The end of the Golden Age of Chinese Adoptions

FAMILY: "Behind the Drop in Chinese Adoptions: How new rules in Beijing are weeding out more U.S. parents," by Kayla Webley, Time, 15 June 2009.

Historically, when civilization/states lose wars or competitions, they end up exporting their women and babies in the form of trophy wives/war brides/prostitutes and adopted children. The Soviet bloc fell and voila! Long-legged Slavic babes--women, that is--figuratively marched westward into brothels and bars and bedrooms across the continent, breaking up marriages (allegedly) wherever they showed up.

Later, it got more prosaic, as the legendary "Polish plumber" ruined the working life of all sorts of West European laborers and the NBA was reborn with all sorts of white men who--if they couldn't jump--certainly knew how to pass and shoot.

I noted in PNM that virtually all of the top-ten exporters of real babies in the 1990s and early 2000s were all former socialist states, with China heading the list (and yes, China stopped being socialist a long time ago--despite holding onto to the "communist" label).

Well, the further we get away from that "loss," the more the adoption flows slow down. That's just natural in terms of recovery. Happened with Korea a long time ago. Happened with Vietnam eventually. Now it's happening big-time with rising China and that alone changes the entire global adoption market.

U.S. adoptions of Chinese babies peaked in 2005 (7,906), a year after Vonne and I adopted Vonne Mei. Since then it's fallen consistently to just under 4k last year.

Yes, China issued more stringent rules that barred single parents, couples over 50, the significantly obese and anybody who's taken anti-depressants in the last two years (a biggie because a lot of menopausal women ended hormone therapies recently and switched to anti-depressants as a substitute).

Oh, and if you're missing an eye, an eye-patch is no longer good enough. Gotta have a glass eye.

The length of time involved in adoptions has grown dramatically as well. When we hit the scene in late 2003, it was the perfect period in which recovery from the SARS slowdown was matched by China's efforts to speed up the bureaucratic process. So our dossier went over in December 03 and we were in China in August 04. Nobody is seeing that sort of speedy response anymore and it's unlikely ever to return.

But here's the big change: adoptions by Chinese themselves are increasing quite a bit. There's long been a strong cultural sense against adoption, but the one-child policy has changed that. You only get one child biologically, but you're free to adopt a second.

A second change: Chinese are beginning to reevaluate their age-old preference for boys (a very agricultural thing, because the strength difference matters). It's still 95% girls in the orphanages, but now the attitude among Chinese parents "toward having girls is changing dramatically," says one Colorado-based adoption agency head.

What drives this cultural change? In my mind it's urbanization. If you live in the rural country, you're still far more likely to want that boy. But once you move to the city, you quickly realize that it's the girls who grow up to take care of their parents better--not the boys.

This shift already happened in Korea. As with many such things, you see it in Korea first and then in China about a decade later.