle baby,” Netty tells me. “If it wasn’t for me getting pregnant, this never would have come out.” She is referring to the discovery she made, one so dramatic it upended her life and the lives of the people closest to her. She’s spent much of the past year both embracing what she learned and trying to wish it away.

Seven years ago, Netty was a senior in high school living in a poor section of Bridgeport, Connecticut, and got pregnant. By the fall, she couldn’t hide it anymore, and didn’t want to. She was excited. Her cousin Brittany was pregnant, too, and now they could be mothers together. But she needed prenatal care, and to get free services from the state, she had to have a birth certificate. Her father, Robert Nance, was a sometime drug dealer who only saw Netty now and then. It was her mother, Ann Pettway, who raised and supported her. But when Netty asked her mother how to get the documents, Ann brushed her off. “She said she was going to handle it,” Netty says.

* * *

When Ann came through the door that night, she went straight upstairs to Netty’s room, sat down on the bed, and started weeping. In her whole life, Netty had never seen her mother shed a tear. “What are you crying for?” Netty asked.

“Your mom left you,” Ann Pettway told her, “and she never came back.”

It was a full seven years before Netty learned the rest of her story. Her real name was Carlina White. She had been abducted as a newborn baby, nineteen days after her birth, from Harlem Hospital and never seen again. And Ann Pettway was not only not Netty’s real mother—according to the police, she was her kidnapper.

It's an incredible story.  Be sure to read the whole thing, and let me know what you think -- is there a parallel to adoption here?

A Korean Adoptee's Plea to Parents

This article, Cultural Citizenship, Not Colorblindness,printed in the Korean Quarterly and shared at the Korean Focus website, is especially timely in light of some of the recent tone-deaf comments about race and racism in response to this post about racist Halloween costumes:

Adoptive white parents’ reluctance to talk about race is like a tumor that, if not removed, grows and becomes malignant, spreading throughout and ravaging a person’s body. The mismatch between the worldview of adoptive parents and an adoptee's realities can grow so large that it can kill family relationships like a tumor kills the host organism

* * *

Becoming a cultural citizen for your children means that as a white parent, your racial and cultural identity is different from your Korean child’s. To make up for this deficit requires some changes in behavior. For example, when your child brings up race, you need to talk about it and be honest. It also means that if your child does not bring up issues of race, you must be brave and break the ice. Parents of all minority kids need to talk about the racism that exists all around us and the fact that Asian Americans are not immune from it; it is not simply something black people endure

* * *

If you do not discuss race, power, and privilege on a consistent basis, do not believe that the “tumor” (that I discussed above) will go away by itself. Adopted Korean children will endure stereotypes and racialized identities such as “model minority,” “yellow peril,” “perpetual foreigner,” or ___ (fill in the blank). As a parent and guardian, it is your responsibility to discuss with your children that all of these pejoratives, and even the “positive stereotypes” such as model minority have two common themes: Racism and white privilege

* * *

My plea to adoptive parents and/or people who are considering adoption is to take the process seriously and to realize that you are becoming more than adoptive parents or surrogate parents. You are, or should be, becoming cultural citizens for your children. You will not be able to understand fully what your adopted children face or experience, but this is okay. The best way to persevere is to be honest with yourself and your family.

Talk about race, and talk about feelings. Speak with your adopted child frequently and reassure him/her that although you are white, you are willing to jointly learn about the Korean culture with them. Acknowledge your fallibility and avoid romanticizing the adoption process. Lastly, encourage your child to conduct a birth search if s/he feels compelled to do so. Make your child feel safe if s/he does in fact decide to search, and be willing to support him/her during the process.

Please read the whole thing, and then look again at the photos of Halloween costumes that exploit cultural and racial stereotypes.  Would you still say to your minority child that it's all just good fun?  If the answer is yes, then prepare for tumor removal later in life, and hope the relationship survives the surgery.

China: Black Market Babies

The Atlantic has a piece up on adoption corruption in China, leading off with the story of babies confiscated by birth planning authorities and sold into adoption:

This spring, the business magazine Caixin made headlines around the world when it uncovered corruption at Chinese adoption agencies involving children stolen from their families in Hunan Province and sold for steep prices in the international adoption arena. The news hit hard in the United States, which is home to about 60,000 children adopted from China, mostly girls. Adoptive parents are grappling with the news now that the myth they were once sold on -- that orphanages are overrun with abandoned Chinese girls -- has been shattered.

