I’m probably too tired to do justice to this topic,

but that’s never stopped me before.

I haven’t read the transcript from the Paula Z show yet, but I’m gathering the gist from the IA community that it was marginally better but nothing approaching great. Apparently they emphasized the “thousands” of negative emails they got from the last show (ya’ think?) several times and Paul Z looked really nervous, stumbled over her words and flipped her hair a lot. I might watch it on You Tube later.***

In the first show one of the main points made was that people choose to adopt from China rather than adopt African American babies and how unfortunate that is. Apparently this was also a prominent issue in the second show as well.

First, someone made a good point in one of the forums. It’s something I’ve noticed as well. What’s with all the judging of people’s choices? What’s all the, “Oh, you’re adopting from China.” Pause. “Why didn’t you adopt from the U.S.?” that I hear so very often? When I saw my pregnant friend on Friday evening, I didn’t say, “Oh, you’re pregnant.” Pause. “Why aren’t you adopting instead?”  I may have a personal preference for adoption over having bio children for various reasons, but I’m not going to judge her choice…because it’s her choice. She doesn’t have to defend it to me and I shouldn’t have to defend our choice to others.

Second, as I mentioned before, this comment always seems to come from a place of whacked patriotism. The subtext is always like, “U.S. kids are better than Chinese kids”.  Uhm? I don’t even think I have to address this one. Children are children. No one child is more deserving of a loving home than another.

I don’t have to defend or explain our decision not to adopt an African American child and I’ve already written about why we chose the China program and IA. I will say that we looked into domestic adoption. The cost, the maze of laws, the uncertainty, and the story after story of couples spending lots of money only to end up heartbroken and childless turned us away from that path. I know that it can be done successfully. did it successfully and ended up with an absolutely gorgeous little girl.  For us, it simply wasn’t the road to take. We opted for the (then) stable, established China IA program instead.

But I did want to address this impression I’ve gotten from comments that I’ve been reading. I know there’s many who think that white couples should not adopt and raise African American children. That it’s unfair to the child because they’re being taken away from their birth culture. People say that about international adoption too. I say that a loving home in which the child is raised with thoughtfulness and caring trumps birth culture, but that the parents have a responsibility to see that the birth culture is a prominent part of the child’s life.

However what I’ve been seeing in various comments is maybe some people think it’s easier to raise a Chinese child than an AA child in regard to cultural difference and that’s got me more than a little perplexed. I hope that I’ve misunderstood.

When we started down the adoption path and we discussed adopting an African American child or adopting internationally, we discussed the added dimension of weaving her culture (whatever culture that happened to be) into our lives forevermore. It’s the same. That was our conclusion. Whether you’re adopting an AA child or a Chinese child, either way the parents have a responsibility to do justice and pay respect to that child’s birth culture.

Our daughter isn’t just going to be American, she’s going to be Chinese American. (Literally, since China retains her citizenship. She’s probably going to be a triple national, actually, but that’s another post). It’s our job to help her weave her birth culture into her identity, which is going to be tricky and difficult, but we’re going to do the very best we can. It’s not easier, not at all. I’m not sure how anyone could think that.

In our case the whole thing is going to be pretty interesting because we already have a culturally diverse and slightly, uhm, “different” family, what with the Belgians and the Buddhist influence and the fact my father is probably going to want a protest sign in her little fist by the time she’s five. But, ya’ know.

I hope that made sense. I’m very tired. Only…I just ran the spell check and there’s not even one error. How the hell did that happen?

***Just as an aside, I love all the complaints about the “liberal” media (I guess they mean CNN?) and how FOX news always does it right. Heheh. Those crack me up.

ETA: Here’s the new transcript for interested parties. It’s very disjointed because it was a rush-because-so-many-people-were-pissed show.

 

And Another Thing…

China is trying to project an image to the world of a declining number of abandonments. The Chinese government has shown a history of sort , erm…okay… lying in the two years we’ve been through this process. I’m not presenting a conspiracy theory here. To anyone who has watched this situation unfold as closely as I have, it’s pretty much obvious. We saw it all first hand because China drastically slowed down in its referrals only a month after we were LID. We were timed perfectly to see the whole deal go down.

It is my belief that they are attempting to save face in preparation for being in the world spotlight for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing and also because of the ever-increasing economic development of the country (which, as I stated before IS likely resulting in less orphans overall, but not the drastic reduction they’re attempting to claim). I also believe they know they’re in a fine pickle with the rising gender imbalance and need to take steps to address it.

