Monday, December 25, 2017

Search Videos: Another Avenue for Searching

The success of a recent search video organized by some Chongqing adoptive families with children from that area highlights some important lessons on how to produce a "viral" video. 

The Chongqing video was uploaded on November 28, and as of this writing has been viewed over 8,400 times on Youku, as well as an unknown number of views on other uploads of the video (several in-country newspapers, TV and other sites have uploaded the video to their sites). A half dozen newspapers and TV stations have broadcast stories about the search. So far, nearly three dozen birth families have come forward, and activity surrounding this search video is still growing. Some of those that have come forward are from other Provinces, such as Anhui Province. One of the video's participants, "Lilly", is being interviewed for a serial print and web feature promoting the search. As the Global Times exclaimed, the video "has gone viral on the Chinese Internet, prompting calls for a rethink of China's welfare system and gender equality."

It is impossible to predict with certainty which videos will be successful, and which ones won't, but several things done by the Chongqing families increased their project's visibility. The Chongqing video contained no Chinese names, no child-specific information at all. The preface of the video states "you may think your child was adopted by a family inside China." The Chongqing video intentionally avoid giving any clues, other than the orphanage of origins, as to which birth parents are being sought.

This is, in my opinion, one of the main reasons why the Chongqing project video garnered so much attention inside China. Rather than focusing on locating the birth parents for specific children, the Chongqing video said, "You are all our parents." The Chongqing video was apparently designed to appeal to everyone. Not only were the children from all parts of the globe, but they represented disparate orphanages within Chongqing itself -- Xiushan, Youyang, Qianjiang, Fuling, etc. This gave it a very broad geographical appeal. Additionally, the children themselves ranged in age from 2 years old to children in their late teens or early twenties, twins, boys, etc.  The project was all-inclusive. It represented, in a literal sense, every child ever relinquished in Chongqing. A viewer in China would be much more inclined to pass on this video because the birth parents being sought could be literally everyone. The Chongqing video, to use a fishing metaphor, is like taking a large net from shore to shore with the design to capture every fish in the river, with the hope that one of those fish is the one sought after.

So, future search videos would do well to learn from this project. A few key takeaways that seem to give a video "legs" are":

1) Rather than focus on locating specific birth parents, make the video to locate every birth parent. The "wide net" model will gain more interest, since it speaks to more people, and thus gets more media attention.

2) Use the video to educate a birth parent that even though they think their child was adopted by someone in a neighboring village, in fact that may not be true. Create a sense of doubt. This is critical to get past the story many, if not most, birth parents were told about the destination of their child after relinquishment. The video must penetrate the significant mental barrier that exists in the mind of many birth parents that the images seen "can't be my child, for she was not adopted internationally." Without accomplishing that goal, the search will fail.

3) Avoid giving specific dates and details that are not known with certainty, as that will only cause potential birth families to not come forward. It must be assumed that the information -- birth dates, finding dates, locations, etc. -- is inaccurate, and thus providing them may cause potential matches from not coming forward since they will feel that the match is not theirs.

4) Try to incorporate something into the video that gets one's attention. The Chongqing project created a very smooth and cute transition technique with the "high fives" that each child did to move the video to the next child. With the disparate ages and physical locals of each child, this was extremely effective. Although separated by time and space, one felt that the kids were actually a unified group.

5) Before launching a search video, do some ground work. Recruit volunteers on the ground and in the area media to promote the video after it is launched. Promote the video to various news outlets. Your goal is to force the video into the public consciousness as soon as it is released.

6) Include as many different children as possible, speaking as many different languages as possible. There is a fine line between too long, too short, and just right. Have friends watch it. Did they remain engaged through the entire video? Was it interesting? Did it make them want to forward it to others? Do some pre-release test marketing to fine-tune the video for maximum impact.

7) Lastly, provide WeChat (preferable) or email contact information at the beginning and end of the video. Many viewers may not watch the entire video, so placing it just at the end of the video risks losing some potential contacts. Do not have the viewer have to go to another website, etc., to get contact information -- most won't cross platforms.

