Are whites adopting Asian children guilty of, well, something?

Great Debates
21

When I was in university in Japan, a teacher told us that through the history of Japan, the culture had been that being an adoptive child was more fortunate than being non-adoptive - since usually the baby will have gone up a level in the social ladder and the laws all treated them as being of that class and parentage with no exceptions or qualifications. As such, adoptive kids generally turned out healthy, well-adjusted, and happy in life. Whereas, in the West, adoptive kids often end up angry and maladjusted and complain about not being with their real parents - because our culture isn’t positive towards the concept of adoptions.

So, really, the question is: Is it moral, in the West, to adopt?

22

One of my parents friends adopted a kid about the same time as I was popped out, 1961. Requirements of the US adoption agency required in addition to all the fees $10 000 in the bank and one bedroom per child in the family. Not sure what kind of agency they used, my dad and his friend are both dead, and I dont know the other family well enough to ask question. Apparently my dad was some sort of character reference.

23

That hasn’t been my experience, in terms of how our culture in general regards adoption.

Adoptive children have higher rates of problems, but AFAIK that is mostly if they are adopted as older children, with the attachment issues Dangerosa mentions, as well as higher rates of abuse and neglect that got them into the foster/adoption system in the first place. I am not aware of any hard data that children adopted as babies have significantly worse outcomes than any other kinds of family structures.

My experience is only in the United States - I have no idea what it is like in Japan or elsewhere.

One of the things we did when preparing for our adoptions was to discuss adoption as part of American culture, so we had to name someone who was adopted that we could use to discuss the subject if and when it came up with our child.

I picked Superman, but my son never asked.

Regards,
Shodan

24

Wow… he’s quite well-represented on Google… for being just the kind of weirdo crackpot you describe.

25

I don’t know if this is still true, although I don’t know why it wouldn’t be, but when I looked into it 25 years ago, a large percentage of available babies born in the US are available because their mothers are addicts, and the babies have fetal alcohol syndrome or the equivalent for other drugs.

Many would-be adoptive parents don’t want to take on this additional and often unknown burden.

Also, there aren’t untold numbers. The numbers are quite told, and it is not as many as the people who want babies to adopt – at least, healthy babies.

There are ‘untold’ numbers of older children who are in foster care though.

26

I can understand having qualms about international adoptions. In numerous instances, the adoptee has one or both parents who are alive and well and had no intention of giving up their child but the kid ends up in the adoption system for reasons that simply wouldn’t exist if human rights were globally enforced. Some Western adopters know this and justify their actions by convincing themselves that the child will enjoy a much better life with an upwardly mobile family in a Western nation than whatever shithole country they’re originally from.

But as far as assuming all white parents who adopt POC children only do so for sinister reasons, that’s a generalization I’m not too comfortable making. Are some of them self-centered racist pricks with a white saviour complex who want brownie points for adopting children of a different race? Absolutely. But unless you personally know every white couple who adopts Asian/black/whatever race children, you cannot assume by appearance alone that anything other than love was the intent behind adopting their kids. How many grown up transracial adoptees do you know? Talk to them about their parents and upbringing and see what they tell you before making what is quite frankly, a highly prejudiced assumption.

27

Family friends (in the UK) who adopted two children from China told me that the agency they dealt with would only allow them to adopt a girl for their first child, and strongly pushed them towards a girl for their second. The only boys that the agency offered were severely disabled, and there were very few of them.

Both kids were toddlers, and severely malnourished when they arrived, especially the second, who looked about 18 months old at the age of 3. They told me about the foster care she’d been living in in China- someone who was doing their utmost to care for the kids but had 6 children there, mostly toddlers, and had neither enough money nor time. For the first few months, feeding their newly adopted toddler was like feeding a squirrel in the park; she’d snatch food from your hands, run away, and hide, watching out for anyone who might take it off her.

Sure, adoption locally with a caring, capable family within the same culture would be the ideal, and yes, looking vaguely like your parents is easier. If that option is available, great, go for it, but it often isn’t. What then? Both those girls had been abandoned at birth. No one there was both willing and able to offer them a stable home.

28

I think in order to answer the question one would have to review the lives of other children in the pre-adoption conditions,and how their continuing lives compare to those of the adoptees.

I’m fairly well certain the adoptees will come out way ahead.

29

My wife and I adopted our youngest, soon to turn 17, when she was 13 months from China.

The op’s friend is completely clueless.

Chinese babies are no cuter or less cute than any other kids. My daughter, coming to us a bit malnourished with huge abscesses on her scalp such that my first fatherly act to her was to take a scalpel and drain them, was, I dare say, not at her cutest at that point in time.

We adopted our youngest because another pregnancy and postpartum period was out of the question for my wife for medical reasons that are immaterial here.

