It's a question every couple from a Western country who adopts a
child in China has to face: when to tell the youngster about the
place where they were born?
For inter-racial adoptions, the differences in physical
appearances are obvious.
China passed a law on adoption in 1992, when 206 orphans found
homes in the United States. Since then, US parents have adopted the
highest number of children from China. Last year the figure was
7,906, a record, and 95 percent of the adoptions were girls. That
brought the total to about 50,000 in the past 13 years, according
to US immigration statistics.
Now, with many of the earliest adoptees teenagers, experts are
keeping a close eye on their development.
Jay Rojewski, a professor at the University of Georgia in the
United States, conducted a major study on Chinese adoption five
years ago.
It resulted in the book, "Intercountry Adoption from China:
Examining Cultural Heritage and Other Post-adoption Issues," which
is considered one of the most authoritative in its field.
"The issue of race is not necessarily a problem or challenge for
families when children are young," Rojewski said. "Ways of
addressing racial and cultural differences between child and family
were a big part of our 2001 study.
"They may affect families more during adolescence when issues of
belonging and self-identity will become more important to the
adoptees.
"Research and information sharing will be important for families
during adolescence, given the fact that when Chinese adoption
dramatically increased, many adoptees are just now becoming
teenagers."
The efforts of various groups and organizations to ensure
children who are adopted from China are able to maintain some sort
of link to their home country is a striking factor of this
particular type of adoption.
"This sensitivity to culture for Chinese adoptees is different
from the experience of many Korean and Vietnamese adoptees in the
1960s and 1970s, when parents would try to eliminate culture
differences," Rojewski said.
"An interesting aspect of Chinese adoption is the efforts of
parents to maintain connections with other families who have also
adopted children from China.
"Play groups, annual festival celebrations, local and national
organizations all point to a very different experience for families
and adopted children from those earlier situations.
"Some people have likened this to a social movement of advocacy
and sensitivity to culture and race."
This sensitivity was seen 10 years ago.
Jane Liedtke had already lived in China for several years when
she returned to her home in Illinois with her newly adopted Chinese
daughter, Emily.
"When I moved back to the United States with her, I noticed a
lot of people at the time who had adopted children from China did
not necessarily have a connection with China," Liedtke said.
"Some people had lived in China and did have a cultural
connection with the country. But there were others who had never
even been outside the US, let alone to China. I was concerned at
how these children would be able to reconnect with their
culture."
She set up the Our Chinese Daughters Foundation, which offered
cultural camps at Illinois State University and featured a range of
activities such as Mandarin lessons and Chinese cooking
sessions.
The initiative not only allowed the youngsters to learn more
about their homeland, but also gave parents a chance to develop a
better understanding of a country many knew little about.
But when Liedtke decided to move back to China with her
daughter, the camps seemed doomed until she had the brainwave of
setting up the organization in China.
Since the foundation began in Beijing in 1998, hundreds of
families in the United States have taken part in visits aimed at
giving their children first-hand knowledge of and experience in the
country and culture where they were born.
"Kids need to come back at some stage to learn what it means to
be a Chinese person and get a sense of self," said Liedtke, who
lives in Beijing with Emily, now 13.
"One mother told us that the minute they got off the bus from
the airport, the first thing her daughter said was: 'Don't worry,
Mom, I'll make sure you don't get lost.'"
One of the biggest challenges for families is helping their
child understand why they may have been abandoned by their birth
parents.
Liedtke said that bringing them back to China to visit was a way
to help them come to terms with their situation.
"Parents have to explain to kids about the economic or social
situation in China, how some people can't just have as many kids as
they want, or that even if their parents had kept them, the
conditions they would have lived under might have been at the
poverty level," she said.
"A lot of parents take their children to the orphanage where
they came from, it shows them there was a place that cared for them
before.
"Some families will go to the place where their children were
found if they had been abandoned. Some leave a note where they were
abandoned to their birth parents, with a photograph of
themselves."
Liedtke said her organization carried out a lot of preparatory
work with the families and the children before they visited China
for the first time to help them cope. Issues covered included how
busy and crowded some places are, and the conditions they may find
when they return to their orphanage.
"The challenges that they face are the same faced by every
foreigner who comes here, but to them it can seem worse as they are
foreigners in their own homeland," Liedtke said.
Jean MacLeod, of Detroit, Michigan, who has two adopted
daughters from China, is among the hundreds of parents who have
returned to China for one of the foundation's culture-focused
travel programs.
"A China trip gives kids the context, the images, the experience
and the confidence to answer intrusive adoption questions, and to
feel ownership in a place that was only a name on a map before they
visited," MacLeod said.
"Re-discovering the country of their birth gave them back an
important piece of themselves."
(China Daily July 10, 2006)