I truly hope domestic adoptions pick up and/or they ease the one/two child policy. I don’t share some fellow adopters feelings that all the children should be adopted internationally to lift them out of poverty, ect. I think all steps should be taken to allow those children to stay with their birth families, if possible, or be adopted domestically. That’s the best case scenario for these babies. You know, like, the best case scenario for the babies in Africa is not for Madonna or Angelina Joile to come in and adopt them, it’s for the country to develop enough to allow them to stay with their birth parents. Obviously.

It is my hope China can achieve this in the future. In the meantime it appears that many, many little girls are going to end up growing up in the SWIs. May they find foster parents, learn a trade and have good lives. I hope so.

Back to what I said about the best case scenario…I know J and I are going to do everything in our power to be the very best parents we can. I think FD is coming into a very good, safe, loving and stable situation. I believe she will flourish with us and grow up strong, smart and beautiful in all the important ways. Obviously I believe this, or we wouldn’t be adopting.

I hope that we’ll be good parents. I hope we’re doing the right thing. I hope we can walk that very fine line between integrating her birth culture into her/our life/lives while not “appropriating” it. I hope she doesn’t resent us when she grows up.

Anyway, I have a lot of hope.

 

Numbers to back up….

….what I said about not all SWIs in China participating in the IA program.

I’m on a Yahoogroups list hosted by Dr. Jane Leidtke. She founded the Our Chinese Daughters Foundation (OCDF) and lives in Beijing. On her list she answers all kinds of questions about China.

She responded to a query about CCAA’s claim that there were not enough children to meet IA demand. According to Jane, there are about 1000 SWIs in China but only 250 of them participate in IA.

So…250 SWIs out of 1,000 are open to IA.

The other 750+ institutions do not participate in IA and are filled with children. Jane says there are perhaps up to 600,000 children both NSN (non-special needs) and SN (special needs) waiting in SWI’s that don’t participate in IA.

So…600,000 children. I really hope China can make the domestic adoption program flourish.

 

On the Recent Coverage of IA and the New Regulations

The new regulations and international adoption has suddenly become a popular topic for news outlets. Problem is, they’re getting a lot of the details wrong. (Big surprise there) Misinformation abounds.

The issue of the gender imbalance in China is a complicated one and the articles that I’ve seen so far seem to want to blame IA for it. Now, I have a lot of complex emotion regarding adopting from China, (which is an entirely different post), but I don’t think it’s fair to lay the blame of the gender imbalance solely at the feet of internationally adopting parents. There are many factors contributing to this problem.

Of course, I’m not saying IA isn’t contributing. After all, lots of little girls are leaving the country because of the IA program. Has China started to take steps to stem this flow? Yes, I think so…just not overtly. That’s what the new regulations are about — they pare down the number of families eligible adopt.

A related yet separate issue that the news agencies have been harping on is that there are more adopting families than children to adopt. This is very misleading. Only a fraction of the Social Welfare Institutes (SWIs) in China participate in the international adoption program. The bulk of the SWIs do not. I don’t know what happens to those kids in the SWIs that don’t participate.

So when the news agencies speak of children available for adoption, they should really be saying “paper-ready children” — that being children who are in the SWIs that participate in IA and are ready “paper-wise” to be adopted out. The numbers of abandoned children, as far the info shows, is still mind-bogglingly high. It’s just that China is controlling the number of kids put into the IA program for reasons that just aren’t clear.

When we first started this process waaaaaay back in March 2005, the situation in China was very different. Since then, in just a very short time, the country has developing economically at a fast rate. It is true that more couples can now afford to pay the fee to keep their second and third children, so less babies are likely being abandoned (in the urban areas). However, the economic development has not yet trickled into the rural areas of China in any truly impactful way. This is why most of the abandoned children that are in the IA program come from the southern provinces of China, the rural areas.

And, sadly, many more of the babies abandoned these days seem to be showing up with special needs, as a result of bad environmental conditions–pesticides in the water in the rural areas, ect. When we first started this process this was less of an issue. Economic development has its dark side. So there are less children in the non-special needs program because of this, more children in the special needs program.

Oprah didn’t help things either. Apparently she did a show about international adoption from China way back when and spurred a lot of people to adopt internationally. This increased the number of families with dossiers in China.

There is a domestic adoption program in China. They started it in ernest about a year ago (I think). Per my information (I don’t know if it’s correct. I don’t think anyone knows but China), the domestic adoption program started off well but then slacked off. They’re trying to promote as much as they can, and that’s a very good thing.

