A quick reply to the comments on the previous post:
1) I have talked to several adult adoptees about our situation and they have been very supportive of the idea of searching, given the specific circumstances of L’s story. The hitch is that they are all domestic adoptees, so there is a gap between their experience of searching/reunion and the struggle that maintaining a relationship over cultural, language and distance barriers in our situation.
I would think maintaining a relationship would be a little easier for our family than other families who have adopted from China who have more limited language & cultural resources at their disposal. At the same time, I think it would still be really, really HARD.
2) I am not comfortable using for-profit information collection organization/person or anyone else as my agent to contact L’s orphanage. Due to the risk of them violating the CCAA rules (e.g. contacting orphanages between referral & handing over the baby) or pissing off the CCAA in some way or another. I would be very concerned about the actions of anyone acting as my proxy and possibly hurting my chances of getting information/access in the future?
I have two Chinese friends who have experience contacting orphanages who have volunteered to call any time I want them to. I also have another who translates whatever written things I need, which will be especially helpful if we can get some email contact (which the orphanage director seemed excited about). We will be back in China some day and I don’t want to face L’s orphanage director and not know what was said or done by the person who was contacting him on our behalf.
I am planning to try to contact L’s finding place, but haven’t decided if it is better to call or write. We don’t have a phone number, but it shouldn’t be too hard to find it for someone who can speak chinese.
3) As for DNA testing, there is a fledgling DNA project for chinese adoptees, but the primary use seems to be to try to find siblings. From what I have read, the technology is pretty unreliable for sibling identification if there is no parent DNA available. I also don’t feel comfortable sending L’s DNA out there to be used for who knows what. She can make that decision when she is older.
4) As for the taboo against birth parent searching, I am not sure why it is the way it is. My best guess is that a LOT of adoptive parent chose china because child abandonment is illegal in China, which makes it very unlikely birth parents will come forward on their own. I have heard many many adoptive parents say they chose China because birthparents will never be in the picture.
Because abandonment is illegal, it is also risky for the birthparents to do any searching. I certainly don’t want to get L’s parents in trouble by showing up at their doorstep. The last time I researched it, I couldn’t find any records of birth parents going to jail for abandoning a child in china (in English media, anyway). Enforcement would probably vary wildly depending on local officials. I even read one story in which local officials contacted a visiting adoptive family via the orphanage to see if they would like to meet the birthmother.
We would have to proceed cautiously if we decided to search.
5) With over 50,000 Chinese adoptees (and many heading into late adolescence), I find it hard to believe that only 10 have located birth families. There seems to be thousands of families looking for siblings on those sib-find lists, but no one is looking for birth families? To me, that raises an interesting question about why adoptive parents would view a relationship with a bio-sibling to be so desirable, but birth parent contact to be out of the question.
I know of several people who are actively searching for birth families. I know one person personally and she has considerable resources to do it. So I think there are parents out there searching (and soon adoptees will be searching too), but no one is talking about it. That means every family has to reinvent the wheel.
If anyone reading this happens to be searching or seriously considering it, could you email me privately at amfamblog at gmail dot com ?
I just talked to a woman about openness domestically and we started talking about openness internationally. She was going to send me the name of someone doing a lot of research/writing/advocacy around it in Canada although I think this woman’s experience has mostly been in S. America. In any case, I’ll pass it on to you when she passes it on to me.
Thanks for addressing these issues. I have to say that this “I have heard many many adoptive parents say they chose China because birthparents will never be in the picture. ” really pisses me off. Maybe it seems easier to the parents, but it cerainly won’t be for the kid. I suspected this was the case but hoped there were other reasons birth family searching was taboo.
in the world of Ethiopian adoptions, I have heard some adoptive parents say they “hoped” for an abandoned baby or a “true orphan” (ie both parents dead, at least on the referral paperwork) so they also wouldn’t have to deal with parents. As if babies who are abandoned don’t have first parents. As if these kids should have to suffer more losses.
Grr.
I know you don’t think this way. I’m just venting.
In regards to our search: I took a leap of faith that someone was presenting herself as she truly was, and she got incredible info for us. There’s definitely a risk. We also found that the first family was happy to share real info with us once the adoption was finalized. The risks seemed fewer then.
I don’t know the circumstances of L’s early months, but it sounds like you may have a lot more to go on than many of us do. DH speaks Mandarin and he spoke with the director of our daughter’s SWI on the day our daughter joined our family but she was vague at best. We know nothing about our daughter’s beginnings in life other than her being at the SWI. I hope that one day in the not too distant future, China will change its rules and perhaps interested parents can participate in a DNA program which will allow them/us to be in touch should we wish. We do know that given the part of China our daughter is from, there’s a very strong chance that she has an older sister and potentially younger siblings or other siblings given up for adoption as well. I do hope that it is one day possible to find our daughter’s birth family… honestly, not because it would mean that much to me, but because it might mean a lot to her and I’ll move heaven and earth to help her if finding her birth family is important to her.
