The Facts Relating to China's IA Program
Two years ago this month I published an article detailing what I saw as convincing evidence that the dynamics of China's international adoption program had changed. Historically, potential adoptive families were told by their agencies, the media, and other sources of information that the China program was necessary to find homes for the tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of children abandoned every year in China. China's abandonment problem, according to the conventional wisdom, was due to the cultural preference of the Chinese for boys.
The evidence I provided, from a survey of over 250 orphanage directors participating in the international adoption program, was that this is no longer the case. Simply stated, my thesis is the following:
1) Beginning with the change of the domestic adoption laws in 2001, the demand for healthy children within China grew to the point where today there are enough domestic families ready and willing to adopt every healthy child found abandoned in China.
2) Due to the large orphanage donations made by Western families (historically $3,000), most orphanages deny access to the healthy children to domestic families, giving preference to foreign adopting families.
3) Concurrent with the increase in domestic and international demand for healthy children, overall abandonments have been decreasing. This is due to several key factors: Increased economic opportunities; changing cultural attitudes; and greater access to black markets for children.
Due to the above factors, it is my thesis that adoption of healthy children by international families results in domestic families being denied access to those same children, and in fact contributes to the black markets of children in China.
While I feel that the evidence provided by my writings and the media support my thesis, there are some who continue to hold to the old paradigm: That China has thousands of healthy children in her orphanages, and that the current situation is largely a political problem, not a logistical one.
I am therefore inviting anyone with information on this topic to participate in a scientific testing of my thesis. As you visit orphanages, ask how many domestic families are waiting to adopt from the orphanage. Ask how many children are in the orphanage, how many are SN, and how many are healthy. How old is the oldest healthy child in the orphanage? Why has that child not been adopted? What are the abandonment trends in the area? Is the Family Planning program strictly enforced? Does the orphanage offer a "reward" program for children?
Answers to these questions, asked by thousands of adoptive families, will bring to the table substantial clarity to the current state of affairs in China.
Below (in separate blog-postings) are two evidence categories: "Evidence that China has Few Healthy Children" is for families that have evidence that suggests that China's orphanages have few, if any, healthy children available. "Evidence that Abundant Children Are Available" is for evidence that suggests that there are abundant healthy children who are not being adopted. Evidence comments can be posted directly to this article, or the appropriate evidence category below.
Only identified posters may leave comments (evidence), and the orphanage the information relates to must be identified. I will, however, remove any identifying information about the commentator before publicly posting the comment. I will periodically verify information posted. My hope is that this exercise will allow all adoptive families to gain a better understanding as to the changes occurring in China.
posted by Research-China.Org at 10:11 AM
28 Comments:
There's one thing that still bugs me about your assertions.... You say that there are 250 orphanages participating in the IA program and that these do not have enough healthy children to support both international and domestic adoptions. That does not seem unreasonable the information that you have gathered / written about. I do wonder, however, at the number of orphanages that do not participate in the AI program. Do people seeking domestic adoptions shun these orphanages because they (rightly?) believe that these children receive inferior care? I know I would if I was a chinese national wanting to adopt a child (I don't share the naivete many people that grew up in the US seem to have about how things work in many parts of the world). I just wonder if excessive demand for children in the better institutions is exacerbating the problem. I also wonder if there are healthy children in these other institutions that are being passed up by people wanting to adopt domestically. Could you comment on these things?
I have visited a limited number of non-IA orphanages, but in each case they had no healthy children in the facility, and waiting lists of families wanting to adopt. Few families in China are aware of a local orphanage unless wanting to adopt, so I am not confident many Chinese families use "care quality" in deciding which orphanage to approach for adoption.
Brian
This would be an accurate analysis formulated from participating parents ONLY if
1. there is enough of a sample of all parents adopting, and
2. on the large assumption that the orphanage director would answer these questions and
3. on the LARGER assumption that the answers to all of these questions are not falsified by the directors of the SWIs. and
4. the director does not find the questions intrusive.
When we were in China with our first daughter, we asked her nanny to say something to our daughter for her future. She continually looked to the assistant director as if she thought she would be in trouble for saying something out of line, or that could cause her to get into trouble for saying her true wishes for our daughter.
