Let's make this a wilder story. Sounds better.
The community that has been built up around kids adopted from China is amazing; I've distanced myself a little from it as time has gone on, because the whole of what my daughter is has something to do with her old home, and everything to do with her and the life she has now, here in America. To totally obsess on China is silly, any more than I should obsess on the ethnic roots of myself and my family members.
I wanted, always, to give her a clear and unbiased idea of China, while at the same time making her proud of where she came from and who she is. One of the quickest ways I could imagine to set me off would be to have someone make some sort of ethnic slurs at her in my presence; I have a rich love of history, language and culture, and China but got added to the pile in a prominent position - partly for me and partly so she can get her exposure to it, and accept her connection to China and get any of her questions answered.
But she's culturally American, and trying to make her anything else is difficult. She has a former friend at her school who is the daughter of Chinese immigrant parents (I think they've only been here since college, and they're pushing 40), and it's obvious that the other kid is getting a huge push from her parents to Be Chinese. And all the kid wants to do is to be another kid in the sea and assimilate into America. When her parents saw Mere and I making real efforts to learn Chinese and so forth, they probably pushed back at her 'why can't you be more like Meredith and be a proper Chinese girl', and suddenly, their friendship fell apart and she started to flake out. The more I hear from about the weird things that ex-pal is now doing in school, I get the deep feeling that she's resisting and rebelling in a very deep manner against the way she feels shoved into being a stranger in a strange land, and she deeply resents it and acts out.
On the other hand, some parents in the Chinese adoptive community decided to do a more whole-hog approach and try to raise their kids as Chinese, regardless of the cultural matrix of the parents. IMHO, you can only do so much of that without making the kid uncomfortable in the long run, but we'll see. I know a person who got the idea that if they adopted from China, that the Chinese would obligate you to 'raise the kid Chinese', like the old 'raise the kids in the church' that Catholics have/had an obligation to do.
Nothing is further from the truth. The only thing that the Chinese *ask* you to do is to give the child a positive attitude about where she came from, and heck, that's only good parenting in my estimation. If you don't, the kid may get the idea that as Chinese, she's from a baaaaaaad place, and therefore she must also be baaaaaaad. Not a good idea for helping on self esteem issues, I'd say.
Otherwise, you're supposed to love her and take care of her and never abandon her, and raise her the best you can, making the differences between her and any children of your body irrelevant. And heck, again, that's only good parenting.
This story is up and around in the news, and it really seriously bugged me, because so much of it is not true, is sensationalistic, and out-and-out garbage.
Some years ago, there was a British documentary called THE DYING ROOMS which recorded some horrible, shocking ideas as to what was involved in the handling of Chinese orphans. A video of it is here. It raised a huge stink, and mightily embarassed the Chinese government with its hard view of the neglect of kids in certain Chinese orphanages.
As most of you who are regular readers should know, I'm no fan of the present Chinese government, and I'm of the opinion that there's a lot of who-cares-what's-in-it-for-me people in the bureaucracy and government there. But my knowledge on conditions in the orphanages in China is that they vary a good deal. Some are good, some are excellent, and some are not good and run by indifferent caregivers and managers. But the sensitivity of the Chinese government to the DYING ROOMS debacle was such that they decided to make sure that the problems with their system were addressed and improved. And as time has went on, more and more of this has taken place. Special aid groups for the improvement of orphanages in China have seen great leaps and bounds of improvement, and we in this household have contributed to those.
From the newsletter for Half the Sky:
Five-year-old Meredith Ellen Harrington and
five-year-old Meredith Grace Rittenhouse live
in different cities in the USA, but they once
lived together in the Jiangmen Social Welfare
Institute in China and were both adopted as
babies in 2000. Because the girls look so much
alike, their parents brought them for DNA
testing, which found that they have a 97%
probability of being fraternal twin sisters or
half sisters, (only identical twins test 100%).
When Meredith Ellen met Meredith Grace for
the first time she said: “I think we were born
together.” The newly reunited sisters worked
with their folks to raise money to sponsor
two Half the Sky Baby Sisters--twin-girls.
