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.
When the alternative is languishing in a Chinese orphanage? Absolutely. You're approaching this as if a single mom adopting a Chinese child prevents a married couple from adopting. That's not the case. The supply of orphan Chinese children is much higher than the demand.
STUDY after STUDY after STUDY tells you that girls, in particular, need a FATHER in their life.
Sure. Two parents is better than one parent, but one parent is better than no parents.
Doesn't it tell you something when a woman CAN'T find anyone who wants to marry her? NO ONE? I doubt that she'd make a "good mother" when what is STILL driving her is TOTAL SELFISHNESS
Again, what is better for one of these Chinese kids, living with a "selfish" American mom or spending their life in a Chinese orphanage followed by a life on the streets?
Just because these little girls aren't wanted by their biological mothers ... doesn't mean they aren't important and should automatically get screwed out of a Dad that SHE NEEDS in her life.
Again, the supply of Chinese kids is much greater than the demand. If you banned single women from adopting Chinese kids, that just means more Chinese kids will end up languishing in orphanages.
Heartless people. Adoption bigotry at it's worst with false scenarios to try and make it the ONLY choice.
What other alternatives are there? Being adopted by a single woman might not be ideal, but it's better than the alternatives.
Because after all, it's all about you!
Again, the supply of Chinese children is much greater than the demand. If you are a qualified couple, you will get a child.
Again there is NO shortage of eager NORMAL families and parents to adopt these children without resorting to selfish, single women who nobody wanted to marry.
Nope, that is simply not true. If it were, orphanages in China, Russia, Romania etc. would be empty.
If by "sugar daddy" you mean "pimp," sure.
That's fine, but that isn't reality. If there are more potential adopters than adoptees, then married couples should get priority. That's not the case- there are many more children in foreign orphanages than people willing to adopt them.
And to that note....why aren't more compassionate adults such as yourself and the individual in this article stepping up to the plate and adopting older children in China that have been abandoned not simply the "perfect" infants?
This woman saved a Chinese kid from a terrible life and yet you still critisize her for not doing enough. Until you adopt an older child, I think you should avoid throwing stones.
The moment mankind became too many to exist directly off nature by hunter gathering in a congenial climate, mankind became over populated.
And it hasn't gotten any less crowded since.
A below-replacement birth rate might be a good thing IF the borders were closed. With the borders open, a low birthrate results, not in population reduction, but simply population REPLACEMENT.
That's a strange definition. There is nothing "unnatural" about humans farming. As the old saying goes, Hoover Dam is just as natural as a beaver dam.
Would you rather go hunting and fishing--or walk behind a plow all day?
I'd like to have both options, if I was a bronze-age man. Farmers can still hunt and fish, if need be. Hunter-gatherers are SOL if their supply of game dries up.
Well yes, that's what I'm saying: we don't have the problem of a mushrooming birthrate.
But the only reason we have a problem with mushrooming population growth is from immigration of ALL kinds.
Perhaps if this country were a nicer place to live with plenty of room and fresh air for its citizens instead of being shut into densely populated cities, people might feel more normal and start to have babies again.
But if people continue to live apart from nature, you can expect them to think unnatural thoughts and to do unnatural things, like not have babies.
But if people continue to live apart from nature, you can expect them to think unnatural thoughts and to do unnatural things, like not have babies.
All too true.
Doubtfull that all forms of sustenance would leave an area unless that area became overpoplated or a comet struck it.
But in the past--when there was plenty of abundant hunting grounds to be had for free--if the game left a certain area, people just picked up and moved over the next hill.
But when your crops don't get rained on or the locusts eat them, you starve.
Unless you go over the next hill and kill the people already living there for their farmland--or if they starve, they come over the hill to kill you to take your land.
Thus was war born: episodic shortages of resources and no empty land to move to would drive people insane enough to call each other sub humans, and then murder members of their own species--of their own human family--in the name of war.
So I suppose the definition of overpopulation is when people fight because they are trapped by having no place to run.
You have no knowledge of my family situation. I don't reveal a lot of details here for all you "compassionate" types to make snide comments about.
Suffice it to say, I'm sure I've adopted a lot more kids than you have. And your attacks on single women that have also adopted children are narrow minded, short sighted and pathetic.
You might want to change that screen name. It really doesn't fit you.
No, I've lost track. I'm a bit distracted these days....for all the right reasons. :^)
As several people (including myself) have posted, married couples who meet China's medical, financial, and personal requirements are guaranteed a child.
As others have posted, the number of single people who can adopt a child from China is dependent on the number of married people because only 8% of the dossiers sent by an approved agency can be single people.
In other more adoptions from China by single people means that more married couples are adopting children from China; and not than some married couple is being prevented from adopting a child.
Good luck to you. The only objection I have is how much corruption is connected with adoption in some countries. It amounts to baby-selling, and the money doesn't go where it is needed but to officials who then live in luxury, and the money also functions to procure babies from poor women. Try to pick a country where the corruption is low. God bless.
Thank you. We have pretty much decided on Russia. We also seriously thought about Korea.
That's a real hoot, coming from you.
In addition to your incredibly mean statements about women that haven't married, you seem intent on remaining ignorant of issues regarding Chinese adoption. Since there are other folks out there that might actually want to be informed, I'll address a couple of your points for them:
"It's no wonder that MANY kids are soo screwed up and you want to repeat the scenario with adopted kids who already have a few strikes against them. What child wants to face the fact that NO ONE, in her/his family wanted them?"
The idea that a child wasn't wanted by anyone in their birth family is not correct. Not everyone can raise a child that's been born to them, no matter how much they want to do so....especially in China with the one child policy that's been in place for so long. Many of these girls would have been raised by their families if that didn't exist. Instead, parents have been tortured, forcibly sterilized, their homes demolished, they've been fined enormous amounts of money, and any of their children born without a permit have no rights to an education, among other things. In one case, a child born outside the birth quota was drowned in a rice paddy (in front of his parents) by local birth control officials. Living safely in the US, it's hard to imagine living under such a brutal system.
" It will be housed away in daycare ... because she "has to work" and she really is ABOVE that stuff ... so what have you gained? NOTHING."
The idea that being sent to daycare in the US is somehow equivalent to living in a third world orphanage is ludicrous. Mortality rates of Chinese orphanages in the 90's were regularly estimated to be at least 80%. See The Dying Rooms for more detail about this.
"I know, lets look down on kids who are unwanted and give them out to whoever wants them. "
Anyone applying to adopt has to undergo rigorous interviews with social workers. You're fingerprinted and checked by the FBI and Interpol. Not just anyone can adopt.
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