The expected reasoning behind adoption in China is to rescue the thousands of babies (mostly girls) from a harsh country where strict population control often leads to acts of desperation–in this case, abandoning unwanted babies. Some, though, are saying the reality is quite different: the LA Times reports that government officials often confiscate babies from impoverished families for orphanages to profit from the high adoption fee paid by adoptee parents.
“In the beginning, I think, adoption from China was a very good thing because there were so many abandoned girls. But then it became a supply-and-demand-driven market and a lot of people at the local level were making too much money,” said Ina Hut, who last month resigned as the head of the Netherlands’ largest adoption agency out of concern about baby trafficking.
The stories come as no surprise in a complex situation like foreign adoption in America, where issues of culture, racial identity and misplaced intentions always come to play. Could life get even more complicated for these adopted children?
What next?
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3 Comments to “Chinese Adoptees: Stolen or Abandoned?”
Dan W wrote:
This is sad but I'm not really surprised. I hope that the adoptee parents do not feel guilty for raising children from these situations (if true for their particular case) and the adoptees themselves do not hate their ancestorial land. A lot of things go on in China, and not all of them are bad.
Posted on 20-Sep-09 at 11:18 am | Permalink
csli wrote:
Yes, Dan. A lot of things do “go on in China”, not all of them bad”. But try to imagine what “China” means to an eleven-year old girl, surrounded by doting white Americans, who knows that she is only in this strange place filled with food and TV because she’s a girl. Or, more likely, she doesn’t know this, until she’s thirty and piecing together the shards of her strange life, trying to love her “Chinese heritage” when much of that heritage celebrates the very social system that spat her out.
Saying that adoptees should not hate their ancestral land is easy. Understanding why they might is a little harder. Personally, I could find a lot more love about Korean culture if it wasn’t so friggin’ homogeneous, racist, and sexist. C’mon, people of my “ancestors”, give me some reasons to forgive.
Posted on 18-Nov-09 at 5:50 pm | Permalink
Dan wrote:
CSLI,
I think my previous comment stated that I “hope” not “should”. It was not meant to belittle anyone and yes I can imagine just like most people, adopted or not. Though the effect will not be the same as those who are facing it, as it is with all family backgrounds, this I understand.
Posted on 19-Nov-09 at 12:01 am | Permalink
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