The Chongqing search video, among others, have provided all adoptees and their families with valuable techniques to make a successful search video. If every search video learns from the experience of these groups, more birth families will be successfully located going forward. But the adoption community must recognize as more and more videos are produced that the attention paid to such videos inside China will decrease. Media fatigue may set in, making it harder and harder for future projects to garner the needed attention. Thus, it is important that every project be crafted to produce the greatest success possible.

In the end, a search video should be seen as an absolutely last resort in a search. Other steps can and should be employed prior to publicly announcing a search. But once all of the "discreet" methods have been employed, a search video is a last "hail Mary" option.  The goal then is not to search for a specific birth family, but to search for every birth family.

Saturday, December 09, 2017

Research-China.Org Subscription Blog Contents

For families wondering what is available on our subscription blog, here is the current listing. We will be doing a "what is happening in China adoption" soon. 

Subscribe here:

Blog Contents:
“Where Was My Child Found” (Fuling Orphanage Patterns)
What to Tell – And When (Telling your child their history)
“Modern” Dying Rooms (Dianjiang Orphanage)
Why Birth Parent Searches Are Simple (And Why Most Adoptive Families Will Never Succeed With Them)
Police Reports: Why They're Important & Why They Are Not
"The Missing Girls of China" -- David Smolin
Putting the "Quota" Myth to Bed
When Problems Come Home
One-on-One with an Orphanage Director
Creative Searching Techniques by Chinese Birth Families
"Feeling, Reason & the Law of China are Contradictory"
Changing the Birth Dates of Adoptees
Birth Parent Search Results -- LePing, Jiangxi
The Dark Side of China's "Aging Out Orphan Program
Time to Change the Usual "Story"
Selective Abortion in China: A Personal Experience
A Research Project Ride-Along
How & Why an Orphanage Joins the IA Program
The History of China's International Adoption Program (NYU Presentation)
The Wide Cultural Divide
LWB and the Demographics of China Adoption
Open Secret: Cash & Coercion in China's IA Program
Lan's Journal of Life & Research (Part I)
Lan's Journal of Life & Research (Part II)
What an Actual Finding Can Tell Us About Our Own Child's Finding
Covering Adoption Corruption from Inside China
Last Night of an Abandoned Baby Island
Are There Issues with China's SN Program?
Shedding Tears, Real and Fake

Promises, Promises! (Lying to Birth Families)
The CCAA’s Tacit Approval of Trafficking
"Adoption from China is a 'politically sensitive issue'"
"If you don’t pay any money, how will you find any babies?"
Unwinding an Adoption?
Poyang, Jiangxi: China's New "Orphan Program"
The Fuping Scandal and China's Increasing Special Needs Program
The Fuping Scandal & China's IA Program
Baby Trafficking Network: Who Sells Babies That Have Not Yet Been Born? -- Part 1
A "Type and Shadow" the Guixi Orphanage Scandal

The Devil is in the Details (2009 Orphanage Submissions)
A Look at the Provinces I: Chongqing Municipality
A Look at the Provinces II: Jiangxi Province
A Look at the Provinces III: Hunan
A Look at the Provinces IV: Guangxi
A Look at the Provinces V: Guangdong
A Look at the Provinces VI: Jiangsu
A Look at the Provinces VII: Anhui
A Look at the Provinces VIII: Henan

Birth Parent Searching
Birth Parent Search Results -- LePing, Jiangxi
Another Wrinkle in Birth Parent Searching
10 Commandments of Birth Parent Searching
Utilizing Searchers Inside China for Birth Parent Searching
Searching Birth Parents I
Baby Come Home -- A Valuable Tool for BP Searching?
Is Zuyuan A Viable Option for BP Searching?

Birth Parent Stories
Birth Parent Stories I (Hunan/Jiangxi)
Interview with a Birth Mother of a SN Child
A Birth Father's Very Lucky Message

Hunan Scandal
“Information from Hunan I: Thirteen Case Studies”
II: Changning Orphanage Director Police Interviews
III: Director Chen Ming's Rebuttal of Trafficking Charges
An Interview with the Duan Family Matriarch
The Duan Trafficking Logs
Bringing the Hunan Scandal Into Focus
The Impact of the Hunan Scandal on China's Adoption Program
2003 Hunan Scandal Interview
When the Trouble Began

Tuesday, September 26, 2017

Not Simply Abandoned (Guest Post)

Note: A Spanish translation of this article has been kindly provided by one of our readers. It follows at the end of the English version.