We adopted from China because we had no particular need for a baby to look like us. Getting a baby via domestic adoption sources that was not a child of high risk status (drug exposure in utero for example) was less easy to accomplish than adopting a child of not high risk status from China (at that time). Some adopt to do a wonderful thing for a child who is at high risk to have various challenges; we were not adopting for such selfless reasons. We wanted a healthy child if possible and felt that adopting from China was our best chance at that.

When adopting from China girls was what was generally available, other than boys with special needs of various sorts. The program was considered ethically clean. These were girls abandoned because of a perceived need that if only one child that child had to be a boy.

Let me be very clear. My daughter had been in an orphanage but she is not lucky to have been adopted by us. If not us another family would have been in the queue and she would have been fine. We are lucky to have her in our lives … although at some points during teen age years I have thought otherwise …
Short response. There is nothing to their thought. At all. It is an ignorant, an offensive, and frankly somewhat racist statement.

30

He is dead. And while I don’t know if he really deserves to go to hell for being such a bastard, he at least deserves a really, really long stretch in purgatory. Like, I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream style, to borrow from the recently-late Harlan Ellison.

He also looked like an evil version of Martin Sheen.

31

The central problem with this is lack of any evidence this is true. What particular knowledge or expertise do these people have to judge this? The fact that they happen to be of Chinese descent is surely irrelevant. If you’d started with actual evidence any ‘white’ adoptive parents seek out Asian children to adopt because they are ‘cute’ (-er than other children) there might be something to discuss though it would still be anecdotal. The statement of your friends should simply be rejected as bigotry albeit not a particularly virulent example as bigotry goes.

Problems of exploitation of internationally adopted children, either in the home country or sometimes by foreign adoptive parents, or problems with transracial adoption (not very plausible IMO on a net basis, that is v not being adopted, when it comes to Asian or Hispanic kids adopted by white parents, questionable even with kids of African descent if the alternative is not being adopted) are real topics but not what your friends said. They just made a stupid, baseless statement AFAIK.

People adopt internationally for the reasons that have been stated. Domestic foster kids’ parents have usually not given up parental rights and giving up babies for adoption outright has become generally socially stigmatized in US society. And if one is anywhere ready to see something wrong in white parents favoring white (Eastern European) adoptive children then it becomes outright ridiculous to try to also ring them up for racism if they adopt non-white children. With plenty of good reason for there to be international including transracial adoptions, there is no reason to accept the explanation of ‘they think they’re cuter’, even as a minor reason, without some actual evidence. Your friends’ statement is just gratuitous, stupid insulting of other people to address some feeling of inadequacy in oneself. People of all races can fall victim to that, as your friends apparently have.

32

I had a coworker a while back. She told me she wanted to adopt an Asian baby because they are cute. When I told her that kind of skeeved me out, she got a little defensive and tried to explain herself. I mean, if she had given any another reason, I wouldn’t have cared. But “they are soooo cute” is a pretty dumb reason.

It also skeeved me out because she wasn’t shy about talking about how racist and backwards her family was. It was hard for me not to think she wanted a minority child to show how racially progressive she was.

33

You’re right. And he lived to see Obama elected president.

34

Just curious if the Chinese American OP couple can even speak Chinese at a basic level, not even fluently? It’s ironic how many folks in the American melting pot can be so ethnically proud and dogmatic, yet would be unable to function if back in the “mother” country. Or to say it a different way, everyone is Irish on Saint Patrick’s day.

Two anecdotes. I was shopping at a Carrefour in Shanghai, and an American couple had just completed their adoption, were with the maybe ~18 month old, and eager to show off with someone that spoke English. I remember the toddler just looked completely discombobulated. The parents were simply over the moon happy and enthusiastic. They were an older couple…both prolly pushing 50. It was a little surreal given the toddler confusion and the parental joy. (I was with my own birth toddler at the time. And I flashbacked to the discombobulation when I brought my own twins to the US to live at 5.5 years old)

Second anecdote. I was on an “adoption” flight from Shanghai to SF. There were 25-30 couples that had gone to China to get their child. They made Disneyland look like a funeral they were so ecstatic to become parents and have their child and family. It was the happiest place on earth for that flight. No baby or toddler on that flight could have possibly dinted the enthusiasm shown. No kid could have cried loud enough, messed their diapers too much, tossed cookies all over their parents, spilled the dinner tray, anything, that could have dampened the downright eagerness of those adoptee parents to have their family. It was quite moving even to a jaded father of 3 and veteran of multiple trans-pacific flights from hell with my own kids. The kids were loved intensely from the beginning by parents that wanted them and eager to take on the parenting role no matter how distasteful the task.

Third anecdote. I know multiple families that adopted Chinese kids while stationed in China. It just felt like a natural fit for them as they lived and worked in China. Most were Caucasian with a first or second birth child, and added on to their families. I’ve known the kids as they have grown up, graduated high school and gone to college. They and their siblings look to me better for the experience and all well adjusted.

