Adoption of Chinese orphans by non-Chinese overseas

[TSkillet]

Here's an interesting article (or set of articles, rather) about American adoption of a Chinese daughter - told via one family's experience. Intersting to note a lot of the ideas about racial identity here - LA Times (registration required)

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-chinatrip17dec17,0,1529242.story?coll=la-home-headlines

[gato]

How common or uncommon is adoption in China itself? My guess is that people there care about bloodlines too much to adopt.

[vinhlong]

I don't know about the current generation, but I had an uncle who was adopted. I also know of quite a few other examples in my family of adoption. My grandfather adopted another son from a poor family, even though he already had four sons and two daughters.

Don't know about the bloodlines thing... One branch of my family are descendants of a remaried widow, whose husband (who was part of my family's bloodline) died before they got any kids. Eventhough she remaried into another family, and belong to a different bloodline, she and her descendants are still very much considered as family.

[Guest Roderic]

As vinhlong said, adoption was quite common in the past. (probably before one-child policy)

Not only a big family adopt the child from the poor, poor family can also adopt an orphan. In my generation (70s), I can't see any of my friends were adopted, but some of them told me that their parents were adopted, and therefore their original surname should be different.

In fact, the schools for disabled and orphan have been well-established since Qing Dynasty (or earlier), showed in several missionary diaries. The missionary said that orphans and disabled in China were either adopted or trained to specal skills, to make an independent living.

( I forgot which diary I read about these schools. I may check it out if needed)

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Omnipotent Big Brother in Charge

http://chinese-forums.com/viewtopic.php?t=2894&start=20

[gato]

Any guess as to why people in China don't like to adopt any more? The one-child policy is meant to keep birth down. I don't think it applies to adoptions.

[Guest Roderic]

I'm not sure about the adoption in China.

How are you sure it's not common in China----either urban and rural areas? Do you have any stat about it?

[gato]

By the fact that so many Americans are adopting kids from China.

You'd think if the 1.3 billion people in China were keen on adopting, there wouldn't be so many babies available for Westerners.

I read sometime ago in a Korean newspaper that Koreans were resistant to adopting and the Korean government was trying to change that.

[wushijiao]

Some of my family friends adopted a Chinese girl about 14 years ago. She needed cleft palate surgery, and my guess is that her original parents wouldn't have given her up noramally had that not been the case. But now she has had several surgeries (worth tens of thousands of $USD) and you would never have known the difference.

I'm sure that this was an agonizing decision for her original parents to make. Yet, one would have to argue that her life now has many more materialistic opportunities compared to being a disabled woman in China.