A painful issue brings up hard questions

A giant controversy is brewing in the China adoption community.  More and more evidence is coming to light that corruption is deeply embedded in China's international adoption program.  Read more about it here.  It's not a new story -- here's one from 2005.  It's not limited to U.S. media either.  It's actually been a bigger story inside China, with U.S. papers just now picking it up months after it came out there.  For good background on the issue, read the September 30, 2009 entry here.  Yes, I know he's controversial, and I often have doubts about his research methodology, but he's far from the only person beating this drum.  I think we have to pay attention to what he is saying.

Back in late 2005 and early 2006, the Chinese government managed to convince the rest of the world that baby-buying was an isolated incident involving a handful of corrupt orphanage directors, not a widespread problem.  It is beginning to appear that this was not the truth.  It is beginning to appear that it is common practice in many parts of the country for orphanages to pay for babies, and that it has been common for quite some time.  It happens in different ways.  Sometimes babies are stolen outright and sold to orphanages.  Horrific.  Sometimes family planning officials forcibly remove babies from their parents because the parents have exceeded their one/two-child quota.  Again, horrific.  In other cases, orphanages hire "finders" who spread the word that they are willing to pay for healthy babies.  This is slightly less horrific, since it obviously allows someone in a child's birth family to make a choice of sorts.  But is it really a choice?  If the finder's cash payment weren't an option, would the birth family keep the child?  Would they find a family member, neighbor or friend to raise the child if they couldn't afford to themselves?  Is it any easier for a Chinese woman to hand her newborn baby to a stranger, knowing she'll never see her again, than it would be for YOU to do it?  Of course not.

Then there's China's one-child policy (not actually one child in all cases, but let's call it that because it's a simpler phrase than something more accurate would be).  The fines for having a child beyond your family's quota can amount to three years' salary for some families.  If the child in question is beyond quota, how many families can afford to pay the fines?  There aren't any payment plans.  And hiding an over-quota child is not feasible for most families either.  That child could not receive medical care or go to school.  Upon reaching adulthoold, that child would not be able to get a job or a home.  The policy is truly the villain in this story.  It puts Chinese families in unthinkable positions and forces choices that no parent should ever face.  But the policy is not something that we have the power to change, and it is unlikely to change soon.

I think abandonment still happens in China, but it is much less common than it was a decade ago.  I think it most often happens now with single mothers who really don't have a chance to parent their child given the norms of modern Chinese society, and with children who have special needs that are visible at birth.  Again, these parents simply don't have a chance to parent their children, given widespread poverty and the lack of a social safety net in China.  But Chinese families are wealthier than they were a decade ago, and attitudes toward baby girls are changing.  I just don't think that healthy babies are abandoned as often as they used to be.

I'm astounded at the China adoption community's response to this story.  Many are enraged that the media is talking about it.  They seem to be fearful that it will end China's international adoption program, thereby depriving them of the child they've been waiting for.  I understand the heartbreak of the wait; we waited too, although not nearly as long as some will wait.  I can understand how devastating it would be to see your dream of adopting from China come to an end.  But really, would you knowingly enter into an adoption if you had reason to believe these stories were true?  That your child may have been stolen from her parents and sold to an orphanage?  Or that her parents willingly gave her up for money?  I would not.  That is precisely why we discarded Guatemala as an option for our family.  I would not knowingly be a party to this sort of corruption.

Others in the community simply discard this story as lies.  Perhaps it's not true; we don't have conclusive proof afterall.  But it is certainly beginning to look as if it could be true.  How is it helpful to anyone to bury your head in the sand and pretend like it's not happening?  If you already have adopted Chinese children at home, don't you think that someday they will hear about this?  They'll find it on the Internet when they're older, or worse, someone will say something stupid in the grocery store or on the playground, and they'll hear about it that way.  Don't you think you should be as educated as you can be, so that you can have a thoughtful and honest conversation with your child?

And adoption agencies continue to spoon-feed us stories of orphanages full of abandoned babies who need homes.  Are they lying to us, or do they believe it?  If they believe it, should they?  Don't they of all people have an obligation to know what's going on in China, so they can inform their families?

Other questions I'm struggling with include my own unwitting role in this story.  Did I perpetuate this sort of corruption by adopting from China?  Am I obligated to initiate a conversation with Z about this at some point in the future when she is emotionally mature enough to understand it?  Or do I wait until she discovers it to have the conversation?  And have I made it inevitable that she will discover it by blogging about it?  And how on Earth do I talk about this with her in a manner that is sensitive yet honest?

Speculating about Z's history is simply to painful for me to even get into just yet.  I derive minimal comfort from the thought that her special need may have been recognizable from birth, leading her parents to abandon her in a safe place so that needs they couldn't afford to tend to could receive medical care.  But I have a huge amount of soul-searching to do before I can begin to answer any of these questions and begin to contemplate Z's own story.