Fourth anecdote (I know I wrote only two above). An Australian backpacking couple found an infant girl abandoned on a village trail in Sichuan Province in the 1980’s. They took her to the village and by then had bonded. They spent about 2 months in China to adopt her. I stayed in that little town for a couple of days to help translate and negotiate. As I know, this young carefree see the world Aussie couple went home as a family and lived happily ever after (we lost touch after a couple of years of happy family Christmas cards).

I’d be happy to debate with the OP’s Chinese American couple in either English or Mandarin regarding their “cuteness” theory.

BTW, despite the moniker, I’m white trash American. That said, studied Mandarin in University, then lived in China, HK, Taiwan for 20+ years, fluent in Mandarin at a personal and business level, understand a fair amount of Shanghaiese, my erstwhile spouse is a Chinese national, and my 3 girls were all born in China, lived their for years, and have varying degress of fluency.

35

Like you I studied Mandarin at college, and was reasonably fluent when I was younger (very rusty now). In the early '90s, I dated an Chinese-American girl who spoke very little Chinese, and we had some funny experiences interacting with the locals in rural China. On numerous occasions, we had “triangular” conversations with a local. Remember I’m white but speak Chinese; she’s ethnically Chinese but does not speak the language. So I ask a Chinese guy (in Chinese) for directions. Chinese guy looks at me, puzzled: he understands the question, but can’t quite grasp what is happening here. Turns to my girlfriend and answers the question. She looks at me and shrugs. I continue talking to him in Chinese. He looks at me, puzzled. He turns to her to reply. Etc., etc.

36

For the record, I’ll see your story of a coworker who had some fantasy about adopting, with my experiences of being part of a community of dozens of families with children adopted from China and as pediatrician to dozens more. The number of white parents who have mentioned “cuteness” as a factor in how they came to the place of adopting a child from China is zero.

I highly doubt your coworker ever ended up adopting. One simply does not make that sort of commitment based on some very odd sense of some ethnic group looking cute.

37

I hope you aren’t misunderstanding me. I wasn’t trying to saying anything detractive about white couples who adopt Asian babies.

But the notion that some folks want Asian babies for bullshit reasons is not a made-up one. And it is also possible for people to want Asian babies for bullshit reasons while simultaneously expressing perfectly noble reasons.

My coworker (who was actually a fellow graduate student) did actually end up adopting due to fertility issues. But I don’t know what the child looks like since I haven’t kept in touch with her (she married a black guy, so I’m guessing there’s a high likelihood she adopted a non-white child).

Truth be told, she’s probably a terrific mother—or at least someone who is just as good as any mother you have come across. Just because she once said something tone-deaf doesn’t mean she is a bad person. It just means she has politically incorrect thoughts. Like 100% of everyone on this planet.

38

Bolding added to this otherwise great overview of facts. Not literally incorrect but it implies something not quite true. There are fewer kids from Asian countries or anywhere as sources internationally now, period. The numbers dropped way down maybe a decade ago or more, from China and from all over. China still leads but it is no longer virtually all girls, it is often more special needs kids, sometimes now quite complex special needs, a bit older than before on average, and a fraction of its peak volume.

39

We have had tons of posters on this board who have claimed, quite emphatically, that they believe people of Asian descent are intellectually superior and that people of African descent are statistically unlikely to be genetically capable of high intelligence. So I rather think that some people who adopt Asian babies do so because they want a baby, can’t get a white baby, and consider Asian the only other “acceptable” ethnic group. More subtly, the fact is that Asian is the non-white identity with the most positive baggage, so again, I could see a white person feeling like their child would have an easier life being Asian than being Black (or Hispanic)–and that they’d have fewer issues with their extended family. But I don’t think that’s anything like the majority of people who adopt Asian babies have those views, and I’d never impute those views to someone without clear evidence that they embraced them. But I would be really shocked if the community of people who adopted Asian children was entirely free of people that thought those ways.

I am sort of guilty of this myself: my husband and I used a sperm donor to conceive our son, and I insisted we only look at profiles of white donors. I didn’t want to have to go into a detailed discussion about the circumstances of his conception every time someone assumed he was adopted or one of us was a step-parent; I didn’t want adults and other kids asking him about his “real” dad before he was old enough to contextualize it. We’ve never kept it a secret: I started talking about using a donor with him as soon as we talked about sex and babies when he was in pre-school. If there had been a clear reason to chose a non-white donor, I would have, but it’s basically a crap session whatever you do, so it seemed as reasonable and likely to work out to pick random white genes as random genes in general.

40

We did an international adoption, but not Asian. I have never heard of anyone adopting an Asian child because of the cuteness factor. The adoption process is a long procedure and IMO, anyone that goes through it does it because of a strong desire to be a parent, love a child and provide a forever home. Everyone has their own reasons for choosing to adopt domestically or internationally. What I don’t understand though is people, and I hear this often, not because we adopted internationally, it just seems to be a general attitude, that wonder why an adoptive parent wouldn’t just adopt a kid from their own country. There are so many after all. Why is it up to the adoptive parents to do this? There’s no reason why or no law that says a parent of biological children can’t adopt other children.