What cultural identity challenges do Chinese children face in US adoptions?

On 5 September, 2024, the Chinese foreign ministry announced that China would no longer be sending children abroad for adoption. This is partly due to the continued population decline and partly because of the country’s economic development, growing national strength and improved social security, as well as a growing awareness that international adoption is not the best solution to the orphan problem. The era of sending abandoned children to live in foreign lands has finally come to an end.

My observation of the international adoption issue started in 2018 when a report by Chinese-language Initium Media said that in 2004, there were approximately 46,000 international adoptions worldwide, with half of the adopting families from the US. By 2017, international adoptions from the US had dropped to just 4,714. Moreover, over the past half-century in which most fields have been redefined by “deep globalisation”, international adoption has become an option resisted by morality, law and public opinion. 

Besides Russia, Guatemala and South Korea, mainland China has been a significant source of international adoptions for Americans. A 2008 US media report said that from 1991, when China opened itself to international adoption, to 2008, Americans had adopted over 60,000 abandoned babies from China, with more than 90% being girls. 

Data from Initium Media covering 1999 to 2017 shows that the number of abandoned babies adopted from China peaked around 2005 at approximately 7,000 and had dropped to around 2,000 by 2017.

In recent years, international adoption of Chinese orphans by Americans has generally been viewed positively. People tend to believe that these orphans are fortunate to be adopted, as American adoptive parents are often seen as loving and may even learn Chinese themselves, encouraging their adopted children to visit their birth country or search for their birth families. 

On overseas Chinese websites, some anonymous commenters even mock Chinese orphans who return to their homeland to search for their roots, suggesting that they have “forgotten their adoptive parents’ kindness”.

From what I know, the Chinese government has implemented stringent requirements regarding the marriage and health status, annual income and other aspects of American adoptive parents, which helps protect the adopted children. Additionally, some American adoptive parents are indeed very kind. 

For example, in a family I know in the US, the husband was a Korean orphan adopted by Americans. Due to family circumstances, the three orphaned siblings in Korea were adopted together by an American couple to keep them united. This feat is no small accomplishment. 

During my doctoral studies in Albany, New York, my adviser asked me to help translate medical records for a friend who had adopted a Chinese girl. The records revealed the child was a carrier of the hepatitis B virus, and I translated this fact honestly. The couple knew about the child’s condition and did not mind at all. They even insisted on sending me a US$50 check to thank me for the translation, even though I declined any payment. I also know of another couple who adopted two Chinese girls, showing their great dedication to their children. 

Given this, why did the Initium report mention resistance and the significant decline in adoptions?

In my view, while there are indeed many loving American adoptive parents, they are often white middle-class individuals in a dominant and privileged position in American society. They may not fully consider the significant challenges that children of different races and skin colours face while growing up.

Social science research confirms that marginalised groups are often more sensitive to whether they are treated equally compared to dominant groups, which generally lack sensitivity to how others are treated. In reality, white people’s exclusionary attitudes towards non-whites are also very strong.

I have a personal example that illustrates the racial awareness of white children and the situation of adopted children. Due to our residential area, my son attended a predominantly white elementary school with very little racial diversity. Once, when I attended a parent-child event at his school, I heard white American children curiously asking if he was adopted.

At the time, my son was only in the second grade and seemed very confused and worried, and he began to question whether he was indeed “adopted”. Of course, I quickly denied it and explained that we were an Asian immigrant family living in this city and that he was my biological son. 

This incident made me realise that American children have a sense of “otherness” towards children with different hair and skin colour, and due to the prevalence of adoption, they may subconsciously think that if an Asian child appears in a predominantly white environment, they must be “adopted” by Americans. This also reflects the unequal power relations between the US and other regions — if a “foreign doll” appeared in a Chinese elementary school, would Chinese children assume the child was “adopted” by Chinese parents?

From my son’s momentary nervousness and helplessness, I could imagine how a truly adopted child might face repeated inner confusion and struggles due to curious peers questioning them in school or elsewhere. Questions like “Why am I different?”, “Who are my biological parents?” and ”Why didn’t they want me?” would arise.

The adopted child might speak English fluently, without an accent, and think they are no different from others, but their appearance will inevitably lead to them being singled out repeatedly and reminded of the fact that they are an adopted orphan.