Meredith Ellen says she wants the 14-month
old twins to know that “She loves them very
much” and wishes they had a family “NOW.”
In any event, here's the problems I had with that story:
Roedder said he and his wife had two children and wanted a third, and they decided to adopt. Working through the Evansville, Ind. office of an agency called Families Through International Adoption, they went through a lengthy, paperwork-filled, expensive process before their application to adopt a Chinese girl was accepted last year. It took between 12 and 18 months to complete the necessary paperwork, he said, and the fees were "ridiculous" (he said later he took about $9,000 to China with him, and came home with less than a third; the cost of the whole process was pegged at about $30,000).
Most of that is true. The website of the agency has a FAQ on the process, and it correctly states that it is involved with a lot of paperwork and approvals, and that may take (between China and here) a year and a half to go through if you're diligent about followup on your end. And $15,000+ is not peanuts. We probably spent $17,000 in 2000. $30,000? That's crazy. I have no idea as to what he spent on crapola over there, of course. But that figure as a cost for the adoption is way out of line.
The Roedders learned last fall that their application had been approved (and the Chinese government rejects applications for a variety of reasons, including the prospective parents' religion, income or weight).
The Chinese might reject a Falun Gong member, and have made of point of rejecting gays, or if you're in horrible shape, but weight is not an issue for China, or religion (they're atheists and whatnot, but I've known lots of evangelical Christians who have easily adopted from China, and never personally heard of a religious reason for rejection). I've known people who were seriously crippled, cancer survivors and so on who adopted from China. Income is considered, but only from the aspect of 'can you properly take care of the child we are entrusting to you'.
The authorities presented Emma to her new father in a no-frills, five-minute procedure, said Roedder, on the third night he was in the country.
Yeah, that's common enough. What do you want, a brass band?
China's economic condition may be improving, but Roedder said he saw another side of life there. "The worst poverty I've seen here would be middle class there," he told the Kiwanians.
Plenty of truth there. You do not know poverty or crowding until you see China or India, say.
The orphanage was located in an old hotel building, which had no power or indoor plumbing. The windows were left open around the clock, year 'round, because of the awful smell inside, and so the temperature inside was identical to the temperature outside. Babies slept four or five to a crib and were kept warm by piling on blankets, Roedder said. The orphanage playroom was a dirt floor, and the bathroom consisted of two holes in the floor, with a garden hose nearby. Two women are on duty at all times just to change diapers, he said.
If it was that bad, the Chinese would have brought the kid to him, rather than look bad in public - and they are rarely anywhere near that bad these days. I think this is made up BS.
Emma had to undergo a cursory medical exam before the Roedders were allowed to take her from the country. He said the exportation of female infants is big business in China and brings in a lot of money, so the likelihood of a child being disqualified for adoption for health reasons was slim.
Big business? Hardly. The numbers of kids leaving the country for the USA is maybe 6000 a year, and at $3000 an orphanage fee, that's $18 million bucks spread out over a huge number of orphanages in China. Not that much per orphanage for covering the kids' costs, et cetera. The health disqualification is rare, but the idea is to send the kids home to good people who have the resources to take care of them better than they would have it there, and with tons more attention.
The airplane trip back to the U.S. took 15 hours, and there were approximately 60 Chinese girls under the age of 15 months and their new American parents aboard the jet. That left the business travelers "deflated," Roedder told his audience. He said he had been without sleep for about 33 hours by the time the plane landed in St. Louis, and he called it a "brutal" flight and one of the most tiring times in his life. But he purchased a seat for Emma between him and his brother, and she was able to rest there occasionally, he said. Many other parents had to hold their child for the entire journey home.
The length of the trip is about right, as is the number of kids on the plane. The condition of the business travellers? Well, not my problem. The trip for us was about 24 hours, and you're jet lagged and tired and just want to go home. Anything longer depends on layovers and whatnot, but you should have known that before you left and made allowances for it. Likewise, you buy a cheap seat for the kid on the way back, because it's the only sane thing to do.
He described the Chinese-made vehicles he encountered--some were very short and small--and spoke of the need to boil all water for human consumption.
