Tag Archives: Red Thread Broken

National Adoptee Awareness Month (Formerly National Adoption Month)

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In 1976, Gov. Dukakis of Massachusetts designated the first week of November as Adoption Week, an effort to increase adoptions from foster care. In 1984, President Ford proclaimed Adoption Week a national event. In 1998, President Clinton declared November as “National Adoption Month.”

The month has thus had many iterations, as have attitudes about it. More recently, the month has been recast as National Adoptee Awareness Month, by Grace Newton (a Chinese adoptee) writing here in Red Thread Broken, by Shane Bouel, an adoptee writing on Medium “Taking Back National Adoptee Awareness Month, and via Astrid Castro, a Colombian adoptee and founder of Adoption Mosaic, speaking on Instagram.

Last November, The Rumpus devoted its November issue to adoptee-focused essays to reclaim National Adoptee Awareness Month.

While those examples are current, this effort to reframe the month has been going on for at least ten years.

In 2014, Korean adoptee Rosita Gonzalez of Lost Daughters created a #flipthescript campaign on Twitter. That campaign generated a significant video in 2014, “Adoptees ‘Flip the Script’ on National Adoption Month,” via (and including) Angela Tucker of The Adopted Life. Full disclosure: I know, love, and admire many of the speakers.

U.S. adoptee Laura Barcella wrote about the video and the efforts to reframe National Adoption Month in the New York Times: “Adoptees Like Me ‘Flip the Script’ on the Pro-Adoption Narrative.”

Be sure also to check out this resource: “Flip the Script: Adult Adoptee Anthology (The AN-YA Project,” described on Amazon as “a dynamic artistic exploration of adoptee expression and experience. This anthology offers readers a diverse compilation of literature and artistry from a global community of adoptees. From playwrights to poets, filmmakers to photographers, essay writers to lyricists —all have joined together inside these pages to enlighten and educate.”

This month, if you are reading and learning about adoption, be sure to see who is speaking: is it an adoptee? Or is it an adoptive parent or adoption agency? Focus on learning from adult adoptees first.

More Insights On China’s Decision to End Adoption: Red Thread Broken’s Grace Newton, and The New Yorker

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Take a look at Reflections on the End of 32 Years of Chinese International Adoption From a 30 Year Old Chinese Adoptee, by Grace Newton, the writer of the highly regarded Red Thread Broken blog. Grace is a Ph.D. student and a co-author of the groundbreaking Adoptee Consciousness Model.

In her blog post, Grace reflects on China’s history around international adoption as well as her own. She cites other Chinese adoptees, including  Grace Gerloff‘s interview with Minnesota Public Radio. Overall, Newton reflects on the far-ranging ramifications of China’s decision, in terms of adoptees locating their birth families, adoptees who had hoped to adopt from China, the random nature of adoption, and more.

Here’s one excerpt:

“A question that I have grappled with throughout my participation at adoptee conferences and spaces is more than just recognizing and responding to the inherent traumas in adoption, how do we instill pride in a community that wants to become extinct? What does joy and what does liberation look like for such a community? Of course, this doesn’t describe every adoptee’s perspective, but as stated by Hannah Johns, a Chinese adoptee and social worker in New York, “the blunt reality is that there will be fewer families in existence like mine. And none will likely be created the way mine was ever again.” The news of China ending their international adoption program creates a sense of finality to the idea that we, Chinese adoptees, will go extinct. As families that are created through international adoption become rarer, they should absolutely be accepted and de-stigmatized as a less legitimate type of family; however I don’t believe that adoption should be normalized in the ways it has been again.”

Newton is also quoted in a New Yorker article, The End of Adoptions From China.

The article is written by Barbara Demick, a Los Angeles Times China bureau chief and author of Daughters of the Bamboo Grove: From China to America, a True Story of Abduction, Adoption, and Separated Twins.

Demick writes in The New Yorker about the complex history of adoption in China, noting “the legacy of the one-child policy will be long-lasting. Demographers believe that it will be difficult for China to boost its birth rate, in part because there are now too few women of childbearing age, the result of more than thirty-five years of abandonments and abortions. But the Chinese government is trying. Some localities have recently announced subsidies of up to four thousand dollars for families having a second or third child. Women have been given incentives like water bottles and rice cookers to attend pro-family lectures. The same government officers who once terrorized families are now tasked with promoting more births.”

As others in the adoption community have said, the range of responses to China’s decision needs to be discerned and honored. Adoptees are not a monolith, and nor are birth parents or adoptive parents. One certainty is, though, that international adoption is changing dramatically around the globe. Both so-called “sending” and “receiving” countries are no doubt watching the developments and responses closely, especially as allegations of role of money, commodification, and fraud continue to emerge.

Adoptee Responses and Events Around China’s Decision to End International Adoption

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China recently announced an end to the placement of its children for international adoption, after some 30 years of doing so. There have been a wide variety of responses about the decision. As you look for more information, be sure to look first for the voices of the experts: Chinese adoptees.

As is often the case, media information about adoption often promotes the voices of adoptive parents and adoption agencies first, and sometimes exclusively. Adult adoptees are often invisible in media stories about adoption; this needs to change.

There are plenty of adult adoptees available to share their insights, experiences, and expertise. We adoptive parents and others in the adoption community need to promote their voices whenever possible, including in the media.

