Why Americans Are Adopting Fewer Kids from China

Becky Freer says adopting a 10-month-old girl from China was the best thing she ever did. So when the 44-year-old surgeon from Austin, Texas, recently decided to adopt another daughter, she thought China was the obvious choice. She soon discovered, however, that as a single mom, she is no longer eligible. “Three years ago, I was an acceptable parent, and now I’m not,” she says. “It seems unfair.” While Freer has since been approved to adopt a child from Ethiopia, she is one of a growing number of prospective parents who are finding out they are unable to adopt from China under new laws Beijing enacted in May 2007.

International adoptions in the U.S. gained momentum during the 1990s as families reached out to orphans in poorer corners of the world. China’s international-adoption program, which was launched in 1992, has become particularly popular because of its transparency and efficiency. But the stricter guidelines, intended to reduce an overwhelming number of applicants, are proving effective. Adoptions of Chinese children by U.S. citizens have dropped 51% in three years, from a peak of 7,906 children in 2005 to 3,909 in 2008, according to the U.S. State Department. Among the new regulations: adoptive parents must meet certain educational and financial requirements, be married, be under 50, not be obese, not have taken antidepressants in the past two years and, if missing an eyeball, must wear a glass eye.

Even before these restrictions took effect, adopting a child from China was never simple. The state-run China Center of Adoption Affairs requires U.S. applicants to submit a long list of documents, including home studies completed by social workers and federal background checks. Fees and expenses can run more than $20,000, and China is only now placing children in the homes of families in other countries who were cleared to adopt more than three years ago. Some applicants who don’t want to wait that long look to China’s “waiting child” database of orphans with special needs.

The new laws are only part of the reason fewer Chinese children are being adopted by American families. While the Chinese government does not release domestic-adoption figures, U.S.-based adoption agencies say more Chinese children are being adopted in the mainland. (Adopting a second child is one of the few exceptions to China’s one-child policy.) “More and more people can not only afford to adopt a child, but culturally it’s also more accepted,” says Cory Barron, director of Children’s Hope International, an adoption agency based in St. Louis, Mo.

A change in the perception of gender may also be a factor. While girls still make up 95% of children at orphanages, the attitude among Chinese parents “toward having girls is changing dramatically,” says Josh Zhong, director of Chinese Children Adoption International in Centennial, Colo. “I have friends [in China] who have girls, and they are just so excited.” It’s part of a shift that, for the foreseeable future, will keep more of China’s children closer to home.