Why aren't you adopting from the US?
Wow. That's a long answer.
Short answer-Until the US legal system protects the adoptive parents as well as the birth parents we will not be participating. Actually, there aren't a lot of a kids available for adoption in this country. Plus the legal process to adopt them can be long and complicated--and in the end there are no guarantees that you will end up with a child. With China, we are pretty much guaranteed that we would be adopting once our application was accepted.
Long answer-Birth mothers can reclaim the child for 6 months from the date of adoption. How would you feel after spending 6 months loving your new child to give them back? To adopt an infant we would need to advertise ourselves to birth moms and wait to be picked. Recess all over again and no guarantee we would ever be chosen. Fraud-Some birth mothers use hopeful adoptive parents for monetary gain with no intentions of ever giving the baby up for adoption. Foster care in our state does have many children who are not free to be adopted. Just because they are in foster care doesn't make them orphans. Their parents still have rights and the state is supposed to be trying to reunite the family.
Up tp 2/3 of all adoption contracts with a birth mother are never fulfilled. The vast majority of the time the birth mother changes her mind before you take the baby home, often changing her mind in the last month or two of her pregnancy. In the mean time, you've invested money into the adoption proceedings, paid her medical and living expenses (depending on the state you live in) and have invested your heart into the child. Once the baby actually goes home with you, the percentage of birth mothers (or birth fathers, usually pressured by the baby's paternal grandparents) who reclaim the child is relatively small, less than 5% I believe. In fact, my reading pointed to birth fathers pressured by the baby's paternal grandparents as the number one reason for a birth parent reclaiming the baby after placement in the adoptive home, where as the birth mother deciding to raise the child herself due to pressures from her own parents and/or friends as the number one reason for breaking the adoption contract before the baby's birth.
I thought to make these questions more fun I'd copy some of the questions asked to other adoptive parents by real life people. Not always strangers but always strange questions.
I wish people would think before they opened their mouths. I think most people wouldn't say half of what they did if they thought first and spoke later. Seriously though a split second can be the difference between hurting someone deeply and phrasing a question in a more diplomatic or curiosity based way. I choose to believe most people just want to understand not be hurtful. If you have thought about saying any of these things, thanks for keeping them to yourself. Especially around my children.
"How much did she cost?" was "The children are free, but the shipping and handling will kill ya."
So you are making sure you will have a smart child...good for you!"
"You know if you keep pursuing this adoption...you'll probably get pregnant with a real baby..."
"I know she is going to be a baby...but will she be ABLE to speak English later?????"
"Do you get to pick out your baby?"
"I knew a couple who adopted from China and it only took 10 months". (implying that we must be doing something wrong if it is taking us so long)
"Will your child speak with a Chinese accent?" (asked AFTER asking how old the child would be and I said the average age was 12 months).
"There's a little adopted Chinese girl in my son's pre-school class and she's the smartest kid in the class"
"I visited China once. They are very smart, especially in math."
"Ohhh....you're adopting, I really admire you. That child will be so fortunate..."
My husband's grandmother asked (after knowing it was a China adoption) whether we would tell her she is adopted. Duh!!!
The two most common dumb comment we get are "how much does your baby cost?" or "why haven't you gotten her yet, the stars seem to be able to pick one up like they do a new handbag?"
"Why'd you adopt a communist?" I said, kids don't have ideologies. A friend told me I should have said: "Discipline. Capitalist kids are so unruly."
We were asked if our baby would be baptized over in China because we wouldn't want to baptize her twice.
I had a person ask me how much she would cost. This person could barely take care of themselves let alone their child.
When I was asked if I could pick out my own. I said. No, China stopped doing that, everyone wanted the same model and they could not make enough of them.
We are asked CONSTANTLY - "Are you still adopting?". I try to answer calmly and totally understand that no one means any harm. I joked with my husband about making a China-Adoption "materninty" shirt with the word BABY and an arrow pointing to an outline of China
Maybe that would clear it up for some people."Do you know who (or have you met) her real parents are?"
