Compassion

It's heart-breaking enough to think about placing your child for adoption, but abandoning your child just sounds evil.  "How could a mother do that?" I've been asked in exacerbation. I've heard everything from how parents don't deserve to have children if all they were going to do was abandon them, to questioning why someone would want to give away such a cute baby.

I know why a mother would do "that," as in, abandon her child.  Poverty.  I have compassion for the unimaginable because I can't imagine what it's possibly like to be in a situation where I don't have the resources to raise my child and/or get him or her necessary medical care.  No formula or food stamps or food shelves or school lunch programs.  No health insurance or knowledge of available medical treatments or access to clinics or cash to pay for medical treatments that require upfront payment.  No social security or pensions or retirement plans to not have to rely on a healthy son in order to survive in old age.  I can't even begin to imagine.  Even though extreme poverty and a spotty social welfare safety net exist in my own country, there's much we take for granted.

In China it's illegal to place your child for adoption.  If parents don't believe they have the means to raise their children, there's no option to make an adoption plan or even surrender their children.  Anonymous abandonment really is the only option.  That's why there's a common theme to finding stories of Chinese orphans.  They were left in public spots where they would be found quickly.  It's the best parents can do to ensure their child is taken to an orphanage and receives necessary care.     

With my whole heart I believe that birth parents don't abandon their children because they don't love them, but because they do love them.  I believe they want better for their children, and in cases where their children are really ill, they just hope they will live.  I have compassion for their heart-breaking realization that they will be unable to raise the children they desperately wanted to keep.