Taiwan TV frequently carries stories of abducted children. These children, usually destined to be sold to affluent local or foreign couples without offspring of their own, naturally represent an illegal and horrifying trade. Stories of parents all over the world so poor that they sell their children are not much more cheering. Adoptions such as the one described in this book, however, arguably fall into another category.
It tells of an American couple who adopted an abandoned baby girl from China. The author is a journalist, and her husband a lawyer. Both had been married before, but neither had any surviving children. Both were over 40 by the time they adopted, and for the privilege they paid a total of US$15,000.
The adoption was wholly legal in both China and US, and the process monitored by the two respective governments. More than 4,000 babies are currently being adopted annually from China by childless US couples, and occasionally single people. The children involved are almost without exception girls. There's even a Web site connecting those in the process of applying to adopt female Chinese infants.
The author claims that the risk of the child having been stolen from her parents was almost wholly avoided by adopting from China rather than elsewhere. In some countries of Central and South America, for instance, a black-market in stolen babies is said to operate. But because of China's one-child policy, large numbers of baby girls are abandoned there every year. The author's was found abandoned in a local market, the orphanage workers said, and it is certainly the case that many female babies in modern China are left to the tide of fortune in just this kind of way.
The author doesn't go so far as to point out, though she could well have done, that as emigration to America is the dream of millions of Chinese, she and her husband would have been seen by many local people as acting as benevolent gods in taking the child in any circumstances whatsoever.
The couple, who live in San Francisco, filed their application in California in January 1996. They were handed their 12-month-old baby, in Jiangmen City in southern China, 22 months later.
Interestingly, they initially requested to adopt two children. This was turned down. They could adopt one now, and maybe another one later, they were told. The author surmises that for a foreigner to be able to adopt two children (except in the case of twins) when Chinese nationals are only allowed to have one would appear to the authorities in China as unfair.
So, why did they not try to adopt within the US? The author's answer is that there is enormous competition among infertile American couples -- six million of them, according to a 1998 count -- and that the wait would be long and the outcome uncertain. The cost might well be double (US$30,000 and possibly more for a private adoption), with fears of broken agreements, the possibility of legally insecure adoption bonds, and the birth-mother changing her mind and trying to recover custody of the child. For every couple who succeeded, one agency reported, five or six others failed.
One rather surprising fact emerges -- that the overwhelming majority in the US pursuing parenthood through in-vitro fertilization or adoption state a preference for a girl. This marked contrast to attitudes in Asia suggests a fundamental social difference, albeit one masked by increasingly similar surface life-styles.
The baby was from the beginning robust and well-nourished. In one chapter Karin Evans refers to the notorious BBC TV documentary called The Dying Rooms that featured a nightmarish orphanage in China, and follows this with an account of the official Chinese reaction, and subsequent attempts (though the film's accusations were denied) to make improvements. There's still a long way to go, she concludes. All adoptions by foreigners come from a relatively small number of orphanages, clearly among the best, and a tiny fraction of China's total.
The book is nevertheless suffused with the spirit of delight -- on first understanding the possibility of adopting a child, on first seeing her, and at all the stages reached so far of her growing up. There are now more than 1,000 young girls adopted from China living in the New York metropolitan area alone, almost all ensconced in more or less affluent families. Given their pitiable start in life, it is hard to believe their prospects would have been better had they remained in China.
But hard choices are involved. What about the majority of abandoned girls who remain behind? No amount of international adoption is going to provide homes for all China's abandoned girls. How are the babies selected, and then matched with the applicants? There are political issues, too. Given the amount of money prospective parents have to pay, can China be accused of selling its orphans?
The author is sensitive to the emotional issues involved. She speculates on the trauma any mother would suffer on abandoning a baby, and even recounts an imaginary conversation she had with her child's birth-mother in a dream. In more sober mood, she offers a history of China's one-child policy to explain how it is that such tragedies have become so common.
Many couples, she reports, go in search of the place the abandoned infant was actually discovered, and video-tape it for their adoptive daughter to see in later life.
When Evans is first handed the baby, she discovers the laughing infant is wearing a T-shirt emblazoned "Trump's Castle Casino Resort."
"`Oh lord, sweet baby,' I said, laughing back at her. `Where on earth did you come from?'"
No other circumstances, the author writes, no memories of sweet passion or direct blood tie, could make her love the child more than she does now.
After reading this straightforward, honest and moving book, it is hard to find fault with that.
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