Jenny asks:
It didn’t even cross our minds to find our daughter’s birth family because we were told that in China it was 1) impossible and 2) dangerous for the birth family. We didn’t speak Chinese, we weren’t even taken to the city where she was found and where her SWI was located. Now that we see (from your blog and elsewhere) that searching is possible, our daughter is six. Do you think it’s too late, that the trail is too cold? Should we make the effort? We are emotionally prepared to do it. We were just ignorant, and when you know better, you do better.
I can’t say if you should make the effort or not. By sharing our story, I hope that adoptive parents will have a better understanding of both the challenges and the rewards of searching in China. Despite my personal struggles, I really believe we are an example of the best case scenario…and even that is very, very hard. Are you prepared for the fallout of a worst case scenario? Are you prepared to navigate the challenges of building a relationship with the birth family for the rest of your life?
I can’t say if it is too late or not because I don’t know your child’s specific circumstances. In some cases, an adoption file will have enough information to find the family now or to find it in 30 years. In most cases, there probably isn’t enough information to find them ever. By searching sooner, you increase the (likely very slim) odds of success.
This isn’t really related to your question, but I would like to mention another phenomena that I have observed: the adoptive parent who wants to give the impression of “searching” without actual putting in the effort that would actually lead to success. I suspect these people want to be let off the hook by their kids. They can say they searched without actually dealing with the stress of doing the work and/or dealing with the birth family.
These are people who want to write a (relatively small) check for someone else to go “search” for them. In some cases, this might actually work, but I am going to go out on a limb and say that searching done by someone who is actually invested in success (rather than financial gain) is probably going to be more likely to actually find the birth family. You *might* get lucky with some posters or sending someone on a “research project” briefly to the area in question, but you are more likely to be successful by building personal relationships with people in the area.
I think that sometimes success will also depend on the size of the town where you child was born/found. Our daughter was 6 when we started searching. She is from a very small rural town. The kind of place where everyone knows everyone’s business. The posters and repeated visits were enough to get the gossip mill going. To get people talking about the fact that some of their babies were no longer in China and might be interested in them. To get them wondering why a family might look. To get them talking. We did not have success until we walked into the town with our searcher, our daughter and us, short blond me and super tall blonde hubby. Now that created a stir. Then they started talking and things started happening quickly. Within half an hour of stepping onto the streets we had met the potential family. However, you have to have the right searcher. We had visited the previous day and our guide led us around the market. She answered no questions. She took the official line. Our searcher was familiar with the area and local culture/dynamics so got people talking without offending them.
“Are you prepared?” I really like that. We were prepared when we had one daughter. Shortly after acquiring a potential birthfamily, we also acquired a second chinese daughter. Forget all of the possible obstacles and hurdles already mentioned on this blog about building a relationsip; we also need to be thinking about our other daughter. I have no answers on this one only questions. I would never want to take away from our first, but how do we give to our second when success is not guaranteed. That is something we should have thought about going in.
I first thought searching would be as easy as hiring someone to go to the orphanage, get her file, the finders name and I had this feeling the finder would know her parents. Oh how I wish.
Thinking now the “finder” may not exist.
Well, as an adoptive mom that has written a “relatively small amount” for our contact to go searching for us and has put up posters in our finding area I can say without hesitation that your assumption that I simply want to be let off the hook by my daughter is wrong. I would love to build a relationship with someone in the area and “have the stress of doing the work”. How do you propose I do that? I would love to know who specifically to contact in the area to build a relationship with? Especially since we could not visit the area when we were in China due to many circumstances.
I congratulate you on your success and have read your blog along with other resources for tips on how I may continue my search. I wish there was more support from those that have been successful to us that are new on this search road rather than this criticism.
[...] and a bit of a rant I got a comment on this post that needs to be [...]