That said, we all know that China is not a democratic society, and I personally think doing this for the sake of statistics would be insulting to the group of people that have cared for our children. I would never ask these questions of the orphanage. And frankly, if I have a choice of questions, it's more important to me to know about my daughter's past than it is to know about who's what and where in China. And I doubt that all 4 of the criteria listed above would be met, even if we did ask these questions. As a PAP, I'd much rather take the risk of upsetting the apple cart for the cause of knowing more about my own daughter instead.
Sing:
It is, of course, easy for everyone to view things the same as you do -- seek only what is good for their own child. Fortunately, I am confident that there are many families who seek answers to the bigger questions so that one day they can answer questions with confidence and accuracy. Limiting our range of knowledge to just our child causes one to remain ignorant of the larger histories of our children.
Brian
I am curious about point #3. How does
greater access to black markets for children
equal
overall abandonments have been decreasing
Mkrmommy:
As it becomes more and more well-known that options such as a baby-broker are available, birth families are less inclined to simply abandon a child; rather, they will seek those services in order to obtain compensation. This, of course, translates into fewer children being found by the orphanages.
Brian
If I were one of the unfortunate waiting parents who have been hoping and praying for a referral for two years or more, I would consider this to be very bad news.
But as an adoptive parent who loves my three Chinese daughters profoundly, I have to say that I'm glad to hear that the children in China's orphanages are now being adopted domestically. What a wonderful thing to grow up amid their own people and culture!
There remains the matter of the children with special needs. Two of my three children were adopted as older "waiting" children with medical conditions. They are the joy of my life, along with their "healthy" sister. I would not hesitate to recommend that the waiting parents serious consider waiting children. Then, no one will be waiting any more!
In your insults back to me, you did not address the initial part of the post. And actually, I do think that the directors would find it offensive to ask so many intrusive questions. For such an important topic, I would think you would be doing your own travels to China's SWIs more to gather the facts you find important.
I have visited and interviewed over 50 directors. Some are truthful, others avoid. I have rarely had one lie outright to me.
Additionally, there are thousands of families in contact with foster families, care givers, etc. with whom relationships of trust have been formed. Questions can be asked of these people also.
I don't need this information. I have abundant evidence gathered from my own researching to fully and completely "prove" my thesis. I simply want to give families that have had experiences in this area a place to tell about them. Together, by putting together thousands of small pockets of information, we can see the mosaic that is China's adoption program.
Just to be clear, I have not experienced the objections you list. I see nothing wrong with asking these questions, and when I have asked, most directors have either given me honest answers, or demurred.
Brian
By the way Brian, I love this idea. There is no way to obtain knowledge unless one is willing to ask a question. While I think we all realize that people can lie to us, this is not a valid reason to not even try to get this information. While many of these questions may seem intrusive to some people, others may have no problem answering them. Personally, I am amazed at the amount of information I have obtained about my daughter's background, by asking various Chinese people "intrusive" questions, and most of the time, they do answer.
Wendy
So what happens to the healhty children in the orphanages not participating in IA adoption? What about the private orphanages run by religious insitutions? Do they allow Chinese families to adopt those kids? Since they do not receive any funds from IA adoptions or sometimes, even funds from the government are all the healthy kids adopted? You seem to have left out those thousands of orphanages that do not participate in International Adoption from your thesis. Why are Chinese families denied adopting those kids?
It is my belief that the healthy children are adopted from the non-IA orphanages as well. The few that I have visited had no healthy children available, only SN.
I have only been to one non-governmental orphanage (Lijiang, Yunnan) and they also had no young healthy children.
Brian
Do you have reason to believe that there is an increase in China domestic adoptions of children with special needs or birth defects? Are such children being abandoned at the same rate as previous years.
Living out a life in an institution because of a small physical difference remains one of the most inhumane things to do to a child.
For all the way China is growing and changing, some aspects of the society have a long way to go still. And parts of China are still extremely impoverished and uneducated.
I have met a few families that have adopted SN children inside China, but by and large, the great majority of families want a healthy child.
Brian
I know there seems to be few families that adopt sn children, I don't know if it is something many are not willing to do. Our daughter's foster mother desperately wanted to adopt our daughter was told that she was not available to Chinese families, only healthy children. She fostered her for 20 months and still thinks of her as her daughter. Of course we were not told this by anyone, now that we have continued contact we know. Sad.
Our daughter has limb difference.
