So Why China?


We get this question a lot, so I thought I'd address it here. Chris and I have been married for almost 10 years, and a couple years after we married we talked about adopting. I was the one who did a bit of research and started planning for it. There were a few reasons that we thought about adoption and specifically China. I am a Bio teacher and I spent time learning about zero population growth and the carrying capacity of the Earth, etc. and I liked the idea of adopting kids that were already here. I also liked the idea of giving a girl different opportunities in a place where her status as a woman would not be a limiting factor. Infants from China are generally very healthy and are well taken care of before adoption. After we thought about these things and then watched the National Geographic special "China's Lost Girls" we decided to one day do it.

I went to a meeting at WACAP in August of 04 and learned about some of the different programs. China has been a very predictable process (at least until recently!) and we liked the idea of a year long time frame. 6 months for paper work - known as the paperchase- and another 6 months before referral. We had to wait until I turned 30 in January of 06 before we could turn in the paperwork and at this time, the wait for referral has slid to 11months and climbing.

We understood that some people will ask about the effects of this choice on our future daughter. Some adoptees resent being taken from their own country and put into a transracial family. We know we are the third best possible parents, behind Chinese parents from China, parents of Chinese descent in another country, and then us. We have gone to a couple of classes with our adoption agency that gave us some resources, and we are currently looking into Families with Children from China- FCC - Seattle. We are learning all about China, have begun to incorporate some Chinese customs into our family and will encourage our daughter to learn about her background. There is a delicate balance between pushing her too hard and really making her feel like she is different from her family or pretending that she isn't adopted and it is something we never talk about. We'll be very supportive with this integration into our family and let her take the lead with language lessons, cultural events, whatever else we find that she enjoys.

We sometimes get the question, why not from the US? Aren't there plenty of children here who need homes? Well there might be. We didn't investigate domestic adoptions very thoroughly. The idea of private adoption was a bit scary for us, because a birth mother can always change her mind at the last minute. Also, the process of going through the government seems to have a much longer waiting time. We wanted to adopt an infant and at this time we weren't considering an older child- which is a shorter wait in the US. So, we may look into doing this in the future, but not this time around. I think when people ask why not from the US, it can come across to adoptive parents as a bit of an accusation. And I know people don't mean to say it that way, but it would be like walking up to a pregnant woman and asking her why she didn't adopt from the US. People make the choices that fit their families best and this one is right for us!