Kay Ann Johnson is a professor of Asian Studies and Politics at Hampshire College. Yet when she adopted her daughter from a Chinese orphanage in 1991, she felt not only the anxiety of participating in what was then a new adoption program, but also a great desire to learn more about her daughter’s story, or at least the story of many girls like her. Why are children, especially girls, abandoned in China? What consequences—emotional and practical—do the birthparents face? Do most foundlings enter the orphanage system?
Johnson’s 2004 book, Wanting a Daughter, Needing a Son: Abandonment, Adoption and Orphanage Care in China attempts to answer these questions.
Many Americans make certain assumptions about abandoned girls in China:
–The Chinese value boys much more than girls
–Chinese people don’t adopt out of concern for “purity of bloodline”
–All abandoned children go to orphanages
–Chinese orphanages are horrible places which children are lucky to survive
–International adoption has been a windfall to the Chinese government because of the fees collected from American adoptive parents
Johnson, who points out that her previous work has not all been flattering to the Chinese government, nevertheless does not believe the sensationalized past reports of human rights groups which allege that children in are deliberately left to die. Johnson reported a surprising openness in the orphanage workers she spoke with.
Conditions were indeed bad at orphanages in the early 1990s. Johnson’s own daughter’s orphanage housed dozens of babies in a large, drafty room with no air conditioning in the sweltering summers and very little heat in the cold winters. The mortality rate was high, but Johnson witnessed many babies brought to the orphanage already very sick. Many had congenital conditions, and most suffered from exposure, malnutrition or dehydration.
Johnson has made several trips to orphanages over the past decade. Conditions in 1993 were much improved, with some orphanages having new and safer buildings which include space for play and a preschool. Others have washing machines, air conditioners and heaters, and toys. Nonprofit groups, a significant part of them adoptive families, have provided funds for women to be hired as “grandmothers” to give extra nurturing to one or two children, and for a foster care village where retired couples live with six children in apartments on the grounds of the orphanage. The children go to the orphanage preschool or local elementary school, then return to a more family-like setting in the afternoons and evenings.
Johnson points out that the fees paid by adoptive parents are a tiny portion of the Chinese economy and the charges that China is “exporting” children don’t realize the drop in the bucket such fees are to the Chinese economy. Nevertheless, these funds are very significant to the orphanages and the children who live there. The orphanages do keep a large percentage of the funds from international adoptions. There are inequalities in this system, however, in that larger, urban orphanages have more foreign adoptions and therefore receive an unequal share of these resources.
Part Two of this Blog will discuss domestic adoption within China. Johnson’s research in this area brought results she did not expect. Her work shatters several myths about domestic adoption and the desire for daughters in China.
Please see these related blogs:
China Adoption Book Review: The Lost Daughters of China