It’s been a while since I’ve posted. Work keeps getting in the way.
To get back in the rhythm of posting every day or three, I’m going to report on another chapter of Wanting a Daughter, Needing a Son: “The Politics of International and Domestic Adoption in China, 2001.”
Johnson found that the Chinese have a strong tradition of adoption. Interestingly, she found that this applied particularly to girls, partially because they are more available, but also because the blood-line politics are less complex. (If you adopt a boy because you are unable to have a son, and later are able to have one, what happens to the original, adopted son?) Johnson speculated that China should be able to handle its adoptable population domestically (i.e., infants without special needs).
So what’s happened?
In a nutshell, China’s population control policies have made domestic adopt difficult.
First, adoption is viewed suspiciously by the population control officials. People have “adopted” a daughter out temporarily to childless relatives or friends. They are then free to try again to have a son, and reclaim the daughter when they do so successfully. Because of this and other factors, adopted children are given the same status in population control policies, and adopting an over-quota child can carry the same penalties as giving birth to an over-quota child (more on this in another entry).
Furthermore, in 1991, China legislated to control its adoption program. Domestically, this law restricted the population of those who wished to adopt to people over 35 with no other children. This placed a greater strain on the orphanages, or social welfare institutes (SWIs). This also created the international adoption program in China, which helped to decrease the over-crowding found in many SWIs.
A 1999 law relaxed the restrictions on potential adoptive parents, but as of 2001, this was not well publicized, Johnson says.
So what are the politics of the domestic and international adoption programs? First, IA (international adoption) has brought in a lot of money. It’s easy to over-state this, however, and the media almost always does. It does not bring in enough money to contribute to the economy as a whole. And while there have been a few cases of corruption tied to IA, the money seems to go where it’s supposed to: the SWIs, where it has made a great difference, by all accounts.
In many ways, the IA program and the foster care program—preferred by many APs (adoptive parents) and population control officials because it provides care without officially creating larger families—undermine the domestic adoption program. This happens because of the IA program in institutionally entrenched. The program is handled by the Chinese government at the federal level, not by the provincial governments, and also because an “industry” of agencies and charities have grown up that cater to IA, but completely ignore domestic adoption. This probably isn’t driven by intentional greed, but by ease and the easy money it provides for a good cause. In a sense, IA has worked too well, allowing everyone to become complacent and not to stretch for the harder, but better, solution of domestic adoption.
This puts the Chinese adoption program in violation of the Hague Convention, which says that IA should only be a last resort and that domestic adoption is always preferable.
And for a future AP like me, this also raises some interesting questions: Particularly, to what extent are we contributing to a suboptimal program? On the other hand, this is the system that exists today. We can criticize it all day long, and we should certainly speak up, but that doesn’t help the children in the SWIs right now. Practically, one thing we can do is make a difference in one child’s life.
(Of course, she’s also going to make a difference in ours. We aren’t doing this to “save” a child. I hope and pray and believe there’s a mutual benefit, but I’m trying hard to keep a colonial attitude out of this.)
I also need to ask myself what I can do to contribute to the better solution, especially since I now have a stake in this. The article mentions that our giving should be driven by the SWIs’ needs, not by IA, and by supporting domestic adoption and helping orphanages care for those least likely to be adopted. How well are we doing this currently? I have no idea. But this is certainly something to think more about.
But in spite of these difficulties to domestic adoption, China has also always had a thriving informal adoption “program.” Without this, its SWIs would be seriously over-strained. But the problems face by those adopting informally are tremendous. I’ve finishing reading a chapter from *Wanting a Daughter* on this, so you’ll hear more about it soon.
