So you think you want to search?

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.

OmegaMom

November 28, 2009 at 9:48 pm · Reply

I’d like some information on the “how”…How do you do it?! Where do you start?

Mer

November 29, 2009 at 12:41 am · Reply

I would like to know how, too, but we adopted from VN.I would love help.

bmama

November 29, 2009 at 2:34 am · Reply

All really, really interesting and you make many good points. I hesitate, because we aren’t in a position to provide financial support – and also at a loss as to how to start. But I’m still very interested in the possibility of a search.

Thanks for putting this out there.

Mary

November 29, 2009 at 5:40 am · Reply

I am also interested in the how to. Do you know anyone who was successful, personnally?

November 29, 2009 at 9:13 am · Reply

[...] birth parent searching has also recently been discussed on This Woman’s Work and today on American Family. Let me know what y’all think, [...]

Kim

November 29, 2009 at 12:53 pm · Reply

I would like to hear of the how…we have done some searching ourselves through a group that does searching

Thorn

November 29, 2009 at 12:57 pm · Reply

I’m so glad you’re talking about this and I agree with you that knowing even some bad stuff is better for L than knowing nothing at all but suspecting the worst. While my partner Lee has plenty of problems with her own adoption story, I think she’s so much healthier about it than she would have been if she hadn’t dealt with it until adulthood, as was the norm for her generation. Because she got to see the flaws of her bio- and adoptive parents up close throughout her childhood, she was better able to craft her own story and her own self-image. She was talking this weekend to some of her bio-dad’s kids he didn’t raise (in part because they were so young when he died) and it was striking to see how her realistic and nuanced view of him was healthier for her than the imaginary hero they imagined from their mothers’ stories. All three of his kids have had to deal with similar problems, probably part of his genetic gift to them, but I think one of the reasons Lee has been more successful with that is that she was able to compare herself to him and deliberately make different choices about her health and direction.

Not that any of that is about L, obviously, but it’s really been on my mind this weekend and I do think there’s a connection. I think what you’re doing for L is a wonderful thing even if it does end up being brutally painful for all of you. I’m a big fan of truth.

dawn

November 29, 2009 at 4:28 pm · Reply

Awesome post (as I knew it would be)! I shared it on the OAS twitter, too. I think you are a role model about handling searching in international adoptions in general and China in particular because of the evenhanded, realistic and respectful way you have gone about it. I hope this post gets shared all over the internet.

Wendy O

November 30, 2009 at 1:20 am · Reply

As you know we did search and locate M’s family. I can only speak from our experience, but I do feel it is important for all a-parents to search and find out all they can. As for sharing the information–when, how much, etc.–it is something only a parent and professional (if needed) decide depending on the child and the circumstances.

Honesty is always the best policy–of course in age appropriate ways, and allowing a child to grow up without the myth, created fairy tale, or blatant lies and half truths–as we see some ap’s doing by accepting only the standard agency answers and turning them into their child’s story in lifebooks, discussions, public discourse, etc. is the most honest approach allowing the child to incorporate their true past as they grow.

It is not easy before you search, during the search or after; however, dealing with a truth–no matter how painful–is something that must come with time and imo is easier to handle if that truth has always been available to process rather than having it hit you hard in the face as an adult as it collides with the dream stories the mind has created in order to cope.

If you acknowledge that you are not your child’s only family, you are ready to search.
If your child and their truth is important to you, you are ready to search.
If you believe your child deserves to own their past, you are ready to search.
If you know that you cannot fix your child, but can comfort them and allow their grieving process, you are ready to search.
If you can share your child (which you do whether you acknowledge it or not), you are ready to search.

Of course this is my opinion, but it is one in which I have experienced first hand.

