Yes, You Can Get a Boy From China

When we tell people that we're adopting from China, EVERY SINGLE person makes the "you must be getting a girl" comment.  Every single person.  Seriously.  Sometimes they'll gingerly ask us if this means we're getting a girl, but their tone of voice implies they're asking a question they think they already know the answer to.  Others don't ask. They just matter-of-fact respond that we'll be getting a girl.  My explanation that there are as many orphaned boys in China as girls and that in reality, more boys are in need of families because Americans overwhelming adopt more girls, confuses folks.  "You can get a boy from China? asks EVERY SINGLE person. Well, except for the one person kept cutting me off.   "But you know you're getting a girl," she said in a know-it-all voice.

Clearly news of China's one-child policy has made a lasting impression on Americans' understanding of adoption from China like no other international adoption program.  I knew nothing about adoption from China before we started the adoption process, and for as long as I've wanted to adopt, I've believed the only orphans in China were girls.  The truth is that an equal number of boys enter "social welfare institutes" (orphanages) in China as girls.  

As I learn more about the Chinese adoption process, I've been researching how our society has come to believe that only girls are available for adoption in China and why boys, regardless of the country they're from, are considered harder to place. 

China has two adoption programs, one for children considered healthy (i.e., no identified needs) and the other for children with special needs, which can be anything from "minor and/or correctable" to very serious needs.  China's infamous one-child policy contributes to the disproportionate number of healthy girls abandoned, but with China's rising economy, more Chinese are adopting these orphan infant girls.  And like many other countries, China is putting a priority on domestic adoption, which means the government will try to place orphans domestically first.  That means that the wait time for Americans to adopt from this population of orphans has reached over six years.  

For about seven or eight years now, most Americans adopting from China are now doing so from its special needs program.  When you look at the gender make-up of this group of kids, it's more an even mix between boys and girls.  The one-child policy can actually help explain this too.  If parents can only have one child, and they prefer that child to be a boy, they want a healthy boy. 

But if the gender make-up of the special needs population in Chinese orphanages is more evenly split, why do more American families adopt girls, not just from China, but from every country with an international adoption program?  China's one-child policy is no longer a reliable explanation for why more Chinese girls join American families than Chinese boys.  China allows adoptive parents to choose the sex of the child they want to adopt and I've heard as many as 80% of families choose a girl.   The social workers I spoke to from various adoption agencies confirmed that more families request girls, and also said that boys are considered harder to place, but no one could explain why.  I stumbled upon a Slate article written in 2004 that finally started to piece apart why this is. 

"For years, it's been common currency in adoption circles that girls are far more popular than boys among adoptive parents," the author writes. 

What are the reasons for this?  There's a societal belief that girls are easier.  I'm sure my friends who have little girls get their fair share of "You have your hands full!" comments when they mention the ages of their kids, but I hear time and time again that I have my hands full because my young children are boys. 

And maybe the one-child policy does play a part indirectly in reinforcing the belief that girls are easier.  American parents might sub-consciously interpret the reason for abandonment differently for boys than girls.  As one researcher was quoted in the Slate article as saying, if you believe that biological parents like sons better, there's an underlying notion that 'boys will tend to be put up for adoption when there's something seriously wrong with them, but many girls will be put up for adoption simply for being girls.'

The author suggests yet another theory why families overwhelmingly choose girls. If parenting is about nurturing, then parents "adopt girls out of a common perception—however accurate or inaccurate it may be—that girls respond better to nurturing than boys do."

The theory that resonated the most with me is that American families more often indicate a preference for girls because woman are the driving force in the adoption process.  We tend to assume that women want daughters and men want sons.  An author and executive director of an adoption think tank is quoted as saying, "It's usually true that the women are filling out the paperwork, going to the conferences, the support groups." He adds, "If I speak at a conference—whether it's on adoption or family issues—at least 80 to 90 percent of any of these audiences are women."

This is sooo true of how the adoption process is shaking out in our household.  If I had wanted a girl more than anything else, I would have selected "girl" when asked about gender preference on our application and that would have been how we'd be proceeding. 

Instead, I ended up sending this e-mail to our social worker right after we sent in our application to the agency:

"Although we have already indicated that we are open to adopting a child of either gender, I was told to mention how open we are to adopting a boy from China.  We have two boys now and would be truly overjoyed to welcome another boy to our family.  Everyone assumes that because we have sons that we must only be adopting because we want a girl, which is the farthest from the truth.  My husband and I would be equally as happy to have another boy."

And me mean it.  Except no one really believes us.  At least two or three times during the application process we had indicated our gender preference as "either."  Yet the no-nonsense intake coordinator at our adoption agency became practically giddy when I told her that our "no preference" really did mean exactly that.  She was the one who suggested I send the e-mail to our social worker to make sure it was clear that we just weren't selecting "either" and hoping for a girl, but that we do really want a boy. 

Sadly, even some Chinese orphanages believe that Americans only want girls, as the author of the blog series The Changing Face of China's Orphans writes.  Even though they know the reality is that orphanages have as many special needs boys as they do girls, they use their limited resources to promote the children they believe they can find families for and those are girls.

As tired as I am of answering the girls question about Chinese adoption, I patiently share what I've learned so far about how many boys are orphaned.  The more people who know that boys need families just as much as girls, the more likely a prospective adoptive family will open its heart to a boy.