Proud, lucky, and grateful Mom.
"I have met a few families that have adopted SN children inside China, but by and large, the great majority of families want a healthy child."
The CCAA can't have it both ways (well maybe they can) I just don't see a viable SN only program without a viable NSN program -
From a purely business standpoint, IT looks like it is geeting close to 50 ns /50 nsn and the question becomes is the loss of IA adoption of 3000 NSN children a year worth the econonic effect on the SWI's.
It isn't alot of money in the big picture of China's economic boom - but it also isn't chump change to the SWI's "adoption suppport" industry IE foster parents, orphange workers suppliers, weeks of AF staying in provence waiting on paper work etc.
Brian, since you have been saying for a while now that all of the healthy Chinese orphans could be adopted domestically - and I believe that to be true, I've often wondered why the CCAA doesn't initiate the end if the IA program for NSN children.
As you point out, the orphanage directors have something to gain from the IA program - either for their own pockets or for the other children in their care, but the CCAA has the final word. Why is the CCAA complicit in the continuation of this program if it is not necessary?
The most recent poster has suggested that an SN only IA program would not fly - that the SN children would only be adopted if there were also NSN children available. I hadn't thought of that before, and I guess I can see the logic in it. Basically, keep adopting NSN children out of the country even though they could be adopted domestically so that more SN children can be adopted that wouldn't otherwise be adopted domestically. That is a positive spin on why China would keep their NSN IA program open even though those NSN children could be adopted domestically. What is your take on this?
As for closing down the IA program, if they do it, I'm sure they would do it by announcing that they would stop taking applications at a certain point in the future - and then still complete all pending adoptions so that there wouldn't be the case of a family waiting 3 years and then being told - sorry, we've just stopped the program.
-J
J:
The CCAA keeps the program going for the same reason the orphanages do: for the money. The CCAA gets no funds from orphanages for domestic adoptions. In fact, if the program closes completely the CCAA are out of jobs. So, there is a strong incentive to keep it going.
I don't agree that a SN program needs a NSN component to function. I believe that if the CCAA made an announcement closing the NSN program (which I feel will happen shortly for one reason or another), they could "market" the SN program heavily as a program needed to give homes to truly needed children. I believe if the program was made more accessible, China could adopt 8,000 SN a year.
I may be wrong, but I think there are 8-10,000 families in the world that would love to adopt a second child from their first child's orphanage, for example, or a cleft-lip child, etc. that would step forward to fill the gap.
The price to continuing the program is too high -- wide-spread trafficking, family planning confiscations, domestic families denied children, etc.
Brian
What you are proposing is *not* a "scientific" testing of your thesis. You undermine the work you are doing when you bandy about terms like that very loosely. It turns the information you are sharing into spin and empty rhetoric.
You are correct that it is not a scientific test, as all of the evidence being given by families is anecdotal, and not randomly collected.
This exercise is designed to allow the thousands of families who have experiences to share them. My research has already demonstrated the state of affairs in China. This allows families to support or refute my research. Hopefully it will be convincing to those who continue to maintain that the increased wait-time is simply a political move by the CCAA.
Brian
Brian,
You have made a strong assertion in the comments section: ["I believe that if the CCAA made an announcement closing the NSN program (which I feel will happen shortly for one reason or another)"]
In your opinion, if/when this closure of the NSN program occurs, do you believe that the waiting adoptive parents would be able to continue to wait for a referral of a child from the NSN program or do you believe that the potential closure would prevent any future referrals, even for those who have been waiting with dossiers logged in for years now?
I am confident that the CCAA will work to fulfill their agreements and provide children to the families already logged in. That has always been their method, and I don't think it would change now.
Brian
A few readers have apparently misunderstood my objective. I don't need any data, and won't be using any comments for any articles. I have collected data through a tested survey of over 250 orphanages, through analysis of thousands of finding ads, and through personal conversations with scores of directors and others involved in the IA program in China. The evidence from this survey (not a random survey, but a 100% survey of every orphanage involved in the IA program) overwhelmingly demonstrates that:
A) the orphanages involved in the IA program have few healthy children
B) that those same orphanages have long lines of domestic families wanting to adopt
C) that the wait is not a product of the CCAA "slowing things down" but rather a reduction in the number of children being brought to the orphanages for adoption
Given that data, and data from many other news sources, etc., there are still some who stubbornly maintain that the orphanages in China are full of children waiting to be adopted, and that it is the laziness of directors, the CCAA, or some other absurd reason that the paperwork for these children is not being submitted or these children referred.
