And there's more where that came from...
Also from the New York Times:
December 24, 2006
In an Adoption Hub, China’s New Rules Stir Dismay
By ANDY NEWMAN and REBECCA CATHCART
The news last week that China was putting sharp restrictions on foreign adoptions landed harder on the Upper West Side than just about anywhere else.
The neighborhood has the nation’s highest concentration of adopted Chinese children, according to the group Families With Children From China. A bicultural social network has developed there that offers everything from ethnic-heritage training to Mandarin-speaking nannies to mother-daughter dumpling-cooking classes.
Now, some of the same demographic factors that made the Upper West Side an adoption capital — a tendency for women to want a career first and children later; an abundance of single people who can afford to support a child without a mate; a large gay and lesbian community — are considered deal breakers by the Chinese government.
The rules, which take effect in May, require an adopting family to be composed of a man and woman between 30 and 50 years old who have been married at least two years (or five years if it is a second marriage). They cannot be obese or have a net worth less than $80,000. And anyone on an antidepressant or other psychiatric medication is out, a rule sure to raise anxiety levels in a neighborhood where seeing a therapist is considered unremarkable.
All of which has many people racing to complete the lengthy process of filling their application dossiers before the rules change.
“I’ve been totally overwhelmed,” said a 48-year-old single businesswoman who declined to give her name, citing privacy concerns. Within a few months, she needs to pass city, state and F.B.I. criminal checks; take classes and receive visits from social workers; and complete medical and financial screenings, among other things.
The woman, who lives on the Upper West Side, adopted a year-old Chinese girl last year and had wanted to wait a while before deciding whether to adopt again, but she said she felt that her hand was being forced. “Even if I got married tomorrow,” she said, “the two-year waiting period would freeze me out.”
Beth Mintz Friedberg, associate director of international adoptions at Spence-Chapin, one of the city’s leading agencies for adoptions from China, said she had fielded many panicked calls and e-mail messages since the rules were announced.
“I was just on the phone with a woman who has other options, but even so it was very hard for her to let go of this fantasy that there was this little girl in China who was going to be her daughter,” Ms. Friedberg said.
She added that anyone who would not qualify under the new rules and had not already started the application process had little chance of finishing in time.
China, long the world’s leading source of children for foreign adoptions, says it is enacting the rules because it is inundated with requests. Waiting times for adopting a Chinese child have increased to as much as two years.
Gongzhan Wu, director of the New York office and China program manager at the Gladney Center for Adoption, said that his agency was recommending that prospective families consider Vietnam, which has fewer restrictions.
Nearly 8,000 children from China were granted orphan visas last year, accounting for more than 30 percent of all foreign adoptions in the United States, according to federal statistics.
About one-fifth of the Chinese adopted children in the country live in New York, said Families With Children From China, a support group founded on the Upper West Side in 1993 that now has chapters all over the United States.
The new rules seem to have prompted widespread discomfort among New Yorkers who have already adopted from China.
“Those of us who are parents but would not qualify under the new rules are at a loss for how we would explain this in five years,” said Jennifer Maslowski, the Manhattan coordinator of Families With Children From China of Greater New York. “ ‘Nowadays Mommy and Daddy wouldn’t be good enough to adopt you.’ ”
Ms. Maslowski lamented that a group that had embraced diversity by seeking children outside their ethnic groups was itself about to become more uniform.
“It’s going to change our community into something we don’t want it to be,” she said. “It’s going to change it into all of the families being more or less the same.”
Many parents dismissed the Chinese government’s explanation that not enough orphans were available to meet the demand, noting that Western researchers have conservatively estimated the population of Chinese social welfare institutions at over a million children. The vast majority are girls, many of them given up because of the government’s one-child policy.
“While I may not be considered an ideal person,” said Marcia Hochman, 50, a social worker who was 45 when she adopted her daughter, “the alternative for that child is to grow up in a state-run orphanage in China.”
Robin Reif, a single adoptive mother of a 5-year-old Chinese girl, said she remained deeply grateful to the Chinese government. “My perspective is that I was the beneficiary of the parameters they set,” said Ms. Reif, a marketing agency executive who lives on the Upper West Side and would not give her age.
She thought for a moment and added, “Were I in line now, though, I’m sure I’d be grievously disappointed.”
