Adoption from China?

[Fifi00]

My DD is 9 it is possible for me to have another biological child but I don't think I want to go through the process of pregnancy and childbirth again. My DH is of Chinese origin , there are many girls who are relinquished in orphanages in China. I would love another daughter , I feel we would be able to meet the child's cultural needs. Has anyone had experience of this?

[Kokeshi123]

I don’t think a lot of baby girls are being dumped in orphanages these days just for being girls; the one-child policy ended quite some time ago, and the intense gender bias that used to be common in China has died down (I hear that among younger urban families, it’s increasingly common to prefer daughters!)

China has also massively cracked down on the external adoption of Chinese babies. The general feeling now is that foreigners are considered as potential adopters only in the case of children who have special needs, as the idea seems to be that “Chinese families won’t want them so let the foreigners have them” etc.

As most families (Chinese and non Chinese) prefer to adopt girls if they are going to adopt, it’s actually boys who the authorities will be somewhat keener to place with foreigners.

COVID and geopolitical concerns will no doubt be playing havoc with adoption services right now. I don’t pretend to know much about the details, but it must surely be much harder than it was pre-2020. I have heard ballpark figures of 2 years but I don’t pretend to be an expert.

I think it’s important to adopt for the right reasons. It can be a wonderful choice for families who are determined to offer the best possible life and the love of a family to a child who probably has some level of special needs. I wouldn’t personally do it in order to avoid pregnancy and childbirth.

[Coffeelotsofcoffee]

I have to agree with the above poster.
You obviously have your own reasons for not wishing to undergo pregnancy again, but I'd think very carefully , nothing is harder than parenting a traumatised child.

[onlytherain]

I think the child would probably have a good age difference to your birth child. I would start by reading up on everything adoption: the process, trauma, attachment, loss, etc. Creatingafamily.org has good resources on adoption in general and international adoption in particular.

I disagree that "nothing is harder than parenting a traumatised child". I have two and one is actually quite easy to parent. My other one currently has more challenges, but they are both doing well.

[Italiangreyhound]

My local authority was very interested in people adopting who are from any different ethnicity. So, your husband and you together may be very much ideal candidates to adopt a UK child who has Chinese or part-Chinese parentage.

We looked into adopting from China about a decade ago. The costs were high and the waiting list was long. I would have aged out by the time we got to the top of the list. So, we looked into UK domestic adoption and adopted from our local county council.

Good luck.

[Taishan]

Not dumped in orphanages at all.
Maybe 50 years ago, but girls are very wanted, loved and cared for.

[Daisybuttercup12345]

@Taishan

Not dumped in orphanages at all.
Maybe 50 years ago, but girls are very wanted, loved and cared for.

Very common in the 1990s

[Lunde]

@Daisybuttercup12345

Very common in the 1990s

There is growing evidence that many of the children adopted from China in the 1990s were not "dumped in orphanages" at all but were victims of an elaborate human trafficking scheme whereby traffickers or even government officials and orphanages colluded to seize or kidnap babies to be sold to orphanages who registered the children as "abandoned" and sold the children on to wealthy western adoptees. Some probably were abandoned, some were seized by state officials from families that owed fines or contravened the "one child" policy, others were just kidnapped. The $3000-5000 adoption donation made to the orphanage by western families, as part of the adoption process, meant that there was big money to be made by participants who split the proceeds. I have read reports that orphanages even sold children to each other to make money from international adoption. There have been quite a few people arrested, tried and imprisoned in China as part of this scandal.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2009-sep-20-fg-china-adopt20-story.html
https://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/07/kidnapped-and-sold-inside-the-dark-world-of-child-trafficking-in-china/278107/

In Sweden there is a government inquiry underway into
https://www.thelocal.se/20211028/sweden-launches-adoptions-inquiry-after-kidnapping-reports

I'm not sure how much international adoption China is actually allowing at the moment. But if you do go ahead, be wary. I know of 2 families that adopted "healthy" children from China but in both cases the medical certificates provided by the orphanage turned out not to be worth the paper they were written on. In both cases this was only discovered after the adoption was final and the families returned to Europe one child had Hep C and the other had a childhood cancer.