I have 2 children adopted through the SN program from China. Every time I look at them, the joy I feel at having these 2 incredible little people in my life is shadowed by the sorrow I feel knowing that I shouldn’t be the one with that priviledge; that they are here with me as the result of tremendous losses for them, and for their first families.

I ask myself repeatedly if by adopting my children, I in some way contributed to those losses, either for them or for future children. It’s a difficult question to face, and to face honestly. And I think the answer is different for both children.

My son’s chances for a family domestically were slim to non-existant; his chances for a place in Chinese society as it is now and for the forseeable future were grim. (ok, to clarify: a place other than on the lowest strata of Chinese society) This doesn’t mean that his losses aren’t significant, just that I honestly believe that international adoption was truly the best option for his finding a family and having a bright future. And, I hope the fact that he and other children like him are wanted and considered desirable by international families, will influence Chinese society to reconsider their attitudes towards children and adults like my son.

My daughter, however. . . her SN is not visible. While I suspect that it may well have been known and contributed to the decision to abandon, once treated I don’t think it would have impacted her future in China. Once in China, we had the great priviledge of meeting her foster mother, and were told that her foster family had wanted to adopt her. However, they didn’t have the funds to do so. . . and they were “too old”. Now, we can give our daughter more “stuff”, and a better education than she probably would have received in China, but we can’t love her any more than her foster family did, and we can’t give her the pieces of her identity they could have preserved. And, unlike one of her listmates from that orphanage, she didn’t need treatment not available in China to survive.

Can you tell I feel incredible guilt over my daughter’s place in my family? Had I not adopted her, some other international family would have. . . but why should ANY international family have had the chance?

Of course, there are aspects to that I can’t answer: if her foster family didn’t already have her, and know and love her for the child she is, would she have been domestically “adoptable” as a girl with a corrected special need? Would she have gotten surgery without the influence of international adoption?

And, for me, the largest question of all: Did my children’s parents have the money to pay bribes, fines, for medical care, etc, and if not, were they abandoned not for their gender or the social impact of their special need, but because their parents couldn’t afford to keep them, or to get them the help they needed to survive?

There are no easy answers, in the world as it is, even to the relatively narrow international focus to the larger issue of adoption.