By Susan Halverson 
(Pseudonym so that we can continue research)
My sixteen-year-old daughter and I traveled to Ningdu, Jiangxi, China in July 2015 and then again in July 2017, with the hope of finding her birth family.

Our public approach to searching has drawn out many birth families. Public searching is the use of social media, flyers and television, in order to bring a lot of attention to an adoptee, so that birth parents may come forward. 

In comparison, some people prefer to search quietly by getting to know foster parents or orphanage officials. In my daughter’s case we had learned from her orphanage analysis, finding ad data, and from other information learned through Research-China.Org, that the finder listed in her adoption paperwork had probably been put by the orphanage in the paperwork. As a result of all this pre-search information, we concluded that the orphanage information was all false (This was shown later to be the case). 

Thus, as a last resort, we decided we wanted to approach her search in a public manner, but in such a way as to locate as many birth families as possible. We believed birth families all deserve to know their children are alive and safe. Together, we have gained many friends and experiences, and a love for the city of Ningdu.

What we learned on our search is that many birth families are desperate for a sign that their children are safe and loved.  They also want their children to know that most were not simply abandoned. Their stories are honest, complex and painful. They don’t expect their children to be returned.  They understand that they were legally adopted overseas. But all have a strong desire to find and connect with their children.

To date, we have not found my daughter’s family. Perhaps they are related to officials, or perhaps they live remotely and we have not reached them, or maybe too much time has passed and they have left Ningdu. We are uncertain where my daughter’s search will take us next, but we feel compelled to share the moving stories told to us. The following are the voices of some of the birth parents we met in Ningdu, and whose DNA has now been submitted for matching.


“We already had your two-year-old sister when we gave birth to twins. We live in a village near Ningdu and we are poor. A woman came and took one of you and a few days returned to take the other. I heard that you were adopted separately. People can see pain in my eyes when they look at me.”

“Your mother and I own a small store in a village near Ningdu. We already had your brother and sister. When you were born, a village neighbor turned us into Family Planning. We later learned that if she didn’t report your birth, she risked having her roof knocked off her house. I keep a journal with all of my children’s births in it, including yours.”

"You came from a very poor family without means to pay a fine for a second child. We met an in-between person who said the orphanage would give us $500 USD for you, and that you would be sent to an American family. The next day we changed our minds. We went to the orphanage to get you back, but we were told that you were already sent to a family in Spain for adoption.”

“A foster mother from the orphanage heard that we had you. She came to our house and said that if we did not give you to her she would take your unregistered brother and sister.” 

“Your mother was very sick and we were poor.  We didn’t have money to pay for the hospital bill and family planning fine.  I took you to the orphanage and left you at the gate.  After I saw someone take you inside, I left.  You have three older sisters.  One we raised publicly, one we hid, and one we sent to live with your aunt. Now we are established in our careers.  We have more time and the luxury to mourn our loss. We miss you. “

“We had your two sisters (ages 2 and 5). We were fortunate enough to pay the fine for your second oldest sister. When you were born we didn’t have the means to pay the family planning fine. We paid an old woman to keep you safe until we could find a way to keep you in our family. The old woman tricked us and sent you to the orphanage. We tried to get you back from the orphanage but they said that you had already been sent overseas for adoption.  We know it wasn’t true because there was no way you were sent away that quickly, but we were powerless.  You now have a younger brother and we all miss you.” 

“Your father and I both have disabilities and we are poor. Someone came and took you to the orphanage because we could not care for you.  Since we lost you, we have lived separately. The pain is too great to know we lost you. You have one older sister who we raised.  She is healthy and received an education. We live in a beautiful village in the countryside.”

“Your aunt worked for the orphanage. She told us that we were not allowed to keep you or we would be fined or worse. We agreed to allow you to be taken to the orphanage, only if you were adopted by a local official. We soon found out that you were sent overseas for adoption. We are devastated that we were deceived and we didn’t get to watch our baby grow up."   

“Your parents had five children. They sent three of sent us to live with our auntie. You have two older sisters and a younger brother living with auntie. Mom and dad are only raising your oldest sister. Auntie is helping us search for you. We know that you were adopted overseas so we post flyers on social media in hopes that you will find us one day”. 