December 24, 2006
In an Adoption Hub, China’s New Rules Stir Dismay
By ANDY NEWMAN and REBECCA CATHCART
The news last week that China was putting sharp restrictions on foreign adoptions landed harder on the Upper West Side than just about anywhere else.
The neighborhood has the nation’s highest concentration of adopted Chinese children, according to the group Families With Children From China. A bicultural social network has developed there that offers everything from ethnic-heritage training to Mandarin-speaking nannies to mother-daughter dumpling-cooking classes.
Now, some of the same demographic factors that made the Upper West Side an adoption capital — a tendency for women to want a career first and children later; an abundance of single people who can afford to support a child without a mate; a large gay and lesbian community — are considered deal breakers by the Chinese government.
The rules, which take effect in May, require an adopting family to be composed of a man and woman between 30 and 50 years old who have been married at least two years (or five years if it is a second marriage). They cannot be obese or have a net worth less than $80,000. And anyone on an antidepressant or other psychiatric medication is out, a rule sure to raise anxiety levels in a neighborhood where seeing a therapist is considered unremarkable.
All of which has many people racing to complete the lengthy process of filling their application dossiers before the rules change.
“I’ve been totally overwhelmed,” said a 48-year-old single businesswoman who declined to give her name, citing privacy concerns. Within a few months, she needs to pass city, state and F.B.I. criminal checks; take classes and receive visits from social workers; and complete medical and financial screenings, among other things.
The woman, who lives on the Upper West Side, adopted a year-old Chinese girl last year and had wanted to wait a while before deciding whether to adopt again, but she said she felt that her hand was being forced. “Even if I got married tomorrow,” she said, “the two-year waiting period would freeze me out.”
Beth Mintz Friedberg, associate director of international adoptions at Spence-Chapin, one of the city’s leading agencies for adoptions from China, said she had fielded many panicked calls and e-mail messages since the rules were announced.
“I was just on the phone with a woman who has other options, but even so it was very hard for her to let go of this fantasy that there was this little girl in China who was going to be her daughter,” Ms. Friedberg said.
She added that anyone who would not qualify under the new rules and had not already started the application process had little chance of finishing in time.
China, long the world’s leading source of children for foreign adoptions, says it is enacting the rules because it is inundated with requests. Waiting times for adopting a Chinese child have increased to as much as two years.
Gongzhan Wu, director of the New York office and China program manager at the Gladney Center for Adoption, said that his agency was recommending that prospective families consider Vietnam, which has fewer restrictions.
Nearly 8,000 children from China were granted orphan visas last year, accounting for more than 30 percent of all foreign adoptions in the United States, according to federal statistics.
About one-fifth of the Chinese adopted children in the country live in New York, said Families With Children From China, a support group founded on the Upper West Side in 1993 that now has chapters all over the United States.
The new rules seem to have prompted widespread discomfort among New Yorkers who have already adopted from China.
“Those of us who are parents but would not qualify under the new rules are at a loss for how we would explain this in five years,” said Jennifer Maslowski, the Manhattan coordinator of Families With Children From China of Greater New York. “ ‘Nowadays Mommy and Daddy wouldn’t be good enough to adopt you.’ ”
Ms. Maslowski lamented that a group that had embraced diversity by seeking children outside their ethnic groups was itself about to become more uniform.
“It’s going to change our community into something we don’t want it to be,” she said. “It’s going to change it into all of the families being more or less the same.”
Many parents dismissed the Chinese government’s explanation that not enough orphans were available to meet the demand, noting that Western researchers have conservatively estimated the population of Chinese social welfare institutions at over a million children. The vast majority are girls, many of them given up because of the government’s one-child policy.
“While I may not be considered an ideal person,” said Marcia Hochman, 50, a social worker who was 45 when she adopted her daughter, “the alternative for that child is to grow up in a state-run orphanage in China.”
Robin Reif, a single adoptive mother of a 5-year-old Chinese girl, said she remained deeply grateful to the Chinese government. “My perspective is that I was the beneficiary of the parameters they set,” said Ms. Reif, a marketing agency executive who lives on the Upper West Side and would not give her age.
She thought for a moment and added, “Were I in line now, though, I’m sure I’d be grievously disappointed.”
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