What Does Being Female Have to Do With It?

The One Child Policy was implemented in 1979. It has had such a huge impact on my life that, in some ways, I feel like my life revolves around it as a galaxy revolves around a black hole.

While many people want to simply say that all the thousands of adoptees adopted internationally from China during the first wave were "abandoned" (which isn't really  true because many different scenarios happened and babies were most often handed directly to another person rather than being left in a public place to be found...) due to males before more valued in Chinese culture, this is too simple. 

Males were already valued in Chinese culture before 1979. The only really big change to spur the Chinese adoption boom was that the One Child Policy was implemented.  Before then, people generally wanted really large families. Especially if the kids could help out on the farm. Having a boy was great...but the girls were also kept. Generally. Of course, I can't get into every single story because there are so many different stories that it is hard to condense China into a blog post. For instance, a lot of "domestic adoptions" were taking place where families sort of arranged to give each other kids or people "adopted" kids from people running a sort of "orphanage," but it wasn't a legal or official one. One of my distant DNA relatives on 23andMe is about 80 years old and he told me that his father was "adopted" this way. Though, he said, it was probably more accurate to say "bought" by his family since it wasn't legal per se...Technicalities. But there were also legal domestic adoptions too. China is complicated.

All this to say that China is a large and complex country and one story is not the entire story. Still, that doesn't mean gender didn't play a role at all. Even if the gender ratios in China aren't as extremely skewed as has been reported, they're skewed. But it isn't quite as bad because of the uncounted "hidden" daughters who were unable to fill out the census until they were able to get their documentation. It isn't even a secret that most Chinese adoptees in the first wave of Chinese international adoption are girls. (The second wave is more recent and has a more even male/female ratio.) For some adoptees, this explanation is enough. They assume their birthparents are in China raising the boy they finally gave birth to and that's the end of the story.

I used to believe that this meant no (or very few) girls at all were "kept" by their birthfamilies in China and was beyond surprised when I started hearing about birthfamily reunions where the birthfamily actually raised three other girls. The One Child Policy, apparently, was also a misnomer. Yes, there are those legal exceptions about having a second child if the first is born a girl, or giving more lenience to those in the country-side...but then there are definitely situations that occur so often it is hard to call them anomalies. For some people, they could just pay the fine and keep their children. For some people, they were in power or famous and were able to get away with things someone else might not. Even though it was harshly enforced (forced sterilizations, forced abortions, police confiscations of babies, threats, jail time, fines, etc. etc.), the One Child Policy might not have been enforced to the letter of the law. Whatever it was, was enforced though. Especially if you weren't in power. 

I was definitely not even aware of any of this when I was growing up. I certainly wasn't even aware of police confiscations or could have imagined how a sophisticated network of baby finders and "matchmakers" worked to get babies to the orphanage. For me, growing up, it was as simple as, "They could only have one child. Boys could grow up strong and take care of the elders. They obviously kept one child because it's called the One Child Policy for a reason. Clearly, they didn't keep me." It absolutely devastated me. I still struggle with my self-worth and question whether I'm just as valuable as everybody else. I see that in some ways, until I learn the truth about my individual story, that this might be insulting to the reality my birthmother went through. Perhaps I was taken from her arms in the hospital, convinced by the doctor that it was better this way because she had broken the law. Perhaps the One Child Police confiscated me in my own home. Can I absolutely just shout "Sexist!" at my birthmother when I have no idea about the truth? What about the pressure she was under? It doesn't sound like it was a picnic for women. It sounds like a nightmare. Besides, most of the stories I have heard, where gender played a large role in whether to keep the baby, involved the paternal grandparents giving their two-cents about the situation. They have a lot of power in the family structure and may get their way, even if the parents might be upset. Still, every story is different. 

Yes, being a female likely mattered...but I see so many Chinese girls my age being raised and loved (in China) and many of my female Chinese American friends are first generation, born in China just like me, and now live down the road with their sisters (all within a couple years apart so they were all born during the Era of the One Child Policy, though the younger ones were born in the USA). Most of the international students I've been friends with are female from China. And what of the many sisters being raised by the birthfamily? I used to think I had just a single brother. Now I wonder if I have many siblings. Maybe I have a combination of siblings raised by the birthparents and siblings adopted like me. That's what happened for some Chinese adoptees in reunion. The world is too large and complex to sling around slogans and over-generalizations. I want to know the truth about me. My truth. Before I make any judgments.