Pretty much true.
The speaker discussed China's laws governing how many children (and what sex they can be) parents are allowed to have.
How many is regulated. Which sex is not.
I wanted, always, to give her a clear and unbiased idea of China, while at the same time making her proud of where she came from and who she is. One of the quickest ways I could imagine to set me off would be to have someone make some sort of ethnic slurs at her in my presence; I have a rich love of history, language and culture, and China but got added to the pile in a prominent position - partly for me and partly so she can get her exposure to it, and accept her connection to China and get any of her questions answered.
But she's culturally American, and trying to make her anything else is difficult. She has a former friend at her school who is the daughter of Chinese immigrant parents (I think they've only been here since college, and they're pushing 40), and it's obvious that the other kid is getting a huge push from her parents to Be Chinese. And all the kid wants to do is to be another kid in the sea and assimilate into America. When her parents saw Mere and I making real efforts to learn Chinese and so forth, they probably pushed back at her 'why can't you be more like Meredith and be a proper Chinese girl', and suddenly, their friendship fell apart and she started to flake out. The more I hear from about the weird things that ex-pal is now doing in school, I get the deep feeling that she's resisting and rebelling in a very deep manner against the way she feels shoved into being a stranger in a strange land, and she deeply resents it and acts out.
On the other hand, some parents in the Chinese adoptive community decided to do a more whole-hog approach and try to raise their kids as Chinese, regardless of the cultural matrix of the parents. IMHO, you can only do so much of that without making the kid uncomfortable in the long run, but we'll see. I know a person who got the idea that if they adopted from China, that the Chinese would obligate you to 'raise the kid Chinese', like the old 'raise the kids in the church' that Catholics have/had an obligation to do.
Nothing is further from the truth. The only thing that the Chinese *ask* you to do is to give the child a positive attitude about where she came from, and heck, that's only good parenting in my estimation. If you don't, the kid may get the idea that as Chinese, she's from a baaaaaaad place, and therefore she must also be baaaaaaad. Not a good idea for helping on self esteem issues, I'd say.
Otherwise, you're supposed to love her and take care of her and never abandon her, and raise her the best you can, making the differences between her and any children of your body irrelevant. And heck, again, that's only good parenting.
This story is up and around in the news, and it really seriously bugged me, because so much of it is not true, is sensationalistic, and out-and-out garbage.
Some years ago, there was a British documentary called THE DYING ROOMS which recorded some horrible, shocking ideas as to what was involved in the handling of Chinese orphans. A video of it is here. It raised a huge stink, and mightily embarassed the Chinese government with its hard view of the neglect of kids in certain Chinese orphanages.
As most of you who are regular readers should know, I'm no fan of the present Chinese government, and I'm of the opinion that there's a lot of who-cares-what's-in-it-for-me people in the bureaucracy and government there. But my knowledge on conditions in the orphanages in China is that they vary a good deal. Some are good, some are excellent, and some are not good and run by indifferent caregivers and managers. But the sensitivity of the Chinese government to the DYING ROOMS debacle was such that they decided to make sure that the problems with their system were addressed and improved. And as time has went on, more and more of this has taken place. Special aid groups for the improvement of orphanages in China have seen great leaps and bounds of improvement, and we in this household have contributed to those.
From the newsletter for Half the Sky:
Five-year-old Meredith Ellen Harrington and
five-year-old Meredith Grace Rittenhouse live
in different cities in the USA, but they once
lived together in the Jiangmen Social Welfare
Institute in China and were both adopted as
babies in 2000. Because the girls look so much
alike, their parents brought them for DNA
testing, which found that they have a 97%
probability of being fraternal twin sisters or
half sisters, (only identical twins test 100%).
When Meredith Ellen met Meredith Grace for
the first time she said: “I think we were born
together.” The newly reunited sisters worked
with their folks to raise money to sponsor
two Half the Sky Baby Sisters--twin-girls.
Meredith Ellen says she wants the 14-month
old twins to know that “She loves them very
much” and wishes they had a family “NOW.”
