December « 2009 « American Family

only 11 days left???

Is it possible that there are only 11 days until christmas?

I will confess, I am not ready. I still haven’t received my xmas cards in the mail, never mind sending them out. I have no idea what I have purchased for gifts so far, nor do I know who else I need to buy for.

I place part of the blame on an email I received about a week and a half ago. A couple who had seen our house when it was for sale last spring had finally managed to relocate from California. They wanted to know if we were we still interested in selling.

That led to much discussion and finally a decision that yes, we are still willing to sell (if the price was right). So we had to clean and restage the house in a huge hurry. When they saw it, they still liked it. That kicked off several days of negotiations and now it looks like we are going to be moving. That is, if we manage to actually sign a purchase contract (supposedly happening in the next day or two) and make it through the inspection period (the part we previously screwed up repeatedly).

If we actually get to closing, we will have to find a house or apartment to rent in hopes that the perfect house will come on the market soon. It is a big if, but in the mean time, we will be paying down my grad school loan debt super-quickly.

Financially, it is a good plan.

Stress-wise, it is doozy.

Poor Christmas has fallen by the wayside. I need to get back on the ball. House sale or not, Christmas is bearing down on us. Crappity crap crap.

Woe is me.

I have spent no less than four hours today taking apart (and reassembling) my dishwasher trying to find the source of a very tiny leak. I do believe my head is going to explode any minute.

I have replaced a gasket and baffles, two parts I didn’t even know the dishwasher has. I cleaned the float case. I am about ten minutes away from yanking the whole thing out of the cupboards and chucking it across the yard.

Gah.

Impossible choice or statistical anomaly?

Sorry I have been MIA, I have a number of balls in the air at the moment and the blog got dropped temporarily. Things are settling down a bit, so I hope to get back to posting pretty often. The following isn’t particularly tightly written, but cut me a little slack today, eh?

I wanted to get back to this before I moved on to something else. In a comment on the So You Think You Want to Search post, Lori asks:

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.

I think it is easy for us to go along with the propaganda that Chinese babies are available for international adoption because their families CAN NOT keep them because of the One Child Policy or because of the child’s special needs. While it is sometimes true, it is certainly not a rule.

MOST Chinese families — the VAST MAJORITY of Chinese families –keep their children once they are born. Even if they have special needs or even if they are a second or third child.

You don’t need google translate to find this information. Just google “Birth Defects China.” Each year in China, there are 200,000 – 300,000 infants born with VISIBLE special needs. There are about another Million born with other non-visible congenital abnormalities born each year (see that same link). This article puts the rate of birth defects at about 170 out of every 10,000 births. I would assume that is probably just the legally recorded births too, if I had to guess. Numbers are increasing significantly because of pollution, not to mention poor nutrition (folic acid deficiencies, etc.) and other factors.

If there are a MILLION babies in China born each year with disabilities, there is no way the majority of them are being abandoned. There is no way the majority of the 200,000 born with visible special needs are being abandoned either. China does less than 8,000 international adoptions a year with less than half being special needs (I can’t find the stats right now, but SNs haven’t become the majority yet, have they?). If they had 200,000 abandoned special needs babies, they certainly would do a hell of a lot more than that.

Even for those children who are nonspecial needs, we just don’t know why they were abandoned. Certainly there are some notable circumstances where families are absolutely not able to keep their children (cases of birth planning officials confiscating them, etc.), but we are lying to ourselves if we choose to believe most Chinese birth families do not have some kind of choice in the matter.

MOST Chinese families do not abandon their children in these circumstances. Most of them find a way to pay the fine, ignore the fine or place their child with relatives or maybe even create a rudimentary adoption plan in which they find another family to raise their child.

The Chinese adoption community wants to believe the fairy tale: We want to believe that our children have parents who love them but were kept down by the Man. We want to tell our children that it is the government’s fault and not the choice of their parents.

The facts aren’t in yet. We don’t know that. Children who are available for adoption from China are available for many of the same reasons children are available for adoption in the US: Poverty, single motherhood, social stigma, family pressure, and most likely coercion.

It is easy to forget this as we sit in the US watching a seeing and hearing so much about abandoned Chinese children. But if we take a minute and think about the population of China (1.5 Billion?! 265 MILLION of whom are 14 or under) and the relatively small number of children in orphanages, you can’t really believe that abandonments are common.

Searching: How to Get Started

When people ask me how to search in China, I generally get the feeling they are really asking “Who can I pay to do the work for me?

Here is the thing: Right now, there are not many searchers you can hire* in China and even if there were, I don’t think they would be very effective. Things in China work through relationships. You need to locate someone who knows someone who knows someone who can get you the answers you need.

Before we go there, though let’s start at the very beginning. I like to think there are two routes to searching in China: A) Following a single thread or B) Casting a wide net.

An example of following a single thread:

You have reason to believe your child’s finding information is true (Don’t assume if you don’t have evidence! You will be wasting your time if you find out later it isn’t true!).
You have a finder’s name and you contact him or her (in person or via phone/email etc.) to find out what they know.
The finder gives you their opinion that maybe the baby comes from XYZ village.
You send someone to XYZ village to ask around or you visit yourself.

