Posted on 02/22/2005 6:56:50 PM PST by qam1
More than anything, Linda Bigelow wanted to be a mom.
The traditional route -- romance, marriage, pregnancy -- would have been great, but she couldn't manage to grab hold of it.
She dated, "but I realized I wasn't really looking for a husband for me, I was looking for a father for my future children," she says. "I decided that wasn't a good reason to get married."
So at the age of 31, she decided to do motherhood -- solo.
On June 4, 2000, after reams of paperwork and several months of waiting, she and her mother, Jean, collected her new baby girl from an orphanage in Changzhou, in the Jiangsu province of China. She named her Jensen.
Three and a half years later, Jensen joined her mom and grandma on another trek to China. They came home to Grand Rapids as a foursome, having adopted 2-year-old Taryn.
The Bigelows' story isn't unique. Many single women are trying to adopt a child or two nowadays. And China is first on their list.
"China is popular with single women because it's a little less expensive (than other foreign adoptions), and they get to travel there with a group of families," said Mary Zoet, China program manager for Adoption Associates, an adoption agency based in Georgetown Township.
Plus, women want baby girls, Zoet said, and China has lots of them.
They look outside of the U.S. because adopting a baby here as a single mother is almost impossible, Zoet said. Her agency allows birth mothers to select families for their child "and they just never pick single women," she said.
In China, a country with a one-child policy, girls often are abandoned. Sons are favored because they carry on the family name and are responsible for taking care of their parents in old age. Ninety-five percent of the children in orphanages are girls.
"Since last year, the increase in China sign-ups has been huge," both for single people and married couples, Zoet said.
Restriction in place
Single women's attraction to China was so great that, starting in 2002, the China Center of Adoption Affairs put a cap on the number of babies the country would release to them. Only 8 percent of adoptions can go to single people. Married couples are welcome to apply immediately and could have a child within a year.
"China's idea of an ideal family situation for a child is two parents. With a single mom, that's not what a child is getting," Zoet said. "We may not agree, but we have to abide by it."
Because of the limits placed on single parents, a woman could wait as long as two years before she even can submit an application, said Linda Schripsema, program coordinator for China adoptions at Bethany Christian Services in Grand Rapids. Zoet has about 30 single women on a waiting list at Adoption Associates. Getting to the top could take a year. Then they'll spend another 11-plus months filling out forms and waiting for a picture of their baby to arrive in the mail. Because of the delays, some who picked China opt to pursue adoption through another country.
Guatemala, El Salvador and Russia also allow single parents to adopt, but Schripsema said none of the countries encourages it.
"It's difficult for a single mom to adopt in any country," she said.
International adoption by a single man is even tougher. Some countries prohibit it. Neither Adoption Associates nor Bethany accepts international adoption applications from single men. Bethany accepts applications from single men -- and women -- for domestic adoptions of older children, however.
Waiting list or not, Barbra Trowe was not going to be deterred from raising a second baby from China. She was among the 25 single women who adopted through Bethany's Grand Rapids office over the last two years. She brought Ava home to Grand Rapids in October. Ava's 5-year-old sister, Maya, was adopted in 2000.
"I'm just crazy in love with these Chinese girls," says Trowe, 46.
She was laid off from her marketing position at Alticor last year but was adamant about keeping the adoption on track. She's tuning up her resume again, now that she's adjusted to life as a single mom of two.
"Maya so needed a sister to love," she says. "It's a beautiful thing to watch them together."
Precocious Maya recently told her mom she hasn't been doing a very good job at finding a husband.
Maya, who's in kindergarten, felt the sting when one of her classmates told her she wasn't allowed to attend a father-daughter dance at school.
Jensen, also a kindergartener, has asked about a dad, too.
"I let her talk about it. I let her have her feelings. I try to keep it positive and tell her what we do have in our family," Bigelow says. "No child is raised in a perfect situation, but my girls are being raised very well, if I do say so myself."
Not time for dating
Bigelow doesn't foresee fitting dating into her schedule anytime soon.
Trowe has a different perspective.
"I really would love to be married. I would love for Ava and Maya to have a dad," Trowe said. "I tell my daughters if I were to get married, he would be the luckiest man on earth because he'd be their dad."