In any event, here's the problems I had with that story:
Roedder said he and his wife had two children and wanted a third, and they decided to adopt. Working through the Evansville, Ind. office of an agency called Families Through International Adoption, they went through a lengthy, paperwork-filled, expensive process before their application to adopt a Chinese girl was accepted last year. It took between 12 and 18 months to complete the necessary paperwork, he said, and the fees were "ridiculous" (he said later he took about $9,000 to China with him, and came home with less than a third; the cost of the whole process was pegged at about $30,000).
Most of that is true. The website of the agency has a FAQ on the process, and it correctly states that it is involved with a lot of paperwork and approvals, and that may take (between China and here) a year and a half to go through if you're diligent about followup on your end. And $15,000+ is not peanuts. We probably spent $17,000 in 2000. $30,000? That's crazy. I have no idea as to what he spent on crapola over there, of course. But that figure as a cost for the adoption is way out of line.
The Roedders learned last fall that their application had been approved (and the Chinese government rejects applications for a variety of reasons, including the prospective parents' religion, income or weight).
The Chinese might reject a Falun Gong member, and have made of point of rejecting gays, or if you're in horrible shape, but weight is not an issue for China, or religion (they're atheists and whatnot, but I've known lots of evangelical Christians who have easily adopted from China, and never personally heard of a religious reason for rejection). I've known people who were seriously crippled, cancer survivors and so on who adopted from China. Income is considered, but only from the aspect of 'can you properly take care of the child we are entrusting to you'.
The authorities presented Emma to her new father in a no-frills, five-minute procedure, said Roedder, on the third night he was in the country.
Yeah, that's common enough. What do you want, a brass band?
China's economic condition may be improving, but Roedder said he saw another side of life there. "The worst poverty I've seen here would be middle class there," he told the Kiwanians.
Plenty of truth there. You do not know poverty or crowding until you see China or India, say.
The orphanage was located in an old hotel building, which had no power or indoor plumbing. The windows were left open around the clock, year 'round, because of the awful smell inside, and so the temperature inside was identical to the temperature outside. Babies slept four or five to a crib and were kept warm by piling on blankets, Roedder said. The orphanage playroom was a dirt floor, and the bathroom consisted of two holes in the floor, with a garden hose nearby. Two women are on duty at all times just to change diapers, he said.
If it was that bad, the Chinese would have brought the kid to him, rather than look bad in public - and they are rarely anywhere near that bad these days. I think this is made up BS.
Emma had to undergo a cursory medical exam before the Roedders were allowed to take her from the country. He said the exportation of female infants is big business in China and brings in a lot of money, so the likelihood of a child being disqualified for adoption for health reasons was slim.
Big business? Hardly. The numbers of kids leaving the country for the USA is maybe 6000 a year, and at $3000 an orphanage fee, that's $18 million bucks spread out over a huge number of orphanages in China. Not that much per orphanage for covering the kids' costs, et cetera. The health disqualification is rare, but the idea is to send the kids home to good people who have the resources to take care of them better than they would have it there, and with tons more attention.
The airplane trip back to the U.S. took 15 hours, and there were approximately 60 Chinese girls under the age of 15 months and their new American parents aboard the jet. That left the business travelers "deflated," Roedder told his audience. He said he had been without sleep for about 33 hours by the time the plane landed in St. Louis, and he called it a "brutal" flight and one of the most tiring times in his life. But he purchased a seat for Emma between him and his brother, and she was able to rest there occasionally, he said. Many other parents had to hold their child for the entire journey home.
The length of the trip is about right, as is the number of kids on the plane. The condition of the business travellers? Well, not my problem. The trip for us was about 24 hours, and you're jet lagged and tired and just want to go home. Anything longer depends on layovers and whatnot, but you should have known that before you left and made allowances for it. Likewise, you buy a cheap seat for the kid on the way back, because it's the only sane thing to do.
He described the Chinese-made vehicles he encountered--some were very short and small--and spoke of the need to boil all water for human consumption.
Pretty much true.
The speaker discussed China's laws governing how many children (and what sex they can be) parents are allowed to have.
How many is regulated. Which sex is not.