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.
Infanticide of newborn girls (if there were alreadys girls present in the family) was common prior to the 'one child' policy. So by preventing the international adoption of the unwanted, girl babies, how does that change the culture?
Becasue the one child policy brings the perversity of the practice out into the open. Not the practice itself, the perversity of it.
Did your baby drink its bottle heated to "coffee" temperature?
Ours did, and being totally ignorant, when she'd break out in a sweat, we'd check her temp and "OMG! a fever!", we'd give her Tylenol. After a day of that, we realized her temperature only rose after downing a 100 degree bottle.
So ignorant was I!
The Irish fleeing the Potato famine....Germans fleeing all sorts of political/religious upheaval in the 18th and 19th centuries.... The huge Italian immigration that started around the 1870s....
Whether it was a small persecuted group or a large wave, all immigrants to the U.S. can be said to have abandoned the problems of their country for a better life in the U.S.
We were quite helpless. It is amazing that she survived her first days with us.
Perhaps it is only right for adopted children to be allowed to search for their birth parents, and wrong for this to be disallowed Chinese children.
Doubtless China likes to have its population problem solved for it by transferring that problem to America.
And so once they export children, China won't want them back, however cruel that may be to the children and their birth parents.
Giving a home to a Chinese infant instead of an American infant is rather ironic: if a person's nephew or niece were orphaned or abandoned, would that person let his nephew or niece go to an asylum so that person could adopt a Chinese infant instead?
Probably not.
But America has become such an overpopulated country, that we no long see our countrymen--or neighbors as family--but as strangers, so we just do what's most convenient.
As Americans, we owe each other the care of our family members in times of hardship.
But in our overcrowded country, that concept has become an abstraction, easy to ignore.
Where is this great supply of American infants available for adoption?
Huh? Bringing the practice into the 'open' doesn't stop it. Giving the rural Chinese parents of unwanted, newborn girls the option of placing the babies in orphanages for foriegn adoption, helps alleviate the practice and saves the infants. Handwringing news articles relating infanticide doesn't save the babies...adoption does.
Abandoned children from China have little or no hope in EVER identifying any family member - EVER.
Our laws and asinine judges are the bulk blame for domestic adoption fears.
Any USA judge who knows little of a child's case can be petitioned by bio-parents to have a child removed from adoptive parents. And you know what? as I said before, adoptive parents have the equivalent legal recognition as that of a stray dog. The AP's then must spend tons of time and money just to regain custody in a situation that shouldn't have occurred in the first place. US courts have repeatedly proven they are hardly EVER sympathetic when adoptive parents vs. bio's, regardless of the length of time the child has spent with the AP's.
Perhaps the mother who was describing "diaper rash" just meant a rash, not that they actually used diapers.
There are plenty of older kids---past babyhood---in foster care in this country. Mostly black and Latino boys. And yes, families should help one another more. I can vouch for that one.
We disagree.
I don't know this personally, but in some cases, the option to abandon a child in China may exist, but I was informed by my Chinese guide it is a capital offense to do so. Some consider taking that risk is worth it knowing the child MIGHT have a chance of a better life. I'm among those who are certainly glad they did....
Whether it was a small persecuted group or a large wave, all immigrants to the U.S. can be said to have abandoned the problems of their country for a better life in the U.S.
And that has what to do with the conversation?
Prolly so. Mine and the other six babies in my group had chicken-pox...
We have a some-what spotted past....;-)
Your comment in post #162 that:
"When we take the pressure off a country by being the release valve, ie baby girls and China's one-child policy, or Mexico's economics and graft; we become unwitting supporters of the opressors.
By that standard almost of our ancestors came here as "unwitting supporters of the opressors." The only major exceptions would be Native Americans and those who ancestors came here as prisoners, slaves, or impressed labor.
"Precocious Maya recently told her mom she hasn't been doing a very good job at finding a husband."
Isn't that amazing? A little girl knows she NEEDS a Daddy!
Christ never ignores the blood of faithful martyrs. If China has any future at all, it will be because Christian values rule the land. Analyst describe China as a "soft" power. Nothing could be more gentle than the message of Christ, and His power over sin and death has no equal.
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