"Mom and dad are well educated but the pressures of having a boy in the old culture was too great. They ended up having six of us before they finally quit having children. Two of us were raised by mom and dad, two of our sisters were raised by local families, and two sisters were sent for overseas adoption. Mom and dad have a lot of guilt. When grandpa saw Americans in town searching for birth families, he told me that I needed to find you.  Mom and dad put their DNA in a local police database as well as sending a sample home with the Americans” (DNAConnect.Org)

"Your dad and I are poor and cannot read or write.  We were told that American’s could offer you a better life and an education.  Like all parents, we wanted what we thought was best for our child at the time.  We were taken advantage of because of our social class.  We miss you and hope you don’t think we abandoned you."

“Your mother and I were twenty-one years old. Our families didn’t approve of our relationship because we had the same surname. During that time in China, having the same surname meant that you are related (even though we know we weren’t). Our forbidden love resulted in your birth. Your mother’s parent said that they were sending you to an auntie’s house to live, but we later learned that you were sent to the orphanage.  My parents and I tried to get you back for a year, before I finally moved on with my life.  I am now married to another woman. You have a half-brother and I have never forgotten you.” 

“Our grandfather took you to the orphanage when mom was recovering from labor. I am pregnant now and shudder as I remember mom’s painful cries when she discovered you missing. American’s told us that they would help us find you. Mom, dad, grandpa, grandma, and myself all went to their hotel to leave a DNA sample.”

“You came back to China and we had a chance to meet you. For some reason after our reunion we lost contact.  Your family paid a baby-broker, that originally sent you to the orphanage to locate us. We have another sister sent overseas for adoption. Someday, I hope all of us siblings can be reunited and not pay for our parent’s mistakes.”

“We live in a very remote village. The officials took you because we didn’t register to have another baby. We don’t have a telephone. We keep to ourselves. We don’t know who turned us in. We only know that you were adopted overseas because of village talk. I am your elder sister. When you were born, our uncle took you to the Nanchang orphanage, where he had connections. Mom and dad agreed to let him take you because he said that they had better conditions and that you would be adopted sooner. Now mom and dad asked me to help them find you. I attend school for accounting in Nanchang and often think of you. I am sorry that our family sent you away.  I miss you little sister.”

“Your mother gave birth to you in the Ganzhou Hospital which is about an hour from Ningdu. You were kidnapped. I search for you but I suddenly stop cold in my tracks. I don’t know if you were trafficked in China or sent to the Ningdu Orphanage as some have suggested.”

“I was having a difficult time feeding you. A neighbor told me about an old woman who could take you to her home to fatten you up. I agreed to send you to the old woman. I was tricked and you were sent to the orphanage.” 

 We would not have been able to accomplished this without the help of DNA

Spanish Translation:

No simplemente abandonados
Por Susan Halverson 

(Post de una madre adoptiva con pseudónimo para que podamos continuar investigando)

Mi hija de dieciséis años y yo viajamos a Ningdu, Jiangxi, China en julio de 2015 y luego nuevamente en julio de 2017 con la esperanza de encontrar a su familia biológica. Nuestro enfoque público de la búsqueda ha atraído a muchas familias biológicas. Fue una  búsqueda pública con el uso de las redes sociales, folletos y la televisión, con el fin de atraer mucha atención hacia un adoptado, de modo que los padres biológicos puedan aparecer. 

Algunas personas prefieren buscar en silencio conociendo a los padres de crianza temporal o a los funcionarios del orfanato. En el caso de mi hija, aprendimos de su análisis de orfanato, de encontrar datos de anuncios, y de otra información a través de Research-China.Org,  que la persona que encontró a mi hija y que figura en su documentación de adopción probablemente había sido escrita en el papeleo por el orfanato. Como resultado de toda esta información previa a la búsqueda, llegamos a la conclusión de que la información del orfanato podía ser falsa (esto fue confirmado más tarde). Por lo tanto, como último recurso, decidimos que queríamos enfocar su búsqueda de una manera pública, pero de tal forma que pudiéramos encontrar a tantas familias biológicas como fuera posible. Creímos que todas las familias biológicas merecen saber que sus hijos están vivos y a salvo. De esa forma hemos ganado muchos amigos y experiencias, y un amor por la ciudad de Ningdu.