Julie
A – I really think anything you can learn is a complete gift for L. At some point it becomes her choice on what to do with it, but to have anything beyond basic information is fantastic. I admit, I’m a little jealous, because I don’t think we would have this type of success. The Director of E’s orphanage and the nannies we met shared less than what was even in her referral. My husband somehow believes that we will find her birthparents someday, and I hope his wish turns out to be a surprising reality.
I am embarrassed to say that I was one of the IA parents who leaned toward IA due to lack of birthparent contact (it was never a really driver in our decision though). Man, have I ever changed my tune. I am an adult adoptee, and I haven’t had a positive experience with my own birth family, and I didn’t meet them until I was 35. Knowing them while I was growing up would have been less than ideal (gross understatement). But, every experience is different, and at least I know who they are, what my story is, what my medical history is, who I look like, etc. Not insignificant things, not in the least.
Hope I didn’t bother you by mentioning a certain service in the last post’s comments. Obviously I don’t endorse them, but thought I’d share whatever methods I knew of and then let you choose if you wanted to pursue it.
Unless L was from a very small village, I would guess that you are going to get more info from following the finding spot lead. Though of course it would be important to keep in touch with the orphanage as well. I wonder if the orphanage knew a family was open to meeting birth parents and the birth parents showed up at the orphanage asking for information – would they connect them? My gut is telling me that they wouldn’t, but I don’t know why.
Lee,
I don’t think you should be embarrassed about having once been attracted to the idea of no contact with birth parents. I agree that this will very likely be a greater hardship for the children, but AP’s come to adoption in different ways. I think for many people, especially those dealing with infertility, there is a very strong desire to be THE ONLY parents to the child. I’m not saying this is right, but I can certainly understand why people might feel this way. Also, it doesn’t take much exposure to popular media to form a negative image of the role of birth-parents in the domestic adoption experience. I’m not saying it’s deserved, but we all know which stories the media tells. Also, I believe many agencies use the lack of contact with birth-parents to “sell” IA, so it’s not surprising that many people site this as a “positive” aspect of IA.
AmFam is right though, that as more and more of these adopted children come of age, this is going to become a very big issue for lots of families. My guess is that the process of making contact will become more stream-lined and routine in the future. The problem of course as AmFam has also stated, the longer you wait, the more difficult it becomes to find information.
I also wonder how most north American families would deal with a “relationship” with the birth-mother/family in China. While I am certain that many mothers of children abandoned in China grieve terribly over a choice often forced upon them and would rejoice to be reunited at some level, it’s a fantasy to believe all these children are wrenched from a crying mother’s arms. What about the mothers/families in China who strongly wish to never be found? What about children who came from truly horrible (abusive) situations and are lucky to have ever made it to an SWI?
Oy, I hope I wasn’t offending anyone on either the mention of “information collection company” or the fact that many adoptive parents choose china to avoid birthparent complications. I only had a few minutes to post during nap time, so I wasn’t tiptoeing around things. I am not judgemental of either of those topics, just throwing out what I thought. I also don’t have any judgement about ppl using professional information seekers, but it doesn’t seem like the best option for our family.
If those searching can navigate the legal hurdles for the birth families, I think searching in China wouldn’t be so very different from searching in other countries. I think the results are going to be a mixed bag of possibilities, like those Scott eluded to.
I keep coming back to the belief that knowing is almost always better than not knowing. It may also be that the truth is not as bad as the possibilities that L might imagine for herself.
Also, I don’t mean to imply we have tons of information. We don’t even have a finding person name. The town L is from is pretty small though. Even if her mother was just temporarily staying in that area to give birth, it is small enough for me to want to assume SOMEONE might have information.
L’s SWI is in another town entirely, so unless information is in the paperwork, I think it is highly doubtful they have information that could lead to her family…but maybe they do.
I sent a letter and photos today. Just in case a nanny or someone who ends up in posession of the photos wants to contact us, I included our address & email address on the back of a number of the photos. I want to leave as many doors open as possible, just in case.
I have been following quite a number of china adoption blogs because the child development and sociological issues intrigue me. I have found the lack of discussion about contact with foster families particularly interesting, since making contact would be much easier.
I think a lot of people adopt from China because there is no birth family involvement. I also think there is often an underlying sense of rescuing the children and a romaticizing of the tragic birth mother. A loving “long-term” foster family to whom the child has strongly bonded is therefore disturbing.
I’ve read more times than I can count, “I’m so glad my child was in foster care because that means s/he strongly bonded to someone and will therefore be able to form a strong bond with me.” End of dicussion about the foster family and the child’s relationship to the foster family. It is much harder to think of oneself as taking a child away from a foster family they are strongly bonded to than from a deprived institutional setting. It’s understandable but unfortunate that a lot of adoptive parents seem to react this way. I would think it’s important for the child’s sake to make and continue contact with the foster family.
I know I’m generalizing here. It’s just that every time I hear that comment about the child’s ability to bond, it pains me. I’m hoping there’s more discussion than I know concerning contact with foster families.