She isn't dating now but likely will join a dating service sometime soon. And when she does, she'll be looking for a husband as well as a father for her girls.
It's not that bad in the summer.
Although I'd have to be paid to take on Lake Superior up north.
"Please tell me that's a joke."
LOL! Please tell me you don't need me to tell you that it is.
This in Bush's 4th best county?
I know a woman who adopted a girl from Vietnam. She has been dumped by a number of boyfriends, and anyone who spends a lot of time with her would realize why. Now her daughter has to spend 18 years with her, which is something that nobody would do voluntarily. The daughter is still better off than growing up in Vietnam, of course, but she is going to need some psychiatric help when she grows up.
May I suggest something very politically incorrect? There are a certain class of people in this world who do no have the personalities to get married. Call these "category 2" single people. In an ideal world, these people also should not be having children. To repeat, however, the daughter is still better off here.
Of course, many single people do have the personalities for marriage but the right pairing hasn't come along. Call these "category 1" single people. I hope that when single people adopt, they are all "category 1", but making it acceptable means a lot of "category 2" people will be adopting as well. Breaking of stigmas has a cost.
I suppose, but the biological drive to have kids is pretty strong. Women's biology doesn't match with modern society, it seems. A woman is most fertile during her late teens and 20's, but many women find themselves in college, graduate school and in the early stages of their careers during those years. Hardly a time to be a mother.
Eventually, medical science will reach a point where womens' fertility will be extended into their 40's or later, thereby eliminating this problem.
One approach I've seen bandied about is impregnation by a male friend through artificial insemination. I know one woman who took that approach.
If you had read my post #40, you would learn that these children are not bought -- that most of the cost comes from putting together the paperwork and traveling to China.
Much of this debate is so unnecessary given that only 8% of Chinese international adoptions involve single parents.
I do not know about your travel group, but in ours, all fifteen families were married couples -- many with FR-approved "traditional" families of working fathers and stay-at-home mothers.
But the selfishness begins in China, where, because of the one-child-per-family policy, thousands upon thousands of little girls have been dumped like garbarge. Boys are cherished; girls are unwanted.
Whatever selfishness some of these women may have, it pales in comparison to the selfishness of a mother and father who would abandon their baby girl in hopes of one day having a baby boy. In the majority of cases, these women aren't depriving these children of a father, they're giving them the only parent they'll ever have.
Ahem!
You missed my point. Early on and throughout this thread, the derogatory remarks regarding this issue leaned towards these women being selfish, losers because they can't find husbands, etc. I have MANY single non-lesbian female friends who never quite found Mr. Right but would have loved to have children. And they'd be GREAT moms. Good support networks, good incomes, TONS of love to share. And maybe Chinese women carrying baby girls wouldn't be so quick to abort if they knew there was a loving home for these babies to go to.
I find it curious that some of the folks on this board immediately want to turn this into a BAD thing, when it is a BEAUTIFUL thing when we get down to it.
"The adoptive parents had best master the Chinese language, or else when the adopted children begin to speak, they won't know what the h*ll the kid is saying."
ROFL! Are you implying that a Chinese baby will only know to speak Chinese when they "begin to speak"? OMG, that is too funny! Trust me, any baby will be speaking the language of the adoptive parent if they are adopted before they learn to speak. And then even if they are adopted at a very young age, beyond the baby years, they will learn to speak the adoptive parents language very easily. gonna laugh all day at your post. Thanks for the morning giggles! :)
If we're talking about adopting Chinese babies, the supply is much greater than the demand, so your point is moot.
LOL! You are welcome.
It's funny how you're right, up to this point. Then you go completely off the rails.
I think you misunderstand the point I'm trying to make.
The biological reality is that women's fertility starts to drop off around the time they hit 30. Women are most fertile in their 20's. However, our society is structured in such a way so that a woman's 20's is when she is typically in college and grad school and embarking on a career.
Until science reaches the point where it can extend women's fertility into their 40's or so, there will always be a conflict for any woman who wants an education and a career but also eventually wants to have kids.
In other words, 92% of all applications are by two-parent families.
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