This is indeed a cruel process, a void that cannot be filled by material conditions or even the adoptive parents’ love and dedication. 

Racial exclusion is widespread and subtle in the US, and certainly not as some Chinese scholars imagine — that “political correctness” and “cultural pluralism” have led to non-whites dominating the US while whites live in fear of original sin, i.e., historical guilt or wrongdoing. One might draw such a conclusion by focusing on a few powerful “leftist” elite universities, but a closer and more objective look at other social layers reveals a different picture. 

Even in the private university where I teach, which has a 200-year history, there have been numerous incidents of verbal abuse and attacks on Black students, as well as malicious slurs targeting African American students (as recently as September 2018, an incident of verbal humiliation of a Black student was reported, leading to a week-long student protest).

There have also been derogatory slogans against LGBTQ individuals, prompting the school to hold anti-“hatred” protests. It is evident that marginalised and vulnerable groups need to “protest” against the dominant, whereas the dominant have no need to “protest” against the marginalised. 

In China, it is widely known that Chinese families adopting abandoned babies generally try to conceal this fact and may even relocate to prevent the adopted child from ever knowing their origins, or at least delay exposure until a serious discussion can be held. Even then, it is difficult to avoid the psychological crises and constant thoughts of searching for biological parents that adopted children may experience. 

One issue with cross-racial adoption is that these challenges are unavoidable from the very beginning, forcing a seven- or eight-year-old child to face them and adjust themselves. In this sense, for American adoptive parents to bring their children back to China, or encourage them to explore their roots, is not an exceptional act of devotion or extraordinary nobility but a necessary step they must take given the circumstances that cannot be ignored. Otherwise, they would be unable to answer their children’s questions.

From what I know about American parents who adopt, there are generally two situations. One is adopting a child from abroad even though they already have their own children, and the other is adopting when they have no children of their own, which can further be divided into adopting American white children and adopting Chinese girls. 

Couples adopting American white children might face fewer issues due to similar physical characteristics and might not have to deal with the curiosity of other children. However, Chinese girls adopted may experience certain psychological challenges. Sometimes, when I see them, they exhibit a sense of familiarity but also more guardedness, making them less natural and open compared to ordinary white American girls at similar ages and in similar situations. I suspect they experience some confusion about their racial identity. 

As for the situation where one child is biological and the other is adopted, the adoptive child often has a more vulnerable mental state and seems more reserved in their behaviour, probably due to the double challenge of coming from a different racial background and being an adopted child.

The often-rosy picture painted by the media might have ignored the traumatic true experience of the adoptees themselves. In one of the comments made on a New York Times (NYT) article, an adoptee said, “I have never known what it feels like to belong and truly trust and connect with people. I can’t shake the feeling that something about me is terribly wrong…I told myself I used all my luck in life getting chosen by my adoptive parents.” 

Another adoptee echoed those sentiments: “Their [the adoptive parents’] ‘best’ didn’t compensate for the constant feeling of alienation combined with the pressure to fit in…and be a good daughter, full of gratitude for the ‘better life’ I was given…”

I believe that the prevalent image of “wonderful”, happy, and successful adopted daughters in the eyes of adoptive parents has concealed the enormous pressure of the children who feel they must “fit in” and be happy and grateful so “my adoptive parents would not regret their decision to adopt me,” as another adoptee said in the same comments thread. This pressure of constantly feeling and expressing gratitude, and proving one is a lucky yet worthy adoptee, is unfair and unhealthy for a child and adolescent. 

After reading my reflection on the international adoption of Chinese orphans in the NYT article, a Chinese American professor shared his experience with me, highlighting the conflicts within adoptive families and the psychological trauma faced by two adopted Chinese boys:

“One of my neighbours adopted four Chinese children, and each day, the children were pressured to express their gratitude, with the message that without the adoption, they would have suffered greatly in China. Among the four, the two boys expressed their reluctance to be thankful, stating that they did not want to come to the US at all. Later, one of the boys ended up in jail after the adoptive parents called the police, reporting that they had discovered him hiding a knife…It is true that the numerous challenges faced by these Chinese children since their arrival in the US have been largely overlooked.”

While I acknowledge that most adoptive parents are good and honest people, I want to highlight that the media often overlooks the true feelings of the children, focusing instead on the adoptive parents’ selfless “big love”.