So, you see? Very complicated. There are many issues here. But the bottom line is that when they say there are more potential adoptive parents than babies to be adopted, it is very misleading.

Also, IA from China doesn’t cost 15k. (Some news agency reported that) We wish it did.

Lastly…(since I’m on a roll)….most of the money in an adoption from China actually goes to the U.S. government and to the adoption agencies. Very little of it actually goes to the SWI, itself. None (I don’t think. None from us directly…maybe there are some small fees in China that we have yet to pay) goes to the Chinese government. China does benefit monetarily from the travel, of course, because adoptive families spend two to three weeks in China, spending money on plane tickets, train tickets, hotels, restaurants, ect…

People who suggest that adoptive families “buy” children is ignorant and, yes, racist. I never hear anyone suggest those families adopting children domestically are “buying” children. But maybe I’m wrong about that. Maybe ignorance abounds throughout all aspects of adoption.

Sometimes people ask us why we chose China over the other international adoption programs. It’s weird because it required little conscious thought on our part. We fleetingly thought of other IA programs — Russia, Guatemala, Korea ect — but it was always really China in our hearts and minds. As trite as it sounds, we just knew that our child was there. I always try to rationalize our decision better than that because it sounds so non-analytical, but the truth is that we just knew.

EDIT: Oh…and the language that is being used in some cases, like “supplier” and “export” is seriously pissing me off and making my blood pressure climb. People need to get a heart and then get a clue. What is WRONG with people?

 

The Biological Mother

It’s a question I’ve struggled with since the beginning. What will we tell our daughter about her bio mother when the times comes?It’s hard in this situation since we will know nothing about her.

Research-China posted this piece about The Myth of the Birthmother recently. The man who keeps this blog is someone I alternately agree with and then don’t agree with. He is an adoptive parent who does research on China and his opinions are his own. I consider them opinions and nothing more, sometimes they’re interesting, sometimes they’re troubling. We will likely use his services to locate our child’s finding ad once the time comes (it’s the ad required by law to be placed in the newspaper when a child is found).

Anyway, he talks about the tendency of adoptive parents to romanticize the bio mother, to project our own emotions onto her and assume she grieves the loss of her daughter and only gave her up under the most desperate and dire of situations. He argues that this isn’t ncessarily the case, that rural Chinese culture is different than ours and that they don’t have the luxury of having children for reasons of love. They do it for monetary reasons, to have a strong workers for the land, to ensure a retirement plan for themselves, ect.

He cites the story of a woman who parented an abandoned baby (likely a frequent occurrence. There is evidence to suggest many abandoned baby girls are absorbed into local villages and never turned over to the authorities). The woman kept the child until she was four years old and then met a man she wanted to marry. In order to provide a shot at having a child with the man, they dropped the four-year-old off at a SWI. Pretty cold, huh? Apparently they went back to the SWI, having second thoughts, but the SWI wouldn’t give the child back to them, told them they had to pay 5,000 yuan for her (that’s about $640.00).

His point is that having children in rural China is less a luxury and more practicality. He argues that the birthmother may not have had much emotion over the abandonment of her child at all, probably doesn’t cry over the loss of the child every day.

Here’s what I think….no matter the culture, no matter the place, no matter the time in history, certain BIOLOGICAL responses remain true. Women have built-in responses to having a baby. They are deeper for some than others, but it is largely universal. It’s a response that is physical, hormonal and has been with us since our caveman days. It’s a survival mechanism for our species.

So, basically, I think this piece presents a sweeping generalization.

There are undoubtedly some bio mothers in China who never shed a tear when they go out into the middle of the night to leave their newborn infant alone on the side of the street. Some probably are more concerned with basic survival than their newborn daughter. Or, maybe, like in the story above, they simply want a shot at another child or a child of a different sex and their decision was a coldly practical one. However, I believe that biological urge–the unique mother and child bond–wins out most of time.

Do these women mourn the loss of their children? Do they think of them every year on their birthday? That we’ll never know, but (and this leads me to my most important point), I think it’s critical we (as in James and I) lean to the compassionate side of that question mark. I think it will be incredibly important and healthy for our daughter to believe that her bio mother gave her up out of necessity and that she was valued as a human being by the woman who carried her for nine months and gave birth to her. (Frankly, as a woman, I have trouble believing anything else anyway. Maybe I’m projecting, but whatever. *shrug*). But the bottom line is that, for FD’s own emotional well-being and sense-of-self, this is what matters.