Lo que aprendimos en nuestra búsqueda es que muchas familias biológicas están desesperadas por saber si sus hijos están seguros y amados. También quieren que sus hijos sepan que la mayoría no fueron simplemente abandonados. Sus historias son honestas, complejas, desgarradoras  y dolorosas. No esperan que sus hijos sean devueltos. Ellos entienden que fueron legalmente adoptados en el extranjero. Pero todos tienen un fuerte deseo de encontrar y conectarse con sus hijos.

Hasta la fecha, no hemos encontrado a la familia de mi hija. Quizás estén relacionados con funcionarios, o quizás vivan lejos y no haya llegados a ellos la información de que estamos buscando, o tal vez haya pasado demasiado tiempo y hayan abandonado Ningdu. No estamos seguros de a dónde nos llevará la búsqueda de mi hija, pero nos sentimos obligados a compartir las conmovedoras historias que nos cuentan.

 Las siguientes son las voces de algunos de los padres biológicos que conocimos en Ningdu, y cuyo ADN ahora se ha enviado para buscar coincidencias.

1-"Ya teníamos a tu hermana de dos años cuando dimos a luz gemelos. Vivimos en un pueblo cerca de Ningdu y somos pobres. Una mujer vino y se llevó a uno de ustedes y unos días volvieron para llevarse el otro. Escuché que fuiste adoptado por separado. La gente puede ver dolor en mis ojos cuando me miran".

2-"Tu madre y yo poseemos una pequeña tienda en un pueblo cerca de Ningdu. Ya tenemos tu hermano y hermana. Cuando naciste, un vecino de la aldea nos advirtió  sobre  Planificación Familiar. Más tarde supimos que si  no informábamos de tu nacimiento, nos arriesgábamos a que nos arrancaran el techo de casa. Guardo un diario con todos los nacimientos de mis hijos, incluido el suyo. "

3-" Vienes de una familia muy pobre sin medios para pagar una multa por un segundo hijo. Nos encontramos con una persona intermedia que dijo que el orfanato nos daría $ 500 USD por ti, y que serás enviado a una familia estadounidense. Al día siguiente cambiamos de opinión. Fuimos al orfanato para llevarte de vuelta, pero nos dijeron que ya te habían enviado a una familia de España para su adopción. "

4-"Una madre adoptiva que trabajaba para el orfanato escuchó que te teníamos a ti. Ella vino a nuestra casa y dijo que si no te diéramos a ella,  se llevaría a tu hermano y hermana no registrados. "

5- " Tu madre estaba muy enferma y nosotros éramos pobres. No teníamos dinero para pagar la factura del hospital y la multa por planificación familiar. Te llevé al orfanato y te dejé en la puerta. Después de que vi que alguien te llevaba dentro, me fui. Tienes tres hermanas mayores. Uno que criamos públicamente, una que escondimos y otro que enviamos a vivir con tu tía. Ahora estamos establecidos. Tenemos más tiempo y el lujo de llorar nuestra pérdida. Te extrañamos. " 

6-"Tuvimos a tus dos hermanas (de 2 y 5 años). Tuvimos la suerte de pagar la multa por tu segunda hermana. Cuando naciste no teníamos los medios para pagar  a planificación familiar. Pagamos a una anciana para mantenerte a salvo hasta que pudiéramos encontrar una manera de mantenerte en nuestra familia. La anciana nos engañó y te envió al orfanato. Tratamos de que volviera del orfanato, pero dijeron que ya te habían enviado al extranjero para tu adopción. Sabemos que no era cierto porque no había manera de que te enviaran tan rápido, pero no pudimos hacer nada. Ahora tienes un hermano menor y todos te echamos de menos ". 

7-"Tu padre y yo tenemos discapacidades y somos pobres. Alguien vino y te llevó al orfanato porque no podíamos cuidarte. Desde que te perdimos, hemos vivido por separado. El dolor es demasiado grande para saber que te perdimos. Tienes una hermana mayor que criamos. Ella es saludable y recibió una educación. Vivimos en un hermoso pueblo en el campo".

