Adopting In China

With more than 4 million Chinese baby girls in orphanages, the number of Americans adopting these orphans is steadily increasing, and this resource for people interested in doing so outlines what to do, where to go, who to see, and how much it costs. Simplifying important information about procedures, forms, and agencies, the guide is also the personal story of one middle-aged couple's quest to become parents--as well as why and how they made the decision and what went on before, during, and after their trip to China.

Adopting a child can be one of life's most rewarding experiences. Unfortunately, complex policies, legal risks, and fewer available children can make a domestic adoption difficult. International adoption offers a solution to parents yearning for a child of their own. American parents are now adopting over 6,000 children a year from China and Korea. John Maclean's The Chinese Adoption Handbook is a comprehensive guide to adopting a child from China and Korea. From pitfalls to practical advice, the rewards to the risks, The Chinese Adoption Handbook leads parents through the international maze, including: How the international adoption process works. How to start the process. What you need to know before traveling to China or Korea. Making the most out of your trip-the inside scoop on customs, hotels, and shopping. The children's homes, the U.S. Consulate visit, and the questions that need to be asked. Medical issues, special adoption doctors, and travel requirements. Post-adoption procedures and much, much more. Practical, accurate, and written with a father's sense of humor, The Chinese Adoption Handbook is the most comprehensive and up-to-date guide to adoption from China and Korea.

With more than 4 million Chinese baby girls in orphanages, the number of Americans adopting these orphans is steadily increasing, and this resource for people interested in doing so outlines what to do, where to go, who to see, and how much it costs. Simplifying important information about procedures, forms, and agencies, the guide is also the p...

As Tara's life story led her to begin the process of adopting a child from China, she had no idea of the cost or how adoption worked in the United States, much less in China. Adopting internationally can be a daunting process for anyone, but especially for a single mother. In a guide tailored for any parent either considering or currently moving through the process of international adoption, Smith shares valuable insight and practical tools that will help anyone navigate through this major life decision that includes filling out complex paperwork, choosing an agency, financing the process, traveling to a foreign land, preparing the home, and adjusting to a new normal once the child arrives. Throughout her presentation, Smith offers a glimpse into her own experiences as she moved through each challenge to finally attain the joy of meeting her daughter for the first time.

In the thirty-five years since China instituted its One-Child Policy, 120,000 children—mostly girls—have left China through international adoption, including 85,000 to the United States. It’s generally assumed that this diaspora is the result of China’s approach to population control, but there is also the underlying belief that the majority of adoptees are daughters because the One-Child Policy often collides with the traditional preference for a son. While there is some truth to this, it does not tell the full story—a story with deep personal resonance to Kay Ann Johnson, a China scholar and mother to an adopted Chinese daughter. Johnson spent years talking with the Chinese parents driven to relinquish their daughters during the brutal birth-planning campaigns of the 1990s and early 2000s, and, with China’s Hidden Children, she paints a startlingly different picture. The decision to give up a daughter, she shows, is not a facile one, but one almost always fraught with grief and dictated by fear. Were it not for the constant threat of punishment for breaching the country’s stringent birth-planning policies, most Chinese parents would have raised their daughters despite the cultural preference for sons. With clear understanding and compassion for the families, Johnson describes their desperate efforts to conceal the birth of second or third daughters from the authorities. As the Chinese government cracked down on those caught concealing an out-of-plan child, strategies for surrendering children changed—from arranging adoptions or sending them to live with rural family to secret placement at carefully chosen doorsteps and, finally, abandonment in public places. In the twenty-first century, China’s so-called abandoned children have increasingly become “stolen” children, as declining fertility rates have left the dwindling number of children available for adoption more vulnerable to child trafficking. In addition, government seizures of locally—but illegally—adopted children and children hidden within their birth families mean that even legal adopters have unknowingly adopted children taken from parents and sent to orphanages. The image of the “unwanted daughter” remains commonplace in Western conceptions of China. With China’s Hidden Children, Johnson reveals the complex web of love, secrecy, and pain woven in the coerced decision to give one’s child up for adoption and the profound negative impact China’s birth-planning campaigns have on Chinese families.

Both a resource guide for people interested in adopting a Chinese baby and the personal story of a middle-aged couple's quest to become parents.

A frank and engaging memoir, Following the Red Thread is a mother's full answer to her daughter's childhood question: 'why did you adopt me?' Making sense of her early experiences as both the preparation and her motivation to adopt, Kerr draws on the Chinese concept of the red thread to detail her long march towards China and the adoption of her much loved daughter. Along the way, she encounters many different 'Chinas' and comes to love the infinite variety that is the People's Republic on the cusp of the third millennium. Kerr's deep desire to adopt is intertwined with her journey back to faith. From an outright rejection of Christianity in her teens, she rediscovers her faith and realises a childhood promise to serve God overseas. Ultimately, in seeking out her daughter, she finds herself.

Stories of children adopted from China due to the rigorous once child policy. Organised by the intrinsic logic of experience, these recollections from families of adoptive Chinese children are moving, timely and powerful.