This is terribly painful for me.  This is something that was not entirely off my radar screen while we were in the adoption process, since the Hunan story broke while we were doing our dossier, but I believed what I read.  I believed that Hunan was an isolated case of corruption.  I believed that abandonment was an ongoing problem in China.  I believed that thousands of children were waiting in orphanages and had little chance of finding families if families like mine did not adopt.  That orphanage care was by definition worse than being adopted by a family of a different nationality and race.  I don't think I could have gotten deeply enough into these issues before we adopted to see them as I do now.  They are infinitely more complex than I could have known.  Somehow, when the child was still an abstraction, these issues remained somewhat abstract too.  It is also true that it has taken me years to discover how many resources are truly available to adoptive parents, and I continue to discover new ones all the time.

I struggled about whether or not to blog about this.  Obviously I lean toward the idea that I do have an obligation to talk to Z about this someday, or I wouldn't have done it.  The bottom line to me is this:  we, as adoptive parents and future adoptive parents, have an obligation to learn as much about this as we can.  We need to discuss, analyze and debate it among ourselves, so that we can talk about it with our kids someday.  I think they will hear about it one way or another, and they will come to us for answers.  We also need to resolve our own internal dilemmas, and maybe even guilt, over this issue.  That is the road I am headed down now.

Dodged a bullet

Perhaps you've heard about how babies in China have been getting sick because of melamine in their formula? If not, here's a brief recap: Shortly after the Olympics ended last summer, it came out that several babies had died and thousands were seriously ill because their formula had been tainted by melamine. Melamine is an industrial chemical that, when added to a food, can make its protein content appear to be higher than it really is, thus boosting the value of the product. It happened a year or so ago with pet foods from China too.

Well, evidently this had been going on for quite awhile in China, and was kept out of the media until after the Olympics in order to avoid tarnishing the image China wanted to project to the world while all eyes were watching. It is quite clear that it has been going on since late 2007, and there is evidence that it was happening possibly as far back as 2004. It can cause kidney stones and even kidney failure.

As you can imagine, we were rather concerned, seeing as how we just adopted Z this February. We were not sure which brand of formula her orphanage used, or even if they consistently used a particular brand, and in any case, the list of brands contaminated by melamine seems to be growing rapidly.

I talked to Z's pediatrician about it at her two-year check-up a few weeks ago. Luckily, she happens to be married to the guy who heads up our children's hospital's international adoption clinic, so she was able to get the latest information and suggested course of action. On her advice, we had three tests run on poor miss Z:
1) blood pressure test
2) blood test for kidney function (this was NOT fun for anyone involved, Z especially)
3) urinalysis for signs of kidney stones

We got a call from the pediatrician yesterday -- all three tests came back perfectly normal. Whew.

Winter storms in China

You may have heard of the terrible winter storms they've been having in China. Or maybe you haven't -- the U.S. news certainly hasn't said much about it. Anyway, they've had snow storm after snow storm over the past couple of weeks, in parts of the country that don't normally get snow at all. These are 100-year storms, very rare, and they have caused massive destruction and suffering in southern China. It's a disaster of Hurricane Katrina proportions. The photo below was taken this week in Zhi Yi's province:

Unfortunately, this is all happening right in the region of China where Zhi Yi is. We have not been able to obtain any information specifically about the conditions in her orphanage, XiaJiang CWI, but we have heard of terrible conditions in other orphanages very nearby. Buildings are without heat, electricity, and running water. There aren't enough blankets and warm clothes. They are running out of diapers, formula, and medications.

XiaJiang is very small, in a fairly remote part of the province, and is not aided by any of the various international organizations that do charity work in Chinese orphanages. It is rare for buildings in this part of China to have central heat, and temperatures have been in the teens. The heavy snows have closed down most transporation, and ice storms have cut power to many regions. It is likely that conditions there are similar to the bad conditions we've heard of in other orphanages nearby.

Needless to say, we are terribly worried about Zhi Yi and the other children in her orphanage. We don't know if she is warm, or has enough to eat. We have inquired through various channels, but no one knows anything about XiaJiang. It makes me so sad and anxious to not know how she's doing, and to be completely unable to hold her, feed her, and keep her warm.

A truly wonderful charitable organization, Half the Sky, is taking donations on behalf of specific orphanages. You can donate on their website, specifying "XiaJiang CWI, Jiangxi Province" in the "message to Half the Sky" field, and they will get the funds to the orphanage so that they can purchase what they need locally. Or you can simply give to their relief fund, without specifying an orphanage.

All waiting parents would be grateful for your help, and the comfort it will bring to China's orphans is immeasurable.