8-" Tu tía trabajaba para el orfanato. Ella nos dijo que no podíamos retenerte o que nos multarían o empeorarían. Acordamos permitir que te lleven al orfanato solo para que fueras adoptada por un funcionario local. Pronto descubrimos que te enviaron al extranjero para adopción. Estamos devastados de que nos engañaran y no pudimos ver a nuestro bebé crecer ".   

9-"Tus padres tuvieron cinco hijos. Enviaron a tres de nosotros a vivir con nuestra tía. Tienes dos hermanas mayores y un hermano menor viviendo con la tía. Mamá y papá solo están criando a tu hermana mayor. La tía nos está ayudando a buscarte. Sabemos que fuiste adoptado en el extranjero, así que publicamos folletos en las redes sociales con la esperanza de que algún día nos encuentres. ". 

10-"Mamá y papá están bien educados, pero las presiones de tener un niño en la cultura anterior eran demasiado grandes. Terminaron teniendo a seis de nosotros antes de que finalmente dejaran de tener hijos. Dos de nosotros fuimos criados por mamá y papá, dos de nuestras hermanas. fueron criados por familias locales, y dos hermanas fueron enviadas para su adopción en el extranjero. Mamá y papá tienen mucha culpa. Cuando el abuelo vio a estadounidenses en la ciudad en busca de familias biológicas, me dijo que tenía que encontrarte. Mamá y papá pusieron su ADN en una base de datos de la policía local, así como enviar una muestra de la casa con los estadounidenses " (DNAConnect.Org)

11-"Tu papá y yo somos pobres y no podemos leer ni escribir. Nos dijeron que los americanos  podría ofrecerte una vida mejor y una educación. Como todos los padres, queríamos lo que pensamos que era mejor para nuestro hijo en ese momento. Se aprovecharon. debido a nuestra clase social pobre. Te extrañamos y esperamos que  creas que no te abandonamos te queremos".

12-"Tu madre y yo teníamos veintiún años. Nuestras familias no aprobaron nuestra relación porque teníamos el mismo apellido. Durante ese tiempo en China, tener el mismo apellido significaba que usted está emparentado (aunque sabemos que no lo éramos). Nuestro amor prohibido resultó en tu nacimiento. Los padres de tu madre dijeron que te estaban enviando a vivir a la casa de una tía, pero luego supimos que te enviaron al orfanato. Mis padres y yo intentamos llevarte de regreso durante un año antes de que finalmente siguiera yo con mi vida. Ahora estoy casado con otra mujer. Tienes un medio hermano y nunca te he olvidado ". 

12-"Nuestro abuelo te llevó al orfanato cuando mamá se estaba recuperando del parto. Ahora estoy embarazada y tiemblo al recordar los dolorosos gritos de mamá cuando descubrió que no estabas, te echaba de menos. Los americano nos dijero que nos ayudarían a encontrarte. Mamá, papá, abuelo, abuela y yo fuimos todos a su hotel a dejar una muestra de ADN. "

13-"Regresaste a China y tuvimos la oportunidad de conocerte. Por alguna razón, después de nuestra reunión perdimos contacto. Tu familia le pagó a un corredor de bebés para ir al al orfanato para que te localizara. Tenemos otra hermana enviada al extranjero para su adopción. Algún día, espero que todos los hermanos podamos reunirnos y no pagar los errores de nuestros padres ".

14-"Vivimos en un pueblo muy remoto. Los oficiales te llevaron porque no nos registramos para tener otro bebé. No tenemos un teléfono, nos cuidamos nosotros mismos. No sabemos a quién te  entregaron. Solo sabemos que fuiste adoptado en el extranjero debido a las conversaciones en la aldea. 

15-Soy tu hermana mayor Cuando naciste, nuestro tío te llevó al orfanato de Nanchang, donde tenía conexiones. Mamá y papá aceptaron dejarlo que te llevara porque dijo que tenían mejores condiciones y que serías adoptado antes. Ahora mamá y papá me pidieron que los ayude a encontrarte. Asisto a la escuela para la contabilidad en Nanchang y a menudo pienso en ti. Lamento que nuestra familia te haya pedido. Te extraño hermana pequeña ".

