I have been reading the posts on "Why China" with great interest. It seems that other bloggers post with lightning speed (okay compared to me a snail's pace is "lightning speed") so I haven't yet read all the posts in this series but from what I have read it seems that, as I expected, for the most part we chose the China IA program for all the same reasons.
Looking back now it seems strange to think that there was ever any decision to make. China was such an easy and natural choice for us and indeed deciding which Country was actually a much easier decision than choosing which agency to use.
For us there was no Red Thread leading us to China, there was no message from a God telling us to adopt a child from China and there was no motivation to "save" a child we simply wanted to be parents. After researching all the adoption routes available to us it was clear that China was right for us and thankfully we met their criteria to be allowed to adopt.
There were many reasons for our choice, one of the biggest ones being the stability and comparative predictability of the China program. It is a very organized, carefully monitored and well established system with an excellent reputation.
It was extremely important to us that we feel sure that our child
was genuinely available for adoption. After reading about why and how
some children in China come to be abandoned and how the IA program is administrated we felt confident that the IA program in China does not exacerbate or encourage child
abandonment and that for the children in the IA program the only alternative to IA is to remain in their SWI until they age out and have to leave.
As first time parents we had a strong desire to experience parenting an infant and, despite being as old as the hills of mature age, we still qualified to receive an infant referral from China, although of course we understood that there was no guarantee about age and we were fine with that.
Another attraction of China was that in general the health of children adopted from China is fairly good, most have some developmental delays due to institional living, as is only to be expected, but they usually catch up well. We realized that, just as with a biological child, there were no guarantees but we felt encouraged by what we had read and heard.
Like most people cost was a consideration for us and the China programm was considerably less expensive than adopting from some of the other countries we looked at.
At the time the wait from LID to referral was an attractively short 6 months but we were very aware that it could change at any time, which of course it did. We would have still chosen to adopt from China even if the wait had been the much longer 15 months it has currently reached. However, if it had been a 2 year wait (as it is sometimes rumored it may now reach) I'm not totally sure that we would have applied to China, as older first time parents who knew we wanted to adopt more than one child we definitely heard the "adoption clock" ticking loud and clear.
Another plus for us was that we were pleased to see how large, active and supportive the FCC community is, knowing that this meant our daughter would be able to grow up with peers who had a shared experience in common. No matter how much we might try to empathize with what it is like to be adopted from China and brought to the US by parents of another race we won't understand it in the way that someone else who has lived that experience can.
We both found the history and culture of China to be fascinating. Simon had been to China several times on business and had always enjoyed his time there. It was a culture we looked forward to learning more about and in turn teaching and exposing our daughter to. We knew it was a country that we would enjoy visiting as often as we could with our daughter, not just in order to let her see her country of birth, but because we wanted to visit and see more of this huge, beautiful, amazing, rapidly changing country.
Whilst we were researching China IA Simon was approached by his employer about relocating to Shanghai for 2 or 3 years (ooh red thread, red thread) which caused much excitement at our house for a while although sadly it came to nothing in the end (snap, red thread broken). We would still love to live in China at some point although I'm not sure that its very likely.
Our reasons for adopting from China are so obvious to us that I forget that for the majority of the rest of our society it is still a little puzzling and their understanding of it is confused by all the misinformation that swirls around IA from China. To be sure, someone with a little knowledge can certainly be a very annoying thing! "The Chinese throw their baby girls away./You can't adopt boys from China/You have to be very rich to adopt form China" and so on.
Additionally when I am asked "Why China" by people who have not adopted or are not considering adoption it usually comes after the question "Why don't you/didn't you adopt domestically and sometimes after "Why are you/did you adopt?" and in-fact my answer to "Why China?" is very much intertwined with my answers to these other questions.
However for this post I have tired to stick with only the specific reasons "Why China". Sometime I would like to blog the rest, when I have fully recovered from almost my first ever non fluff post!
Lastly, after all I have said about why China was perfect for us I know, with absolute certainty, that had we for any reason not qualified for the China program we would have gone on to adopt from another country or domestically. I know equally certainly that the child that came to be ours that way would also have been the "perfect child" for us, because, truth be known, the perfect child for us is ANY child we are priveliged enough to be allowed to parent. There is no legal IA program that is better than another and IA is not better than domestic. They are all just different and they are all wonderful, fabulous, life changing paths to parenthood.
Thanks for tagging me my new BFF and thanks to Johnny for starting this off. Next up Love made real
Previous posts in this chain are here
Johnny Omegamum Letters from the Zoo The singing bird Elsie elsewhere Chicagomama Sopapilla
Hope Springs Jiaozi Figlet Bionic Valentine Hao Bao Bao Mortimer's Mom Jazzie and Tahlia Ruby In Her Own Time
