The Tough Questions

On a regular basis I am reminded that our adopted children are getting older and with it more observant and more likely to start asking us the ‘difficult questions’– such things as was daughter asking where her friend’s dad was (her friend’s mum is single); or attending a China adoption event and seeing all these little people with big personalities (and attitude to burn) running around – I remember a time when there was one or two babes in arms fresh home from China and a whole heap of clucky ‘expectant parents’.

Am I prepared? I don’t think I am but I am trying my best to rehearse in my head what I might say when the tough questions are asked. I just know that these are likely to be asked when I least expect it – like when I’m driving (and likely to take us into a ditch). And then it is likely to be a question I haven’t ‘rehearsed’.

Having listened to adoption specialists talk and read their articles, I realise that it is important to talk as naturally as possible about adoption issues from the outset with our children - to create and maintain communication channels. To be the one that your children hears things from first – not in the school yard, not from friends, not from strangers.

Issues such as baby trading in China are ones that our children need to hear about from us, first. People have long memories, it may be many years down the track when someone dredges their memory and says to our children ‘they sell babies in China, I read it in the paper’. How devastating it would be for our children and our relationship of trust with them if this is the first they had heard of the issue.

It would be easy to say ‘oh, that is a Hunan or Yunnan issue, my child is from…’. Sadly, our children do not come to us with a history of how they entered into the SWI system, even the information that is provided may be a legal ‘falsehood’ (for instance the finding site location may not have a street number but one is made up because the form requires it). We are presented with a series of unknowns and a series of possible hypotheses, that we may not ever be able to test, prove or disprove. But I feel that it important that we share all the possibilities with them no matter how remote they might be, however painful they may seem to us.

When is a good time, well I’m the first to admit that I don’t have that answer – I intend to incorporate age appropriate additional information into our story as time goes by. I think the age of the ‘serious mother/daughter bolt from the blue talk’ (mention it once and lets move on) is long past.

I’m keeping a ‘file’ of relevant material from this period, as an aide memoire for our discussions but also I can let my daughter read these for herself in years to come and draw her own conclusions.

It is so easy to romanticise the events surrounding how our children came to be with us, the children may do so themselves. There are lies and there are lies of omission – both can damage trust in a relationship if discovered. We owe it to our kids, to ourselves and to our long term relationship with them to be as upfront as possible, to communicate and keep communicating with them. To encourage those difficult questions (even if you are trying not to drive into the ditch) and try and answer them as best we can. And if we can’t, we need to be upfront with the kids that we don’t always have all the answers, that sometimes there are just more questions.

Baby Trade timeline

late November 2005 - the Shanghai Daily reports allegations of baby trading allegedly involving orphanages in Hunan’s Qidong County, People’s Republic of China. The paper reported that an alleged baby trader was arrested and made a series of allegations to police that he sold babies to orphanages and social welfare institutions. The paper reported that subsequently police detained 27 managers and workers at the Hengyang County orphanage including Jiang Zhenghua, the orphanage's director; Wang Weihong, the Party secretary of the orphanage, and He Yuhua, an accountant.

Late November/Early December 2005 – issue is carried widely in a variety of overseas media.

14 February 2006 – Jackie Kelly MP is widely reported as saying adopting children from China risked encouraging an international "trade in babies". "I think you do have issues there with the West continuing to plunder the Third World for kids now," Ms Kelly said. "It leads to trade in people. You create a trade in babies. You just don't want to put mothers in that situation where you've got an option of selling a child on the sly to support your other children."

The Australian China adoption community roundly condemns these comments. A range of Australian media have coverage of these comments..

Late February 2006 – trial of the alleged baby traders in Hunan takes place. Chen Ming, the head of Hengdong Social Welfare home, was sentenced on Friday but he is apparently 'on the run'. The heads of Hengyang and Hengdong county civil affairs bureaus, were removed from their posts for their negligence of duties. The officials in charge of the social welfare homes were also sacked. Sentences ranged from 3 to 13 years.

Early March 2006 – alleged baby traders in Yunnan Province arrested - 12 baby boys were allegedly sold, all were allegedly abducted but now returned to their families.

12 March 2006 – Washington Post does a major follow up article on the Hunan baby trade.; Sunday Telegraph (Sydney) reports the same day on the baby trade issue.

16 March 2006 – Associated Press reports that the CCAA has assured US Government officials that no children adopted to the USA had been abducted.

20 March 2006 – DHS Victoria advises that CCAA advice is that the children adopted by Australian families were not involved in the child trafficking; on that day it is reported that the ring leaders arrested in Yunnan for baby trading had been convicted and sentenced to death; other members received from four years to life sentences.

24 March 2006 – reported that a Ms Lin, part of a five-member gang in Fujian Province, involved in trafficking 31 baby boys, one of whom died, had been executed for her crime