This entry is about Love Without Boundaries, a volunteer organization dedicated to improving the lives of orphans in China. They are currently hosting an auction on ebay to raise funds for essential life-saving heart surgeries for orphaned children in China. The goal this year is to heal 12 heart children. There are almost 700 wonderful items to bid on, and there is something for everyone. It certainly isn't limited to adoptive families, with wonderful artwork, music and collectibles. CLICK HERE to view the auction!

I posted earlier how Cam had made an art piece for this auction as part of his senior culminating project you can see (and bid on) his piece on by CLICKING HERE.

Love Without Boundaries also has a program for sponsoring children. We sponsor a little girl called "Libby" and recently got an update on her with the following information:

Libby
DOB: August 2005

Libby has really grown a lot. She has gained 4 cm and about a kilogram in weight. Libby can now sit up on her own and enjoys playing with toys on by herself. As soon as she is sitting up, she tries to grab anything within her vicinity. She turns to voices and always greets her foster mother with a huge smile! She continues to be healthy and happy. The foster family really loves her and is enjoying having her in their home.

A popular thread on blogs is a list of questions about you.
it might be something like"Favorite 5", where you list your 5 favorite, books, movies, places...
As this is a blog that's mostly about adoption I thought it would be good to use a different sort of list. What follows is the "autobiography" questionnaire the Social Worker for our adoption agency had us complete as part of our home study. The original format included space for the answers which pushed the length out to about 18 printed pages.

Take your time, and email me your answers!

A. CHILDHOOD
1. Date and place of birth:
2. Father’s name Residence:
Date of birth: Death:
3. Mother’s name Residence:
Date of birth: Death:
4. Parent’s date of marriage: . 4a. Divorce:
Remarriage: Father. Mother
5. Siblings (including step-siblings) their birth date, married/single, where they live
6. Describe your father’s role in your family, including employment.
7. Describe your mother’s role in your family, including employment.
8. Describe your parent’s personalities.
9. Describe your parent’s marriage.
10. If your parent’s were divorced, discuss why they divorced.
11. Discuss your parent’s prior or subsequent marriage.
12. Describe how your parents showed affection to each other.
13. Describe how your parents showed affection to you.
14. How did you parents comfort you?
15. How did your parents discipline you?
16. How did they criticize you?
17. How did they praise you?
18. How did they encourage you?
19. How did your parents solve problems?
20. What did your family do for fun?
21. What difficulties did you encounter as a child?
22. Describe your life growing up.
23. Name you siblings and describe your childhood relationship to them.
24. Were there other significant people in your life as a child? (Grandparent, aunt, cousin, etc?)
25. Describe your current relationship with each family member. How often do you see them?
B. EDUCATION
1. Name of high school:
Graduated? Year? If NO, why not?
Name of college:
Graduated? Year? Degree
2. What did you like about school?
3. What didn’t you like about school?
4. Do you have plans to further your education?
C. FRIENDSHIPS
1. Describe your past and current circle of friends.
2. Did your parents agree with your choice of friends?
3. At what age did you begin to date? Describe your early dating experiences.
D. ADULT LIFE EXPERIENCES
1. At what age did you consider yourself an adult?
2. Did your parents agree?
3. How old were you when you left home?
4. Did your parents approve?
5. How old were you when you started your first job?
6. Describe your employment history.
7. What do you see as your strengths?
8. What are your weaknesses?
9. Are there areas you would like to improve in?
10. How do you think others would describe your personality?
11. What kinds of activities do you like to do?
12. Who is your employer and what kind of work do you do?
13. How long have you worked at this job?
14. How do you handle job-related stress?
15. How does your job affect your home life?
16. Have you ever been arrested and/or convicted of a crime as an adult or juvenile? If so, please explain.
17. How frequently do you drink alcoholic beverages?
18. Do you use illegal drugs?
19. Please list all past and present medical problems.
20. Are you infertile? If yes, please describe attempts to solve fertility issues.
21. How have you dealt with infertility?
22. What is the biggest problem you have faced as an adult? Explain.
23. How patient are you? Please give examples of what makes you lose your temper.
E. CURRENT MARRIAGE
E1. When and where were you married?
1. Describe how, when, and where you met.
2. What attracted you to your spouse?
3. How long did you date?
4. Did your parents approve?
5. Describe your early adjustment problems.
6. What do you do together?
7. How do you handle disagreements?
8. Describe your last major disagreement and how it was resolved.
9. Describe your role in your family.
10. Describe your spouse’s role in your family.
11. How are your family finances handled? Who pays the bills, etc?
12. How do you feel about your spouse’s family?
13. Please describe your marriage in terms of emotional satisfaction.
14. Who did you learn about sex and sexual development from?
15. Do you plan to educate your children differently than you were educated?
16. Please describe any problems or differences of opinion you experience in your marriage.
17. How have you tried to solve these problems?
18. Describe what you like about your spouse.
19. What would you change about your spouse?
20. How do you and your spouse express affection toward each other?
21. Is this satisfactory to both?
22. How do you handle jealousy?
23. What religion are you? Are you active in this faith? How often do you go to church?
24. How important is religion in your life?
25. Describe your pets.
26. What are your future goals?
F. PREVIOUS MARRIAGE
1. Dates of marriage and divorce:
2. How many children from this marriage?
3. Who has custody?
4. Frequency of contact with children?
5. Describe the problems that led to the divorce in the above marriage(s).
6. What did you learn from that experience?
G. FAMILY
CHILDREN-- Please answer as many questions as possible, even if you have no children.
1. List names, ages, whether in or out of home, and any unusual problems or illnesses.
2. Describe each child’s personality.
3. What are your hopes for your children?
4. What are your fears for your children?
5. Describe the father’s family role.
6. Describe the mother’s family role.
7. Who will handle discipline and how?
8. Describe your child’s school experience.
9. How would you manage as a single parent?
10. Which is the most challenging stage of child development? Why?
11. How do you show your children that you love them?
12. How do your children know you approve of their behavior?
13. How do you criticize your children?
14. What is your personal philosophy on raising children?
15. What do you and your spouse agree about raising children?
16. What do you disagree on?
17. Are you now or will you in the future raise your children the same way you were raised?
18. What would you like to improve on as a parent?
19. How will adoption affect your biological children?
20. How will you help your biological children adjust to adoption?
21. What so you like to do with your children?
22. What responsibilities do you give your children?
H. OTHERS IN THE HOME
1. Name, age, and relationship:
2. What is this person's role in the family?
3. How will this person be affected by adoption?
4. How will you help this person adjust to the adoption?
I. HOME AND COMMUNITY
1. Describe your home.
2. What do you like best about your community?
3. What do you dislike about your home or community?
4. How do you divide household tasks?
5. What happens when family members “mess up” the house?
6. How long do you expect to live in your home and community?
7. What are the public schools in your area? (elem, mid, and high school)
8. Do you have special education facilities in your community?
9. Do you have mental health professionals in your community?
10. Do you have medical facilities in your community?
J. ADOPTION READINESS
1. Who first brought up the subject of adoption?
When and why?
2. What made you decide to pursue adoption?
3. What do your friends and family think about you pursuing adoption?
4. Why do you want to become adoptive parents?
K. ADOPTIVE CHILD’S BACKGROUND
1. How do you plan to explain adoption to your child and at what age will you begin?
2. If you are considering adopting a child of a different ethnicity than yours, please discuss your feelings about preserving and/or acknowledging the racial differences in the family.
3. How will you feel about your child’s inevitable questions about his/her birthparents?
4. How do you feel about your child eventually searching for his/her birthparents?
5. What would you do if your spouse decided to drop out of the adoption process?
6. Do you know other families who have adopted children? What has their experience been?

