• Samvega
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    3 months ago

    I’m saying that instead of adopting internationally, one could look locally

    In terms of benefits to fellow living beings, being a good parent to a child from China is exactly as beneficial as being a good parent to a child from the US. One of those things isn’t more morally appropriate.

    There are also other reasons reported online for specifically adopting Chinese children. Due to political decisions, China had many unwanted but healthy female children. There appears to be a strong bias from many families for wanting physically healthy children. This occurred in Romania in the 80s (due to demands from the government to women to have more babies that they could not afford to feed, leading to a large amount of international adoptions and research into those adopted children from Romania).
    Another that I am aware of is that Christian churches talk about adopting Chinese babies as a means of spreading Christianity. I also sadly suspect that the very far distance between the child and their birth parents might also be attractive, as there would not be as much meddling in the religious teachings that the adoptive families would wish to instil. It became a popular fad for some time, that had already lessened before this news of China tightening international adoption policies. There are articles about this, but the specific one I read a few months ago is not in my history.
    Also, maybe some American parents who already have American children prefer ‘exotic’ children? It’s gross, but that’s the kind of choice you enable when you treat children as a commodity that can be traded internationally for money.

     

    It is clear that economics and politics are amongst the forces principally creating situations where we have many children requiring adoption within a country, and also the situation that the adults in that country feel unable to support them. Then, globalisation allows for international adoption. It’s economic systems all the way down.