16-"Tu madre te dio a luz en el Hospital Ganzhou, que está a una hora de Ningdu. Usted fue secuestrado. Te busco pero de repente me detengo en seco. No sé si fueron traficados en China o enviados al Orfanato de Ningdu, como algunos han sugerido. "

17- " Estaba teniendo dificultades para alimentarte. Un vecino me contó acerca de una anciana que podría llevarte a su casa para engordarte. Acepté enviarte a la anciana. Me engañaron y te enviaron al orfanato. "

No hubiéramos podido lograr esto sin la ayuda de DNA

Monday, September 11, 2017

My Experience With Adopting an Older Child








Wednesday, March 01, 2017

Separated Twins: More Common than Generally Believed

The recent reunification story of two girls adopted by different families points out a problem that we have noticed for many years.  After one of the families contacted us for her daughter's finding ad, we notified them that we also had information that indicated their daughter was a twin. Foster family records, which we obtained on a research project to that area, indicated that although the orphanage had known they were twins, they had separated the girls in the belief that it would be easier to adopt the two girls separately.

This story has created a lot of interest in the adoption community, and efforts are now underway to identify other such "separated twins." In the case of the two children in the story above, even though the orphanage had changed the finding date of one of the two girls, their names strongly implied that they were related. Taken individually, neither name stood out as anything but a traditional orphanage name, but when the last characters of the two girls' names were combined, the word for "Rose" was formed. When the names of two children form such a combination, it is significant evidence, when combined with similar finding data, that the two children are related.

We have created a listing of similar "separated twins," based on similar names, finding data, and other criteria. If your child is on this list, it is very likely that a sibling was adopted by another family (all of these children were internationally adopted).

The following list is a work-in-progress, and will be updated as new potential twins are identified. You can assist in this work if you have purchased your child's orphanage data book and notice unusual pairings.  Please let us know and we can research them further.

Potential Twins

Wednesday, January 04, 2017

Book Review: Leslie Wang's Outsourced Children: Orphanage Care and Adoption in Globalizing China

Leslie K. Wang’s book “Outsourced Children: Orphanage Care and Adoption in Globalizing China” is a well-researched treatise on China’s adoption program, the result of personal experiences of the author working in various orphanages, combined with academic studies. The central thesis of the book, that China has allowed international adoption of its children as a means to increase the overall value and productivity of its remaining citizens, is a fairly new idea in the adoption community. Few adoptive parents realize the overall goals and objectives of the Chinese government in encouraging and promoting adoption, and for this single reason alone Wang’s book is a valuable contribution to the history of China’s adoption program.

Wang spends considerable space putting a personalized face on the orphans in China, mostly special needs. Her time in the Haifeng Children’s Welfare Institute (a pseudonym), an orphanage that participated in the international adoption program, illuminates the issues present in the Social Welfare Institutes regarding the severely handicapped. Wang gained access to the Haifeng orphanage as a volunteer for “Tomorrow’s Children,” a Christian faith-based NGO that assisted the orphanage in caring for its special needs children. Her experiences in Haifeng are contrasted with those she had in the Yongping orphanage (also a pseudonym) near Beijing where another group, “Helping Hands,” worked. This group was comprised of expat women who, as Wang describes, were looking to put meaning into their lives as their husbands went off to work.  The contrast between these two groups – how their methods were accepted or rejected by the nannies that worked in each facility, by the government, and by the children themselves, is fascinating to read, and provides a valuable assessment of the damage that “first-world” attitudes can sometimes have in such settings. 

But the core of the book is devoted to the idea that China has allowed the exportation of her children with a simple goal in mind: To increase the overall productivity of its people with the stated goal to become a first-world nation. With this goal in mind, Chinese leaders feel that children abandoned by largely rural, uneducated and less productive birth families in a real sense act as weights to the progress of China overall. By removing these children from the national population, the thinking goes, the government accepts that the remaining population would increase in education and productivity.  Wang states that “Although urban little emperors bear the heavy responsibility of building a glorious future for their country, a much larger number of youths from rural areas are viewed at best as a hindrance, and at worst as a dangerous threat, to Chinese modernization” (p. 29-30). When viewed in this light, the actions of the CCAA and other national governmental agencies can be clearly understood, especially as it relates to ethical breeches and scandals in China’s adoption program. Simply stated, orphanage actions such as baby-buying and Family Planning confiscations achieve a national interest, even if those same actions result in lapses in international treaties and standards. 