Later, in my Modern East Asian History class, I met a Vietnamese boy who had been adopted by Americans. When he came to my office for a conversation, he told me that he grew up in a town that was almost entirely white and had faced a lot of unkind treatment due to his race and appearance. However, after going to college, he increasingly wanted to learn about his homeland and Asian culture. He hoped to one day return to Vietnam, even though it would be impossible to find any relatives. 

This conversation left me with the impression that he did not blame his adoptive parents. Indeed, they had sent him to this expensive private university, which was already quite remarkable. But no matter how good his adoptive parents were, they could not change the subtle or overt exclusion he faced in society, nor could they stop the growing inner questioning of “Who am I?” 

It was precisely this environment and experience that drove him to increasingly seek to reclaim his racial and ethnic identity — at least cognitively, to understand more about the society and culture from which he came. In fact, it was the continuous stimulation from the white community that awakened his desire to trace his roots, even though he had already naturally integrated into American society.

In another semester, during my Chinese modern history class, I encountered a Chinese girl adopted by Americans. She didn’t speak any Chinese at all. Later, I discovered that she had a very negative perception of China. For example, she insisted in her final independent research that China had severe gender discrimination, exploited female workers, and so on.

Some of her claims were supported by empirical evidence, but I suspected that her negative feelings were at least partially influenced by her experiences of abandonment and adoption. Her American adoptive parents might also have played a role in shaping her perception of China, for example, the perception that Chinese abandoned babies are victims of the one-child policy and gender discrimination.

However, just when I thought this girl was filled with resentment and rejection toward China, I found out that she was simultaneously learning Chinese from scratch at our school and had chosen “Chinese Studies” as her interdisciplinary minor. 

It is evident that despite all the negative perceptions she held about China, she still wanted to learn more about it and rebuild an emotional connection. This process was also part of her intellectual journey to find herself. 

In both of these cases, the adoptive parents treated the students well. But it’s easy to imagine the adopted children’s confusion when they realised their physical features differed from their parents’, or the impact when they encountered strange looks or direct questions at school or elsewhere. Thus, this identity crisis would always exist.

A report by Initium Media even mentioned that adopted children often experience suicidal tendencies after entering adolescence. Although I have seen few specific reports on this, it is at least understandable why a significant number of adopted Chinese children hope to return to China to search for their biological parents or at least to see the country. It is also understandable why transnational and transracial adoptions are now facing increasing resistance. 

After all, the challenges of self-identity, racial divide, child psychology, peer pressure and even relationships that arise during an adopted child’s growth and socialisation are likely unforeseen by adoptive parents. 

These issues cannot be solved simply by providing a comfortable living environment or having loving parents. What’s more, not all adoptive parents play their roles well, nor can they eliminate racial prejudice. Any slight disrespect they show toward their adopted child or the child’s country of origin can have a huge psychological impact on the vulnerable adopted child. 

Even the gymnast Megan Hurd, an adopted Chinese girl who became famous for winning a gymnastics gold medal for the US, couldn’t escape insensitive questions from the American media about her origins during interviews. 

In South Korea, another major source of international adoption by Americans, reflections on this model began long ago. In the 1970s, when South Korea’s economy was still underdeveloped, many poor families or single mothers voluntarily sent their children to American families, believing that they would have a better life in the US (unlike China, South Korea’s situation wasn’t influenced by a one-child policy).

However, various cases of Western adoptive parents enslaving, abusing and even killing their adopted Korean children led to societal reflection in Korea. Some Korean mothers, who had been forced to send their children abroad for adoption, deeply regretted their decision upon learning of their children’s fate. Non-governmental organisations began to strongly protest international adoption and criticised the government for profiting from it, urging the Korean government to pay attention to the welfare of adopted children in foreign countries.

International adoption solves one problem, but it also creates new ones. Of course, compared to growing up in an orphanage in their home country, being raised in an American middle-class family and enjoying the warmth of a normal home is a kind of fortune. However, we cannot ignore the psychological trauma caused by being abandoned in their home country and the pressures and challenges they face in a foreign environment.

I hope that there are more incentives in China to encourage its own middle-class families to adopt orphans, especially the ones with disabilities and special needs; and all Chinese adoptees who return to China to search for their roots will receive understanding and kindness, both from people in China and the overseas Chinese community. These children should not be blamed; instead, they should be understood and loved.

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