“Do they just leave their baby girls for dead there?”
“Why would they just leave her?”
“How could anyone do that to their own child?”
I’ve been asked these and other questions as a mother of a Chinese daughter. I explain the one-child rule, the pressure to have a son, how hard it is for many Chinese families to care for medically fragile children, how babies are typically left to be found not left to die, how some babies are left with notes of regret or left with money and food.
Abandonment there is not like abandonment here.
With the new regulations going into effect soon in China, I wonder how this will change things.
Up until now, in order for a child to be even eligible for adoption, he or she couldn’t be traced to any living relative. No one. If the government could find a distant cousin, an aunt or uncle, anyone related, even if that relative didn’t want the child or couldn’t care for them, if there was a relative, the child was left to grow up in an institution. There could be families lined up to adopt that little one, but they would never even know he or she existed.
But, that’s going to change.
My first reaction was relief–finally, these children who have no families to their knowledge and experience may be able to have them.
Then, I started thinking and wondering about what this will mean.
Will parents be able to voluntarily place their children for adoption? The article I read said the Chinese office that handles all adoptions has already received 6 “applications” from families who want to have their children adopted. With the way Chinese often view life in America, I wonder if more families will make this sacrifice simply to give their children what they may think is a better life.
Does that mean abandonments will be fewer and fewer in number if birth parents can actually give up parental rights? Will we hear less and less stories like this one (unable to pay more than the $190 USD already paid for the care of his baby boy, a father abandoned his 3 month old baby with heart disease and pneumonia at an airport and was arrested and shamed for it)?
Will adoptive families know if their new child was voluntarily placed for adoption? Will China give us the names of birth families? Will this eventually lead to some sort of regulation around ongoing contact with birth families? Will there be such a thing as an open Chinese adoption?
Rejoicing today for the hundreds of thousands of children in orphanages sleeping right now as I write who have had no hope of ever having a family…but may receive one now. They have watched while other children have received care packages and have had photos taken to send to families and have put on new clothing and then never returned. May their day finally come.
Praying for the families who have already submitted their applications to surrender their children so that they can be adopted and for the children named in those applications.
Praying for protection over the sanctity of human life.