For years, even social scientists supported this narrative. Two decades ago, when the gender ratio first started to skew sharply toward boys, they assumed these official figures were distorted by millions of unreported newborn girls. The country's strict one-child policy, they reasoned, prompted a widespread number of parents to conceal their additional children to avoid harsh penalties. Because of an enduring preference for boys, they surmised, many parents hid their girls or simply abandoned them.

In recent years, that theory has come undone. "The more we look at the data, the more we realize the hidden children, they are not there," says Yong Cai, a sociologist at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "They have never been born or they have simply been aborted." While some do conceal their children or abandon them, sex-selective abortion and poor health care for baby girls account for most of the sex ratio disparity for very young children, which now stands at about 120 males for every 100 females, Cai says.

Here, we tell the stories of families on both sides of the adoption scandal -- an adoptive mother in the United States who discovered her daughter's adoption papers were forged and a Chinese father whose baby was taken from him. We have not used real names to protect the identity of the American woman's adopted daughter and for the Chinese parent's safety.

Even without names used, it's clear that the story of the adoptive mother in the U.S. is the same one reported here by the New York Times (again, anonymously to protect her daughter's identity); the Chinese father's story is likely the same as reported in Caixin Century magazine.

Native American Children & Foster Care

NPR is doing a three-part series on American Indian children in foster care in.  From Part I, broadcast yesterday:

The Indian Child Welfare Act mandates that, except in the rarest circumstances, Indian children must be placed with relatives, a tribal member or at the very least, another Native American. It also says the state must make every effort to first keep a family together with services and programs.

The law was passed in 1978 in response to a century-long practice of forcing Native American children into harsh and often abusive boarding schools where they lost contact with their culture, traditions, language and families.

Except now a generation of children is once again losing its connection to its culture. This time it's through state-run foster care.

In South Dakota, Native American children make up only 15 percent of the child population, yet they make up more than half the children in foster care. An NPR News investigation has found that the state is removing 700 native children every year, sometimes in questionable circumstances. According to a review of state records, it is also largely failing to place native children with their relatives or tribes.

According to state records, almost 90 percent of the kids in family foster care are in non-native homes or group care.

State officials say they're doing everything they can to keep native families together. Poverty, crime and alcoholism are all real problems on South Dakota's reservations and in the state's poorest areas. But, state records show there's another powerful force at work — money. The federal government sends the state thousands of dollars for every child it takes.

Click for Part II. (I'll add the link for Part III when available.)

More About "Cole Babies"

I've posted before about the Cole Babies -- "infants delivered by Coral Gables-based naturopathic physician Dr. Katherine Cole, who profited from falsifying birth certificates and selling babies to infertile couples up and down the Eastern Seaboard."  Here's more:

Josette Marquess, a retired Florida adoption official, has guided dozens of Cole babies through mostly fruitless state searches, and has become the state’s expert on Cole.

Marquess said working with Cole babies was “heartbreaking, because I knew there was really nothing I could do to help them.”

“In order to have a reunion, you really need a paper trail to follow and the particular nastiness of Dr. Cole was, she made sure there was no paper trail.”

Cole — known throughout the Coral Gables community as “Granny Doc” — operated an illegal abortion clinic and a legal adoption center from the mid-1930s to the late 1960s. Young pregnant girls who “got in trouble” would visit her clinic, and Cole convinced them to give their babies up for adoption, Marquess said.

Marquess said the doctor owned a number of apartment buildings within a three-block radius of her clinic. Both the pregnant girls and the adopting couples would stay there until the delivery.

Cole would assess each infertile couple individually, charging anywhere from $25 to $10,000 for a baby.

“All you needed was a wedding ring and $5,000 and you were good to go,” Marquess said. “She probably placed, at a minimum, 200 babies a year and she operated in Florida for more than 30 years — even with a little prison stint in there. That’s thousands of people who will never know their true identity.”

More Adoptions From Foster Care Than Internationally? Always

The Denver Post reports that "most kids adopted by U.S. families now come from the child-welfare system" as if that's something recent:

Images of children from distant countries, from Bulgaria to China to Russia, have been the public face of adoption in America.

But that picture is overdue for an update.

Most kids adopted by U.S. families now come from the child-welfare system: about 52,340 in 2010, up from 15,000 in 1988.

Indeed. But this isn't anything new.  There have always been more foster care adoptions than international adoptions!  When those 52,340 kids were adopted from the child-welfare system in 2010, there were only 11,058 kids adopted internationally. The article notes that since 1997, "about 750,000 children have been adopted from foster care in the U.S."  In that same time period, less than a third of that number were adopted internationally.

So there's no news here.  Yes, more kids are adopted from foster care than internationally.  Yes, it's always been that way.