Coming in late and haven’t had time to read everything carefully-but wanted to chime in on the DNA stuff. I would absolutely love to do DNA testing to learn more about my African American heritage-but it is truly not safe to do it before we have legislation stating how it may/may not be used. For example, there is a strong possibility that I have the “breast cancer gene”. If I get my DNA on file someplace, there is no guarantee that, at some point in the future, an insurance company can’t buy that information, making it hard for me to get insurance. ~lmc
Here in Holland a 10 year old chinese adoptee has recently found her birthfamily. A dutch televisionshow that has done an awful lot of birthfamily searches all across the world have found them. I can’t remember much more about it but could look into it for you (it was quite big in the news..). I do remeber the story was aired without problems for the birthfamily
In refernece to mijk’s above comment:
I believe there was a small blurb about this family in Adoptive Families Magazine a couple of months back. What was surprising to me learn is that there is a statute of limitations in China when it comes to prosecuting people who abandon their children – 6 years from what I recall. That info did give me some hope for the future. I would love to look for my child’s birth family some day – but how? I wouldn’t even know where to begin. I’m hopeful things will be different when she’s older and the search won’t seem so overwhelming.
In reference to the comment above, the statute is 5 years. As cited here: http://www.adoptivefamilies.com/news.php
Scroll down to China Adoptee finds Biological Parents (I’m paraphrasing slightly). It’s halfway down the page or so.
here is a link to the program. http://player.omroep.nl/?wopid=KRO_1240912
It is in dutch of course but I suddenly realised that their might be a lot of chinese in is and that you might get some clues out of that (completely willing to grab a box of tissues and watch it myslef for the dutch parts. but not now I have 3 2,5 year olds in the house!)
searched some more and found out that this parents had indeed found imformation on their own and didn’t know what to do with it. The televisonteam did reasearch and found that the parents woudln’t be proseciuted since that can’t be done after 5 years. 24th of spetmeber the program of the reunion between child and parents will be broadcasted.
“There seems to be thousands of families looking for siblings on those sib-find lists, but no one is looking for birth families? To me, that raises an interesting question about why adoptive parents would view a relationship with a bio-sibling to be so desirable, but birth parent contact to be out of the question.”
Wow.
At the risk of offending your China-adoption readers, I’ll just say it: I suppose it is much easier for white middle-class westerners to feel comfortable making connections with other white middle-class westerners who might be raising their kid’s sibling than with an actual MOTHER who is not white, nor middle-class, nor western, eh? Falls right in with the anedotes about not wanting birth parents in the picture.
I will be watching this unfold for your family with great interest and if I come across anything I will certainly pass it on. I’ll be at an adoption conference (with Dawn!) next month and I’ll keep an ear out for you.
Many, many adult adoptees feel that adoptive parents should not undertake a birthparent search under any circumstance because you are taking a choice away from the adoptee, who has had absolutely zero choices with regard to adoption. Tready carefully before making a final decision.
The conversation on Dawn’s today brought me to this post and the previous one. And I have to say that although my kids are at the other end of the age spectrum, in their mid and late teens (16 and 18), I’m still asking the very same questions. Because I’ve acknowledged I need to step away from actually DOING anything anymore, I don’t do any more than that.
It’s very interesting to me to learn that the prevailing attitude in the China adoption adoptive parent community is to not try to find more information or to search. When we adopted in 1989 and 1991, this was the prevailing attitude in Korean adoption as well. This is just opinion, but I think the fact that Korean adoptees reached critical mass, started searching, and talked about it kind of woke many adoptive parents up to the possibility of more openness. I wonder if this might also happen in the China adoption community.
[...] I got this comment on the LJ branch of the site yesterday: I just ran across this blog entry and I was wondering (although it’s none of my business, of course) whether you guys have given any thought to searching for Meredith’s birth family, or if you’re going to let the girls decide when they’re older whether or not they want to pursue a search. Since they’re so thrilled with each other, knowing they might have another sister and/or brother still in China must be somewhat heart-wrenching. I have no idea what I would do in that situation – I was considering adopting from China before I had my daughter, and I’ll admit that the thought that I wouldn’t have the birthparents breathing down my neck seemed to me to be a plus. Now I’m not so sure… I don’t turn off anonymous commenting, because there are people in the world who read this journal and don’t belong to LJ or whatever, and would like to say hello. I do screen the anonymous messages; the only ones that show up are the ones that are OK. This one comes from someone in the Nashville area using Comcast, for what it’s worth. OK, here’s the answer, after the cut, in detail: [...]
[...] AmFam has been talking about searching for L’s information/family and in that case doing nothing could be impeding L’s future options — there could be harm in doing nothing. (I don’t know — I trust AmFam on this one but I’ll say right now that I don’t know enough about Chinese adoption to speak intelligently about it.) Because China is growing so quickly, the information they could get now may not be there by the time L is old enough to want to search. If I were AmFam, I hope I’d be brave and savvy enough to do what they’re doing. [...]