China's Hidden Children: Abandonment, Adoption, and the Human Costs of the One-Child Policy

Johnson honors the stories of the birth parents, adoptive parents, and the relinquished daughters caught in the vortex with her sympathetic and sophisticated analysis.”. Johnson, the foremost authority on adoption and child abandonment in rural China, debunks the popular notion that birth parents viewed abandoned daughters as ‘throwaways’ at worst, second-class citizens at best. Contrary to the constructed narrative, efforts to keep a daughter collided with a nearly insurmountable wall of laws designed to s

Not written clearly Cape Pug There is a lot of information in this book that I feel is important. However, the way it is written makes it very difficult to follow and take in. There is a lot of repetition. Constant references to what will be ahead in the book and explaining what and why things are in the book. It reads very strangely and that takes away from the information. Every chapter reads like a forward.. "Must read for Adoptive Parents of Children from China" according to Anne M. Andersen. Solid long term scientific on the ground studies of the real and changing reasons why children in China ended up in orphanages and adoptions over 20+ year period of time. Also suitable for adoptees 15 and above who want real information instead of the stories fed to their parents by adoption agencies and government officials. It gives a lot more perspective on the heartbreaking choices birth parents had to make.. "All adoptees from China and adoptive parents with Chinese children should read this book" according to MomtoM. Excellent book! Prospective adoptive parents should read this book too.Kay Johnson is an adoptive parent as well as an authority on China, a College professor of Chinese studies.She has done years of research on this topic. Finally the truth is being told instead of the propaganda that has been so wodely shared and believed. Thank you kay for writing this amazing book. Please keep writing and sharing the stories of China birth families. Heart-wrenching as they are, the world needs to know the truth.

In addition, government seizures of locally—but illegally—adopted children and children hidden within their birth families mean that even legal adopters have unknowingly adopted children taken from parents and sent to orphanages.  It’s generally assumed that this diaspora is the result of China’s approach to population control, but there is also the underlying belief that the majority of adoptees are daughters because the One-Child Policy often collides with the traditional preference for a son. Were it not for the constant threat of punishment for breaching the country’s stringent birth-planning policies, most Chinese