It is important to understand that China’s international adoption program was started as a result of advocacy work initiated by World Association for Children and Parents (WACAP), a private adoption agency based in Washington State. This agency was the first to be allowed to adopt Chinese children in 1991 from the Luoyang orphanage in Henan Province, the same Province where Wang volunteered in the Haifeng orphanage.  It was WACAP’s advocacy that convinced the Chinese that the benefits of international adoption in terms of financial resources and outsourcing the costs of childcare outweighed the loss of face. The creation of China’s international adoption bureau, the CCAA, occurred one year later. In 1992, 206 Chinese children were adopted to the U.S. (232 internationally), a number that grew to 4,206 children in 1998 (6,012 internationally), when some orphanages began to feel pressure to recruit children for adoption. By 2002, when 6,119 children were adopted to the U.S. (10,194 internationally), many, if not most, orphanages were heavily involved in baby-buying and other recruitment methods to satisfy the demand for healthy, young infant girls.  In 2005, international press revealed that orphanages in central China’s Hunan Province had been buying babies, and in 2008 families that had adopted older, “aging-out” children from the same Luoyang orphanage came forward indicating that their adoptive children had been lured away from birth families under the false pretense of gaining an education and employment in the West. 

Which brings me to the one objection I have to Wang’s assessment of China’s program. Although Wang gives a hat tip to reports of scandals in China’s program, overall she maintains that the direction of the adoption program is dictated by Beijing. She states, for example, that it is the outcome of the HCIA (Hague Convention) “combined with a proactive effort by the top sending countries – namely Russia and China – to lower the number of kids they place abroad” (p.131) that resulted in the collapse in international adoptions after 2004 (Russia) and 2005 (China). Wang also writes that the PRC “severely limited the supply of healthy girls following the Hunan child trafficking scandal” (p.132), and still later observed that “it is highly significant that, as the country’s global economic position has improved, the number of children it sends abroad has declined dramatically” (p. 148). Intentionally or not, these and other similar statements by Wang imply that the number of children adopted internationally is controlled by the Central Government, controlled from the top down. There is no doubt that this is a commonly held view, even by those involved in the adoption community, but it is largely a misperception.

The idea ignores the well-documented data and experiences in China’s orphanages themselves. There is no question that China’s program took a dramatic turn in late 2005. In fact, when one graphs the findings (the number of children entering the orphanage) by the orphanages in the provinces of Guangdong, Guangxi, Hunan and Jiangxi, etc., the main providers of adoptable children in 2005, one can see the decline beginning in December 2005, exactly when the Hunan scandal was being reported on inside China. In February 2006, three months after the scandal broke and when the decline was already visible, the CCAA (the office of the national government responsible for international adoptions) began actively pushing orphanages to submit as many children as they could, even severely special needs. When the number of submissions continued to fall, only then did China change the criteria for who could adopt. The lack of definitive action to curtail corruption in the face of various adoption scandals since Hunan should also be seen in this light.

Thus, the decline in adoptions from China was not a result of top-down actions such as Hague implementation, progress in economic circumstances, access to ultrasounds, the 2008 Olympics, or any of the other “macro” explanations that have been given. Rather, it was a bottom-up reaction by millions of Chinese birth families, most of whom learned for the first time in December 2005 that their children were being “sold” to Westerners by the orphanages, and consciously chose to no longer cooperate, largely out of fear for their child’s safety and well-being. As a result, the number of healthy children entering the orphanages fell dramatically, and the apparent emphasis shifted, as Wang documents, from healthy young infants to older special needs children. I say apparent, because it was the disappearance of the healthy children that made the adoption of the special needs children both more desirable by Western families due to the longer wait times for a healthy child, and more visible to outsiders. But the mission of the national government is still firmly in place: Adopt out as many children, healthy or special needs, as possible to elevate the productivity and desirability of the rest of China’s citizenry. 

Wang’s book is a highly interesting view of the China program, and she brings many perceptive and important observations to the conversation moving forward. Do Western NGOs do more harm than good? Are their efforts sustainable? Should the international adoption program be used as a tool of the Chinese government to outsource orphan care? These and many other considerations are addressed and explored by Wang in what is a fascinating read.

Leslie's book can be ordered here.