Dawn and several other people asked me to write about searching for birth families in China.  I think the easiest way to talk about it is to go through the thought process that Mr. A and I went through when we made the decision to move forward.   That means your mileage may vary based on your family and your child’s specific circumstances.  This is not a post about how to search.  Let me know if you want more detail about that and I will see what I can do.

This post is by no means an exhaustive list of everything you have to think about if you are considering a search.  I invite those of you who have struggled with these same questions or others to share your thoughts in the comments.

Before I start, I am going to send you back to this post.  I wrote it one year after L came home, when I was just starting to collect information.  Please go read it before we move forward.

That was about two years ago and my feelings are largely the same now and these are some of the questions we asked to get to the decision that we are actively searching for L’s birth family with a goal of an open relationship with them.  These are some of the questions you should ask yourself before you start:

WHY do you want to search?

L has a story.  It is hers and she has a right to know where and who she comes from.  As her mother, I make decisions on a daily basis because I believe they are in her best interest.  I believe that knowing is better than not  knowing.  I believe it is easier to deal with the devil you know rather than the devil you imagine.  (The devil in this case being the story of how L lost her family. Not the family themselves)

Listen, our children are going to hear these stories about human trafficking in China.  They are not going to believe our butterfly and rainbows One Child Policy fairy tales.  They are going to hear the worst and they may very well apply those facts to their own stories.  We all know that sometimes those horror stories are actually the stories of children who have been internationally adopted.  Don’t pretend you don’t know that.  I would rather L know her own story rather than jumping to conclusions about what may or may not have happened to cause her to lose her family.

Recent events have shown us that we don’t know what we thought we knew about why children lost their birth families in China.  Families in China are separated from their children for many of the same reasons birth families in Western countries lose their children (poverty, unwed mothers, coercion etc.)  It isn’t just the One Child Policy.   It isn’t all kidnapping/trafficking/special needs/overpopulation/poverty.  There are as many stories as their are children in Chinese orphanages.

Once a pregnancy is established (i.e. past the point where an abortion is a viable option) MOST Chinese families keep their children, even if they are born with visible disabilities, female, a second/third/later child.  Do you want your child to know the truth about why THEIR family was the exception?

What are you going to do with the information you find?

When we decided to search, I did not have any illusions about keeping the information I discovered from L.  Every single thing we know will be shared with her (at an age appropriate level).  We will try to ensure that she has the tools necessary to process that information and integrate it into her identity in a safe and healthy way.  I am not sure what that will look like yet because L is so young.  I expect that there will be crises,  rebellion against the facts and tears as she processes her story.  Will knowing the truth be harder than the fairy tale?  There is no way to know.

I believe the information is hers and she has a right to it.  I want her to know that she can trust us to always be honest with her.  I also believe that MANY of our adopted children will begin searching on their own when they reach adulthood and they will find out what we know (and more) anyway.  I never want L to feel we have hidden her truth from her.  I want her to know that we don’t find her  the truth about her past or her (potential) relationship with her birth family  as threatening to her love for us or ours for her.

If you think you want to search — even if what you are searching for is just information not necessarily a birth family — you need to be prepared for what you might find.  Birth families have been located accidentally by adoptive parents who never gave a single thought to making contact with them.

But what if you find out something really, really BAD?

I won’t share L’s personal story here, but I think it is ok to share that the very first thing we found out when we started searching was not good.  That one tiny speck of information sent me reeling for weeks. It made me question whether we were doing the right thing or not.

At each step in this process, we have to decide to stop or to keep searching.  The decision to search is not made just once.  It is made over and over.  For most searching families, it isn’t a fast process either.  Each baby step requires a renewed commitment to moving forward.  It also requires a commitment to maintaining contact/a relationship once the birth family is located.  Once Pandora’s Box is open, we can’t slam it shut and pretend nothing ever happened.

I try to ask myself, what are the worst things we could learn?  She could have been kidnapped.  She could have been confiscated by the family planning authorities.  She could have been trafficked.  She could have a family who doesn’t wonder where she is or care about her at all.

Once she gets access to a computer and is curious about adoption from China (or hears stupid comments from strangers on the street), there is a good possibility she is going to believe these possibilities could apply to her situation anyway.  We are prepared for the worst.  I need to be  ready to answer questions about trafficking and kidnapping and uncaring birth families anyway.

If you locate you child’s birth family, what kind of relationship are you willing to have?

If you are going to go knocking on this family’s door, are you ready for what you will find?  Are you ready to share your child with them?  If not, I suggest you don’t search.  Do not open the wounds of a family who has lost a child only to walk away once you find the answers you are seeking.

We feel that our family is in a position to attempt to support an open adoption with L’s birth family.  Will they want that openness?  We won’t know until we find them.  We also know we will have to accept any openness they will allow on their terms, not ours.  We know that we are painfully ignorant of the cultural context that brought them to let go of L and of the personal/legal/emotional ramifications of allowing her to return to their lives.

I hope and pray that we can find a way to balance their desires and L’s best interests.  We believe we have the commitment and resources to maintain a relationship with L’s family — should they desire one — until she is old enough to manage that relationship on her own.

If your child’s birth family needs financial support, are you willing or able to provide it?  In what cases would you say no?

If you are searching, you need to prepare for this question.  Mr. A and I have discussed numerous scenarios and what we would do.  This issue could raise itself very quickly once contact is made, so we need to be ready with an answer.  The future of your child’s relationship with their family could depend on how you handle it.  There is also the question of whether the birth family may one day expect your child to support them financially.  How would you feel about that and how would you prepare your child for that possibility?

And finally, these last questions are borrowed from Dawn:

Do I have reason to believe that searching could in any way hurt the family or my child long-term?

It seems obvious that my child’s health and safety takes #1 precedence over anyone else in this situation.  At this point, I think searching is in her best interest, but if it becomes clear that it is damaging to her, obviously we would stop.  The same goes with managing openness.

The jury is still out on whether  Chinese  birth families will be punished if they publicly acknowledge they abandoned their child.  Child abandonment is a crime in China.  I haven’t heard of any cases where located birth families have been punished but anything is possible given the Wild West mentality of many local Chinese governmental officials.

Are you willing to be discreet in your search and after you locate the birth family?

Can I do anything now to make my child’s search easier later?  If I don’t do anything now, will it impede my child if s/he does want to search later?

Even if we don’t find L’s family, the clues I have gathered will help her if she decides to search later.  As Dawn mentioned in her post, L’s specific circumstances indicate that valuable information might be lost the longer we wait to gather it.  In fact, the 2.5 years it has taken me to get to the point where I am now might have been too long.

In L’s case, not searching was making an active decision to severely limit her access to information later.  I can’t in good conscious do that to her.