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Letter:

Challenges of adopting

I'm writing in response to your Quick Take piece about adoptions ("Adopters avoid challenges," March 4, page 3).

"Why doesn't he look like you?" "Why don't you have your own children?" "Aren't you afraid his birth parents will try to get money from you?" These are a few of the typical, and tactless, questions that I hear on a daily basis from strangers that I come in contact with on public transportation or on the streets in Taipei.

Why do I share this with you? Because I want to let you know some of the challenges that every adoptive parent faces.

Your article stated that most people who adopt in Taiwan don't want to adopt a physically or mentally challenged child. Therefore, as the title states, they are avoiding all the challenges of adoption.

Family privacy is something you no longer have as a prospective adoptive parent. Courts and social workers question you on every aspect of your personal life as well as how you plan to raise your child. This long and arduous process full of paperwork and interviews is one that causes most people to lose the will to keep going toward the moment when a new child is brought home.

Add to this the integration of a new person into the family, and quite possibly, as is the case with my family, the integration of a third culture.

My husband is of the Ami tribe, I am American and our son is Chinese. We are responsible for teaching our family not only in our own two cultures, values and traditions, but also in those of his birth culture. This responsibility, this challenge, lies solely on the parents' shoulders.

A final challenge that I would like to share, and which only adoptive families will ever experience, are the questions that an adopted child raises about his or her birth family. It is our responsibility as adopted parents to openly share with our son his birth story, as tragic as it may be, and answer his question, "Why did my birth parents not want me?" It is our job to convince him that our love for him is unconditional and never-ending.

We must help him, through his entire life, to believe and accept that "blood" doesn't make a difference when it comes to our love as a family. I think all would agree this is a challenge that few people are able to meet successfully. These are only a few of the challenges that adoptive parents and their children face.

Who says adopters avoid challenges? Last year, my husband and I adopted a boy from a orphanage in Taiwan. Our son, Longlong, is profoundly deaf, has various physical problems as well as being severely developmentally delayed. Yes, most people believe that adopting a physically or mentally challenged child is more "noble" but I am certain the challenges of adoption are the same, regardless of the health of the child.

I believe your article quoted information from an article in a Chinese-language newspaper that ran on March 4 that included an interview my family was involved in. The reason we chose to share our story with the public was not for honor, praise or words of admiration. We simply wanted to share our story of love and encourage others in Taiwan to consider adoption.

Whether the child is healthy or has special needs doesn't matter at all when we consider the fact that all children need parents who will love and care for them unconditionally.

Adoption is full of challenges that not everyone can accept; but those who are able to accept the challenges will have the most precious and worthwhile experiences of loving and growing in love with a child. A child that wasn't born of blood, but was born of chosen love.

Jeri Kay Long Kao
Taipei
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