Thus, my blog is a challenge, really, to those naive few who still clutch to this paradigm to present ANY evidence, anecdotal, statistical, anything to suggest that my thesis is incorrect. So far, no one has submitted anything. There is a good reason for this: There is no evidence.
So, we can all sit around and argue wither this exercise is scientific or not. That is not the point: My survey was scientific, and presented a supportable conclusion. As such, I am able to predict certain outcomes. I am simply asking anyone with other evidence to bring it forth to be similarly tested.
Brian
You say that your 'research has already demonstrated the state of affairs in China'. In fact, what you call 'research' would not be accepted as such by any serious academic institution - and I do not mean this as an attack, rather as a statement of fact. As a social scientist, my view is that you have not provided nearly enough evidence to demonstrate the state of affairs. The value of your blog is that you ask extremely relevant and important questions. Also, you have SOME information on the situation that might enable you or others to formulate a hypothesis that would then have to be tested. I think you need to concentrate on asking questions, pushing people into questioning their taken-for-granted knowledge. But you should also recognize the fact that your information is incomplete and impressionistic. Calling it research is I think misleading and ultimately undermines the true value of what you do.
Your research lacks scientific rigor and it is insulting to those of us who are Social Scientists working in academic institutions conducting ethically approved research. You provide a service to PAPs and you are very familiar with some aspects of China adoptions but to equate the work you do with that of academic research is false. You would be better off to 'market' yourself as someone who is invested in the China adoption process given your own experiences of raising daughters from China rather than a researcher. I have to agree with the poster prior me and say that you are misleading readers and PAPs. Moreover, if the media seems interested in your work it may simply be that you provide the 'shock & awe' soundbite that media loves.
I realize that my surveys, etc. are conducted outside what you "social scientists" would consider "scientific rigor", but what you apparently fail to realize is that it is impossible to achieve that level in this topic. Anyone, of course, can attempt to put together a tested questionnaire, scientifically rigorous, and attempt to obtain permission from the Chinese government to ask the hundreds of orphanage directors the questions, but you will only be making one phone call. The Chinese will not cooperate with a "Social Scientist." Until you, or anyone, can offer a reason why the data obtained is potentially unreliable, it is the best information available anywhere on this subject. We can argue academic titles, but the facts remain.
Brian
I think collecting data via adoptive families visiting orphanages and asking questions is a great idea. I want to know what is really happening. After reading your blog, I now fear that my daughter may have been stolen from her family or put up for adoption for money. It saddens me to no end. What will we say to our children? I had no reason to doubt the Chinese adoption program. In fact, we chose China because of all of the assurances that their program was ethical, that the babies were truly abandoned, and that the one child policy explained the reason for all of these babies. I believed that. Maybe I was naive, but I don't think I was--I knew enough to avoid programs about which there were doubts. We did do our research, or so we felt at the time.
By the way, when I visited Liangping SWI in October, 2005, the orphanage had many babies who appeared quite healthy, and none with any obvious (to the casual observer) disability.
In sum--I hope and pray that our daughters will forgive us for our participation, even though unintentional, in baby trafficking.
I am saddened at the loss of any romanticism connected to my daughter's "story" pre-adoption, but I would rather know the truth than hang on to a pretty fantasy about red threads and "saving" tens of thousands of girls abandoned due to the one child policy, and doomed to spend their lives in orphanages.
Currently, NSN adoptions are decreasing because both China and US adoption agencies are encouraging and even I think, "pushing" families into switching from their NSN route to the SN program. They lure them over by citing short wait times, quick referrals, no 3-5 year wait, etc. Many families are switching which is wonderful for the SN kids. However, I do think China is moving towards a SN only program.
The world of China IA is undergoing a huge, messed-up change. With the new Hague requirements, many families are mired in the I-800 mess, some agencies are being forced out of business (mine included) and the larger ones left are raising their fees to offset the slowdown in applications. Couple that with the orphanage donation in China increasing to $5000 after the Olympics, I think you're going to see a major shift in IA to other countries; Ethiopa is becoming very popular right now.
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