The Nanchang Project, among the very first to share news of China’s decision, is “the only search organization focused on reconnecting international Chinese adoptees with their birth families that is also co-led by both adoptees and adoptive parents.” They are moving, as is true for similar organizations, to being entirely adoptee-led.

From their recent blog post “End of an Era: China’s International Adoption Program”: “This sudden announcement prompted a range of emotions rippling through our community of Chinese adoptees, adoptive families, and prospective adoptive parents. At Nanchang Project, it is our profound hope that the remaining children in China receive the attention, medical care, and love they deserve. As for our fellow adoptees interested in their origins, we do not know how or if this will impact orphanage visits or appointments to check original adoption files.”

The blog post includes comments by some 30 Chinese adoptees in reaction to China’s decision. They express a wide variety of perspectives, a wide range of emotions.

Navigating_Adoption is the site of two Chinese adoptees, sharing stories and providing advocacy and awareness. From their Instagram post: “We want to continue to take time and space for those who are grieving and processing everything. We understand that people have different emotions about this, and it’s okay. We are here for our Chinese Adoptee community and our adoption community.”

On September 17, Navigating_Adoption is hosting “an adoptee-led, adoptee-only discussion on China’s recent end to International Adoption. This event is open to all adoptees, not just those of Chinese descent. We ask that adoptive parents do not attend this event so that we may create a safe space for adoptees to talk about their emotions during this time.”

WHEN: Tuesday, September 17, 2024 at 6:30 pm EST
WHERE: This discussion group will take place on Zoom
HOW: You can register for this event via their Instagram page.

Asian Adoptees of Canada posted this on their Instagram page: “In light of the recent news of China ending its international adoption program, Asian Adoptees of Canada would like to hold space for adult adoptees of any background to be in community during this time. We invite you to join our upcoming Open Dialogue event to connect, share, and/or listen,” on September 19.

*Event Details*
Date: Thursday, September 19, 2024
Time: 4:00 pm PST / 5:00 pm MST / 7:00 pm EST
Location: Zoom Meeting
Attendees: Adult adoptees of any background 
To RSVP, email: president@asianadoptees.ca
Deadline to RSVP: Wednesday, September 18, 2024″

Patrick Armstrong, @PatrickintheWorld, is a Korean adoptee, podcaster, and speaker who posted on Instagram about China’s closing here. Listen to his thoughts, and be sure to read the comments, many from Chinese adoptees.

Patrick’s post included this helpful list:

“Here are some Chinese adoptees, orgs, and others that I’ve learned a lot from 🫶🏼

@nanchangproject
@chineseadopteealliance
@adopteesborninchinapodcast
@redthreadbroken
@lindsgeier
@adopteelilly
@kiraomans
@endlesswanderer
@lee_uhh
@adopteesofchina
@cosetteeisenhauer“

While I haven’t seen anything from her yet about China’s closing, Grace Newton, MSW, a Chinese adoptee and Ph.D. student, writes a highly regarded blog called Red Thread Broken. She was recently featured on the wonderful podcast AdopteesOn.

China’s Children International “empowers Chinese adoptees from all over the world by providing an inclusive and supportive community for all of us who share this common beginning.” They have an Instagram post titled “The End of Intercountry Adoption from China.”

Grace Yung Foster, a Korean adoptee and founder of the Inclusion Initiative, notes that “transnational/intercountry adoption is more complicated than it appears at face value. And regardless of China’s economic motives, it’s important to look at how transnational adoption impacts the people at the very center of it, the Adoptees.” See the rest of her post here: “An (Adoptee’s) Perspective on China’s Newest Adoption Policy.“

If you’re not following the Harlow’s Monkey, you should. JaeRan Kim, Ph.D., an associate professor at University of Washington-Tacoma and a Korean adoptee, began writing the blog in 2006. Her most recent post is “Reflection—it’s the end of the (transnational adoption) world as we know it.” In the post, JaeRan discusses both China’s decision to end intercountry adoptions and South Korea’s repot from their Truth and Reconciliation Commission about corruption in the Korean adoption system.

CCAI, an adoption agency founded by two Chinese immigrants, Joshua Zhong and Lily Nie, has placed over 13,000 Chinese children in adoptive homes. It is the largest adoption agency placing Chinese children, though it now has programs in other countries as well. Several dozen families have received invitations to travel to China to meet the child with whom they’ve been matched, though it looks like those meetings will not happen. CCAI and the National Council for Adoption are urging Congress to have the State Department get clarification on waiting/matched families to adopt from China. Read CCAI’s blog post here.

Holt International, an Oregon-based adoption agency, has placed some 7,700 Chinese children with U.S. families. In their announcement about China’s closing, they offer support services to adoptees and families.

Many adoption agencies have posted about China’s announcement. The ones I have seen are largely about families who had been waiting to adopt children from China, some for years. If you read those articles, you’ll note that there are frequently no adult adoptees included to provide their perspectives, This New York Times article, for example, about the impact of the closing, included no Chinese adoptees. It did include Chinese academics, a Korean-Danish adoptee, and prospective American adoptive parents.

The reactions to China’s closing are many and multi-faceted, including among adoptees. That range of reactions shows the complexity of adoption itself. May we continue to hear the voices of adopted people.