I will think and wonder about her bio mother forever, never knowing the circumstances of our daughter’s abandonment. The truth is an important thing to me. I hate self-delusion. But since we’ll never know about FD’s birthmother, isn’t it better we simply think about what’s best for FD? And I think what’s best for her will be fostering a strong sense-of-self and a healthy level of confidence that she is, was, and always will be loved and cared about.

That anonymous woman who gave her up will need to be a part of that equation. She’s going to be the ghostly third parent, never seen but always present.

So, this leads me to my most recent purchase (one of many purchases of books about China and Chinese culture)….

The Good Women of China: Hidden Voices, by Xinran Xue

“In 1989, Xinran, a Beijing journalist, began broadcasting a nightly program on state radio that was devoted entirely to personal affairs—a radical concept in Communist China. In response, she received thousands of letters from women, many with questions about sexuality; one woman wondered “why her heart beat faster when she accidentally bumped into a man on the bus.” Eventually, Xinran persuaded her superiors to let her share some of these letters on the air, and in this groundbreaking book, written after she moved to London, in 1997, she has also included stories that didn’t make it past government censors. A teen-ager commits suicide after learning that a neighbor has seen her boyfriend kiss her forehead; a university student speaks casually of becoming a “personal secretary,” or mistress, to a rich man; a Kuomintang general’s daughter goes mad after witnessing the torture of the family that sheltered her. This intimate record reads like an act of defiance, and the unvarnished prose allows each story to stand as testimony.”

It’s an older book and maybe outdated. However, while economic development is radically changing the face of China, I am yet to be convinced it is affecting the poor, rural areas significantly at this time. And that’s where most the abandoned baby girls in China come from.

 

Drama

So, something unprecedented (apparently) has happened. There were four agencies (three European and one American) who had LID dates after the 8th but still received referrals for their families. This means that lots of families from other agencies were skipped over. No one knows why this happened because, as usual, there is no information offered.

On the one hand we have a lot of surprised and happy families with Sept 9th, 13th, 15th LID dates who are busy crowing about how their family is so special and blessed that God intervened or they said prayers to St. Theresa and she sent them a child earlier because they’re so perfect and pious (and by the way can we kill some more babies in Iraq now ’cause that’s FUN!). And, well, you get the picture (and get me a barf bag too while you’re at it, wouldja? Heh. I’m such a bitch.)

Personally I think it was a clerical error, or a decison to match ALL the babies they possibly could regardless of LID date, and not Divine Intervention for the “special” families, but what do I know? *shrug*

On the other hand we have people bitching about how THEY didn’t get a referral and that’s NOT FAIR! with all the irritating whininess of consumers jostling in line at the department store at Christmas. “Hey! She cut in liiiine!”

Oy. So I’ve made a quick getaway from the blogs and the lists, though the referral pics were so cute! *sigh* And maybe I’m being unfair in my perceptions of these people. After all, this is a pretty damned emotional time for everyone. This is the biggest thing to happen in our entire lives, you know? I know it is in MINE. But I guess I just want to be a little more philosophical about it.

Here’s the thing: it’s going to happen when it’s meant to. I’m as impatient as everyone else to be a mom and I’ve been waiting a REALLY long time to be one. Years and years. But if we’re skipped in this next batch of referrals and someone after me gets theirs…that’s okay. It only means the child, OUR child, wasn’t ready to be referred yet. We’ve come this far, we can wait a little longer.

Now, here’s something we’re currently preparing ourselves for, a possibility I’m a little less sanguine about…

I saw one baby referred who is two years old. I saw several others who are about one and a half years old. We have to prepare ourselves to be referred a child who is that old. If that happens I will grieve missing her firsts because that’s pretty much a toddler, not a baby anymore. We will have missed her first birthday, her first steps, her first words…and that will make me very, very sad. If she is that old, we have the knowledge that she spent the first one to two years of her life without us, perhaps without anyone to truly attach to, someone to rock her to sleep, to pick her up when she cries.

WHY China waits this long to refer children is an utter mystery to me. By law they can be referred at 6 months and there are enough families out there waiting that this should not be a problem for them. The knowledge that she was there waiting for the entire time WE were waiting will be very, very hard to accept. But right now James and I are preparing ourselves mentally for this possibility.

But, like James said to me this morning, it’s all just fate. And as we grieve the loss of her firsts, we’ll be preparing to make the most of everything else.