"Wow! {chuckle} She looks just like you. I mean you have the same nose." ~ I am Caucasian and my nose is - ehem- rather big
"She will probably have problems pronouncing her r's."
"Well, she is cute and one day you'll have one of your own."
Does she wear special clothes since she's not American?
Lots of "how much did she cost?" or "how terrible the way they throw away girls there"...and a few "God bless you for taking in this child," as if we were doing charity work instead of simply wanting to be parents. The worst? We were playing a board game with my family where you had to guess how people would answer a certain question. The question was, "What was the best purchase you ever made?" You can guess how my brother-in-law and sister thought we'd answer.
He said, "won't it be weird to have a baby that doesn't look like you?" He went on to say, "you know that have those operations where they can change people's eyes. I truly thought he meant that I could make my eyes look Asian. He meant that DD could have operation to make her eyes look more round.
"I don't know if I can accept a baby who isn't white. It really is a superior race. Bloodlines are the most important thing."
When ever some would ask me if my daughter spoke Chinese when I got her I always replied "fluently-- she came home at a year of age and I couldn't understand a word she said!"
On a recent visit home, we were in TJ Maxx and my mom became obsessed with this little Asian child in a shopping cart (we were in line and the child and her mom were ahead of us). My mom flirted and smiled and made fish lips and the baby was giggling. Then my mom said something like, "Did you come all the way from China, did you, did you? Did your mama and papa go get you from China?" - in major baby talk, so now the baby is laughing. The mom turned around (she was Asian) - she was smiling - and said, "Actually, we made her right here!" I was so embarassed, but I burst out laughing. My mom was mortified, but she learned a lesson, I think. She seems to be giving little Asian children a bit more personal space.
"Now that you are pregnant are you going to send her back to Korea?" Right in front of the child. " I am so glad she is not old enough to understand what you just said!"
"when are her eyes going to turn blue?"
"is that your daughter?"
Yes.
"Is she adopted?"
Yes.
"I got me two of those. One in Russia and one in Africa. 25 bucks a months each. (beaming idiot smile)".
(me, walking away as fast as possible - my daughter was with me and is FIVE)
she said that all adopted children have Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). I looked at her funny, and she said "No, it's true. Adopted kids' parents are all alcoholics -- they couldn't control themselves so they had sex all the time, and then had to give up their resulting children, and they grew up to have ADHD." Now what can you say to that?
"How will she understand you if she is chinese and you are an American you'll speak two different languages??" My response: "We're taking sign language classes and we'll teach her too as she gets older
Do you know that all the adopted children go back to their biological parents? All adopted children will be terrible in puberty. Do you know it will be difficult in the beginning? Do you know you have to tell your child he/she is adopted? Do you know that children in school will see that he/she is not the same colour as you are and maybe your child will be teased and get remarks about that in school?
The worst was from a relative who said right to my daughter (thankfully she was only a year old and had been home from China for only a couple of months) after DD had a cranky moment, "If you act like that, we'll send you back to China."
I actually had a guy at a party one time tell me that he thought adoption was China's way of populating the world in order to take over one day ! I kind of looked at him and laughed thinking he was joking . He then went on to say that he thought that most of the kids adopted from China had chips in their heads so China could keep track of them . I politely said "Like the humane society does " and suggested he take an extra dose of his medication.
I hope you get a cute one. What will you do if you get an ugly one?"
How does your husband feel about this? :
: "You have to know I grew up on a farm, so I can say this. Your daughter was bred to be smart. "
From a man in the grocery store: "Is she one of those bought babies?"
"Why China?" "Well, 1 out of every 4 children on earth is born in China. Our family is perfectly average by that standard."
I was asked if my baby will know how to use a spoon. I asked them if their 10 month old knew how to use a spoon. They looked at me like that was the most silly question I ever could have asked them. Uhmmmm ditto you moron
How will you love a child with slanty eyes?