Most attentive observers of the China adoption program have noticed that in the past few years there has been a significant increase in the number of boys (both healthy and special needs) being adopted. Data supplied by China under Hague requirements show the total number of adoptions each year, broken out by gender.
China's data since 2005 confirm what most have suspected -- that even as the number of female adoptions has declined, the number of male adoptions has increased. While the gender ratio stood at 95.1% in 2005 (665/13,556), that ratio has steadily climbed, reaching 66.3% (1,313/3,901) in 2009. In other words, one-third of all adoptions from China currently are for boys.
Families speculate how this can be, given the conventional wisdom concerning China's cultural bias to boys: "How come there are healthy boys being adopted in such large numbers when most families seek healthy boys to carry on their family name, provide for the parents in their old age, and to work on the family farm?"
Why indeed.
In our look at Guangxi Province on our subscription blog, we focus special attention on trends in male abandonments, to see if any reasons for these changes can be determined.
http://www.research-china.org/blogs/index.htm
2 comments:
How do you know what percentage of boys adopted from China in 2009 were "healthy" vs. "special needs"?
The health status of the child is included in their finding ad. the ad states if a child is cleft-affected, etc.
Brian
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