so any birthparents who want to search for a child once they are over five (assuming they were abandoned at birth) can do so without consequence.

also, i’ve heard many times (not sure if it’s true) that there are never arrests for abandoning a child. while people do it secretively and are therefore seldom caught, another motivator for the secrecy is often a feeling of shame and therefore a desire to keep secret from families/friends/neighbors.

Also, on my DD’s SWI yahoo group last month, a family did find a birth family totally by accident. They visited their DD’s finding location in a small village not far from the SWI. A neighbor recognized their DD and soon located the family. With no preparation on anyone’s part, there was an awkward reunion. They are keeping in touch occasionally by mail. Their DD is only 11 and not at all sure what to make of all this.

I am very glad to think that my girls might well have some of the blanks in their personal history filled in. They deserve it.

And thanks, RQ, for your observation that some a-parents can be supportive. I don’t want them to go through this process totally alone. They’ve already been abandoned once. Twice seems inhumanly cruel.

As the Chinese adoption community matures, I think that it will increasingly expand to recognize the formerly silent part of the adoption triad — the Chinese birth parents. How amazing and interesting that inclusion will be.

She contacted me first – through the orphanage where she had relinquished me – in relation to RQ’s post I wanted to say that the orphanage told me after that it would have been near impossible for me to search for her given the small amount of information they had. It took them about a week to find me for her. And the state I was adopted in had just changed the law to allow that type of thing two years before that.

LL

And that is for people from the same society, the same culture, who may live in the same city, or only a few hours from each other.”

From Rq commet above.. I couldn’t agree with this more and from someone who met her birthmom 20 years ago and has limited contact with…there was no “connection” or “filled a need”. I’m sure there are way more unsuccessful reunions then those that the medial loves to portray, but the “realistic reunions” don’t get ratings.

She said there is a honeymoon period, everyone is on a high, their can be some abandonment of adoptive parents at first.
Questions are answered, everyone is in a total love fest. However, reality settles in, and expectations and sometimes demands are much greater than reality. In most cases, people go back to the ‘usual’ lives, and contacts are either sporadic or cease. However, there are success stories where familes make it work.

And that is for people from the same society, the same culture, who may live in the same city, or only a few hours from each other.

Add the language barrier, cultural differences, and the fact that it takes days to travel to visit the other… and a long term relationship becomes just that much more difficult.

Any relationship takes a lot of work on both sides, and in a “reunion” type relationship like this, you also have to deal with possible unreasonable expectations that one or both sides may have – even within the same culture. But add cultural differences and it gets that much worse.

I’ve read some really painful stories of birthparent reunions gone really really bad.

Oh, and moonwater, I’ve seen some say that the a-parent can’t be involved any at all, but I’ve also seen some situations where the a-parent is there in the background and they were a big help to their child emotionally. I think it depends on the relationship between child and parent – if the parent has created a situation where there are no loyalty concerns, so the grown child doesn’t feel they are breaching loyalty to the a-parent by searching for their b-parents, then I think it can be helpful for the child to have the a-parents there as a support system when needed.

Our adoptions are legal, full and valid. I already checked this out in my state. They said that our adoptions are binding legally with China, the state you live, and the federal government. We spoke with a lawyer who deals with adoption corruptions and represents biological families. He said, compared to many other countries, China has an adoption system that is very well regulated, and when there has been corruption, the government has acted on it.

But more realistically, listening to these adult adoptees, you could see the enormous painful complexity of trying to come to terms with being an adult member of a culture whose language you don’t speak and whose customs you don’t understand. (I think it’s more difficult in Korea b/c of its tight-knit family structure where adoption is simply not accepted, but it may be just as difficult in China later for our children.) This is not FB.

Many adult Korean adoptees marry Koreans or other Korean adoptees b/c of a certain “comfort” level or a desire to stay closer to birth country identity. When I asked about who will Chinese adoptees marry, given the gender imbalance among adoptees, the speaker said, “Oh, don’t worry. Many many Chinese would love to marry your girls.”

Somehow this also made me feel a little strange. I don’t know if I can see my strong-willed first DD living in a Confuscian society.

So for now, I just try to “drop pebbles” about my DD’s birth parents, keep up conversations about them on a regular basis: what would they be doing? how they would be so proud of them, etc. My DDs need to know that they are real people.

I haven’t yet introduced the concept of real siblings but I know I need to. Not all relationships with “found” siblings are going to be simple, either.

Most of all, these adult adoptees stressed how birth parent searches had to be done by the adoptees alone. They have to be free to make all the decisions. This makes me a little sad. I want to support my children, but I can see that this is going to take a great deal of strength on their parts.