An example of casting a wide net:

Your child was found in a public place in a big city. You don’t have a finder’s name. You ask your orphanage Yahoo group if anyone has a reason to believe their child’s finding information in inaccurate.
You send a letter to the CCA*A requesting your child’s police report.
You send regular care packages to the orphanage to maintain a good relationship with them and help them remember your child. Maybe someone there will eventually be willing to give you some information.
You go online to try to locate a local contact in your child’s finding city.
You have someone call the police officer on your finding report to see if he remembers anything and try to get a police report from them too.
You ask your local contact to place posters near your child’s finding location.
You place an ad in a local newspaper (or several).
You pay to have an ad on a local TV station.

Ideally, casting a wide net could give you a single good clue that you can follow. These methods are not mutually exclusive.

There is no easy way to give a step by step guide. The method you would need to use depends on your child’s particular circumstances, the amount of information your received, the amount of financial resources at your disposal, etc.

***Before we go on, let me stress the importance of trying to keep a certain amount of information that only the Birth Family might know private, so you can confirm it is them before going through the hassle of a DNA test. Also, remember that any information you put out there has a chance of becoming public. A well-meaning person might talk to a reporter, take it upon themselves to act on your behalf, etc. Keep these things in mind as you are getting swept up into the excitement of searching. *****

If I were to try to give you an outline to follow, it would be this:

1) The first, easiest and most important thing to do is to go through the information you received with a fine tooth comb. Have at least two different people read the Chinese version of your documents and make sure your translation was accurate. Are there inaccuracies from one document to the next? If so, they are a clue. You may think it sounds crazy, but believe me, there are clues in that paperwork.

2) Try to confirm the reliability of the information you have. Contact the orphanage to see if they have any additional information. Get the police report (keeping in mind it could also be completely fabricated, but maybe not!). Locate your finder. Does that person really exist? If you don’t have a finder name, call the finding location and see if they remember your child’s finding. This stage can take a really long time and a lot of effort. But you need to try to make sure you are working with accurate information.

3) Along with #2, try to find other people searching in the same area so you can share resources and information. Ask if anyone on your orphanage Yahoo group has reason to believe finding info is false. Ask if anyone’s child shares a common finding location (it could be a clue or they might already be collecting information about it). Ask if they know anyone local who might be able to help you.

4) Do the easy research first. Remember there is a TON of information available online in both English and Chinese now. Get someone to activate your ability to type Chinese characters using pinyin on your computer ( I had a friend do it, so I can’t tell you how. Try googling it.) Get the characters for your child’s orphanage name, finding city/town/village, finder’s name, finding location. Put them in Google and Baidu in both English/pinyin and Chinese and see what turns up (Put the results in google translator. It is really very good now.) Closely examine your child’s finding location on Google maps. It is amazing that they even include teeny, tiny villages now. (You can search there with either pinyin or characters. It works best if you find a nearby large city before you start using the search function.)

5) Find a local contact. This is the MOST important step. Try to find a local message board and get someone to translate brief emails you can send to local contacts there asking for more information and/or help. Once you have practice reading Google-translated Chinese, get a QQ account and search for local contacts in English or Chinese. Search in English and Chinese for Facebook contacts. Ask anyone who might have contacts with Chinese Americans or Chinese living in the US if they know anyone from your child’ area. Are there any foreigners living in that part of China who might be able to help you get a local contact? They might be more understanding about a search and be able to help you find someone who is sympathetic. Remember, you just need to find someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who can get you in touch with a local contact. (Keep in mind, this person could also be your child’s foster parent, the guide from your adoption trip, etc.)

6) Use your local contact’s expertise. Your local contact doesn’t have to be a private investigator. They just need to be someone or several people who are willing to help. Find out as much as you can from them about the climate for searching in that area. Ask them what they think happened given your child’s finding information (keeping in mind they will also be speculating). Maybe they will be able to ask around quietly to see if they can locate the birth family. Maybe they can help you put up advertisements. Maybe they can suggest a newspaper or TV station where you can place an ad. Maybe they can visit local officials on your behalf.

7) Don’t forget that you are building relationships! That is the way things work in China. You need to make sure that everyone you are coming in contact with has a favorable impression of you. This is no time to be an ugly American. You can’t get pushy and demand answers like you would here. It can take a long time to build a relationship and get information. Even if you feel like one door is closed, keep trying. Keep calling, just to say hello and check in. Keep sending updates to the orphanage. Send small gifts to your child’s foster family. Even if your local contact can’t help find the birth family, remember they could be a resource for your child when she/he gets older too.

8.) If all else fails, just show up and see what happens. There have been a number of cases of birth parents who were located when an adoptive family brought their child back on a heritage tour. Not often, but it does happen. I am guessing it would be helpful to have done as much legwork as possible prior to showing up at your child’s finding location. If it were me, I would go with a pocket full of cards or fliers and hand them out to every single person I saw. I would make sure I had a guide who was supportive and willing to help talk to the locals. I might ask to visit a local school and just happen to show up with a little information about my child to send home with the school kids (not mentioning searching per se, but including my address or a contact number).

Except for actually visiting China, none of these things cost very much money. So far, I think I have spent less than $60 on actual searching. I have spent a bit more on shipping and gifts for the babies at L’s orphanage, but I would have sent those anyway. I am fortunate that I have a friend who translates for me and someone who makes calls for a pittance, but I don’t know anyone who is searching who is paying big bucks to a searcher. That doesn’t mean it isn’t possible, but it isn’t the only option.

________________________________________________________

*There is one exception to that, but because it isn’t generally publicized/advertised, I don’t have any real information about the rumored “research projects” to find birth families. I don’t know how effective they are (if at all).

only 11 days left???

Woe is me.

Impossible choice or statistical anomaly?

Searching: How to Get Started

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