It is the child’s story, it is their journey, but they cannot do it without you providing the background information, delving into the partial truths, missing information, and resources while they are available.
As for me, I share only what is my experience–my daughter’s is hers and I am priviledged to walk with her, but if not for me she could not have the connection, could not continue contact, could not know (as much as can be due to our situation) her first family. As her parent I control what she is exposed to, it is that which I have let go and allowed for her to explore and experience. We cannot “control” our children’s past, we cannot “control” how they will receive and process the information, but we can “control” their freedom to know their truth.

Bobbi Jo

November 30, 2009 at 2:59 am · Reply

Yes, please share some “how-to” tips!! Thanks for a fabulous post. I am very interested in searching and have worked hard to keep up a close relationship with our daughters foster family, with hopes that they hold some key for us since she was from a tiny village. I am struggling to find anything about my son however and would like any tips you might have!

Susan Morgan

November 30, 2009 at 3:08 am · Reply

Great topic! I’ve just returned from China searching (for the second time) in my two daughters’ orphanage cities for birth family. Unfortunately, I came up empty-handed. However, the relationships with foster mothers, caregivers, and at first total strangers who are now friends made the effort so worthwhile. I look forward to someday finding their “first family” and will not give up…we all really need to know…

june

November 30, 2009 at 9:44 pm · Reply

Very well written. Loved the other post too. You make excellent points. For me, since we adopted from Taiwan, we actually have the address of our son’s bio mom. I was asked by an adoptee why wouldn’t we try to open communication with her? Our main fear is the financial support one, since we do know a bit of her story. But I feel very guilty that we’ve made this decision not knowing how our son would feel about it, and not knowing how his bio mother feels about him. I haven’t come to a satisfactory answer for that. Definitely when he is older and wants to contact her, we would help him. But at what age? I really don’t know.

lisa

December 1, 2009 at 6:53 am · Reply

I think you know that I have been searching since the month we returned from China. Since my daughter was found in a city of 3million, and probably wasn’t born there-it’s pretty overwhelming. But we have received a lot of help in China.
But my feelings are so much more complicated now that I have a son, adopted through the foster care system, whose birthmother lost her rights. She lives less than 10 miles from us (though no one knows where), and I do know her name and circumstances. None of it pretty. I have asked the caseworker to contact me if she ever wants to meet her son. But I’m not comfortable with her having our contact information. Which makes the China birthparent search more complicated for me. What to tell my kids about their different circumstances? Do I feel more comfortable searching for my daughter’s family than my son’s? I know my son’s story is scary, why do I think my daughter’s might be better? And how do I talk about these differences with my children?

O Solo Mama

December 2, 2009 at 7:31 pm · Reply

I was glad that in the original post a person who left a comment referenced Brian Stuy and his wife and I would still tell searchers to start there. (Yes, I believe he gets way too much bad press.)

For those interested in the *how* there are several very helpful Yahoo groups to join. I’m only months into a search but will confirm what I have heard. . . that is is important to go to China, get on the ground and start making contacts in person. Some searchers go every year. It’s a long-term operation requiring patience and tact. Also have all your Chinese documents inspected and translated. Things are missed in translation. Don’t rely on the English.

Mia

December 3, 2009 at 12:12 am · Reply

Great post, and raising so many deep questions that apply to adoptions of all kinds. Thank you.

Lori

December 4, 2009 at 1:14 pm · Reply

re “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 know of anywhere (maybe with Google translate) that this kind of number can be found? How about broken down by province, or urban vs rural, or living subsistence level vs relatively well to do? I know that in some areas the family planning policies are not closely enforced but I thought poverty alone often made this kind of choice impossible for many families.

How. « American Family

February 22, 2011 at 3:20 pm · Reply

[...] if you aren’t sure if you are ready to search, please read “So You Think You Want To Search“. I just reread it and agreed with myself again, so obviously you should listen to me. [...]

cursing and a bit of a rant « American Family

November 22, 2011 at 5:41 am · Reply

[...] are going to remain on the internet forever. When she grows up, she can look at those lists (here and here and here) and ask you which steps you [...]

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