Thoughts Before Watching "One Child Nation"

Sometimes I feel like I'm fighting a losing battle when it comes to the pursuit of truth.

Adoption is complicated. Adoptees are largely discounted in discourse concerning ourselves. Historical bromides still linger, spreading misinformation about infants, separation trauma, and institutionalized care. The savior-narrative still reigns in some adoptee-centric spaces.

DNA testing is bridging the gap between what we thought we knew and what our birth parents can tell us. Yet, despite the many, many stories we know about the many different circumstances surrounding why a baby could possibly be separated from their birth family, I still see so many adoptive parents and adoptees...too many...putting faith in what the Chinese police have told them, believing the finding ads to be true, believing the orphanage records to be true, and scratching their heads when the finding ad doesn't line up with the orphanage records and doesn't line in with the finding story, etc.

We have adoptees riding high off the glory of adoption platforms, getting praise from religious based organizations that love a good "Grateful Adoptee" story. Then we have adoptees in chatrooms screaming about why white parents shouldn't be allowed to adopt non white babies. Then we have legions of people promoting and supporting this One Child Nation documentary, despite the fact that its purpose is largely to shock the public about the horrors of the One Child Policy. I don't think the maker of this documentary lied, but I do seriously want adoptees to think about the fact that she knew exactly what story she wanted to tell, for what purpose, from which angle, and who she wanted to interview. At the end of the day, this can only be one perspective about the One Child Policy. Just one. But adoptees are so lacking in even basic, truthful, accurate coverage pertaining to them and their origins, that this documentary has been catapulted to gospel status.

In my media ethics class, there's a concept that all journalism at some level is exploitative. I realize that adoptees are not exactly being exploited here, but it feels like it. Was it necessary to show fetuses in a garbage bin to educate the public or was that for shock value? Are our lives simply to promote your agenda? What of human dignity? No matter how you spin it, that image was unfair. And while some may argue that exposing the consequences of a draconian policy are worth whatever insensitive graphics may come to light, I still feel stripped naked and disrespected, like I am just a pawn in this entire narrative.

Not all adoptees were trafficked and sold and kidnapped and abandoned. After listening for some time in adoptee spaces, it seems like there are many, many different things that could have happened. But I know that after watching this documentary, so many people will have a false sense of how wide-spread, uniform, or common these things occurred. Just the way the maker of this documentary wanted it. They did not make this documentary for adoptees to learn about their origins. They made it to criticize the Chinese Government.

Yet, because of this movie, we are now seeing article after article after article trying to capitalize on the horror of it all. And who pays the price? Adoptees do. Because it adds to more disinformation in the public spaces I need to live in. People hear human trafficking and watch this documentary, next thing I need to deal with at my super liberal school is students and professors making fun of me and getting in my face about how my parents paid for me in cash. This is absolutely false. Anyone who has ever educated themselves about the Hunan scandal or any other human trafficking occurrence in China will actually know that it is false. But that doesn't matter to people. Because all of these news outlets are feasting off the gore and adoptees are caught in a web of expectations from being thankful and happy to being victims, poor poor little victims of a bad bad country. The same country, where we were born. A country that is imperfect, but which has meaning for us.

China is big. It's bigger than any of the 50 United States. Its population is the largest in the world. Yet, this documentary tricks audiences into thinking they've seen and heard and experienced all they need to see and all they need to ever know about the situation in China, without taking into account that China is large and inconsistent. The policy itself played out differently over time. And there are exceptions upon exceptions about families under the one child policy with more than four children! While this documentary hopes to portray the Chinese public as brainwashed and largely cowed, there are several grassroots movements years old started by Chinese citizens who wanted to reconnect lost children with their birth parents. That's the type of volition, backbone, and compassion that isn't portrayed in this movie. 

An article by the Atlantic says in one paragraph that adoptees were kidnapped and sold by traffickers to orphanages. In the very next sentence, it said that families abandoned their girl babies because of the male-preference. So which is it? Tell me. Because if there is a nuance, this article certainly didn't allude to it. These articles make out that everything is one way, all the time, and that there is only one story to tell. 

Right now, the One Child Nation has its turn to tell its story. But when will the day come for adoptees and birth parents to tell their stories?

Check out:
A link to Research China's blog post of adoptive family Reviews of One Child Nation