On Point with host Tom Ashbrook on WBUR Boston's NPR News Source had a fascinating program on Adopted Chinese Children.

I found this through Research-China.org website. This is a really good program and I highly recommend listening to it if you are interested in adopting from China. Warning, it is about 50 minutes long, but it is really well done. So many of the pieces on adoption I have come across lately seem to be either short and full of errors, or extremely 2-dimensional in their approach to the subject.
This program includes conversations with the following people:
·Carrie Kitze, author of "I Don't Have Your Eyes" and founder of EMK Press
·Nancy Kim Parson, Adult Korean adoptee, working on a documentary film with Point Made Production in New York City on international adoption
·Dana Johnson, Director of the International Adoption Clinic and Director of the Division of Neonatology at University of Minnesota and the University of Minnesota Children's Hospital
·Kathleen Sander, Mother of three girls adopted from China.

And it starts off with my verbal sparring partner Peter Goodman, Shanghai Bureau Chief for Washington Post! In this conversation with him he discusses his article "Stealing Babies For Adoption". I actually emailed him again saying, that if his article in the Post had been a transcript of what he said on this program I would have been writing to praise his efforts instead of taking him to task for his melodramatic pandering.

Anyway, the program is very, very good and you should listen to it. Click HERE.

First an apology to those of you looking for a new episode of Stinky Mouse, I promise to post the next one on Saturday morning.

This post is a follow up to my last one. Peter Goodman is the author of the article published in last Sunday's issue of The Washington Post. I saw that the Post allows you to email their writers. I assumed Peter might be receiving a good number of emails from rankled folks in the adoption community, but I wrote him all the same. I figured at first he would probably not even read what i wrote. I'm not really very good at this sort of thing: politely expressing my displeasure with someone. And this is a complicated issue. The ethics of international adoption are murky at best and is something I struggle with personally. Still I felt that while his article dealt with important issues it was constructed in a subversive manner. What I ended up sending him was less than I had originally written and ended up being a short comment expressing my disappointment with the article:

I'll assume you are aware of the ripples your Sunday article has sent through the community of families who have adopted from China, so this message is probably an echo of many others you have already received. I see from Brian Stuy's blog that he has written to The Washington Post in response to your article. I hope you read what he wrote.

You have been afforded the opportunity to have your words read by many, many people. Your article was hurtful to my family and many others. Please be more thoughtful in your future efforts.

I was quite surprised when I promptly received a reply from him. Upon reading the reply it became apparent to me that this was most likely a boilerplate response he was sending out to everyone who had written him in opposition to the piece. Here is his reply:

Dear Scott,

Thanks for your note. First, I can assure you that I do fully understand the stakes involved here -- the emotions for adopting families, the clear benefits of the foreign adoption program -- and I am cognizant of the impact of the piece. Surely, for a family that has adopted from China, or is considering doing so, my piece dredges up a lot of uncomfortable questions. But I fear that your reaction to the piece is indicative of the general reaction from the US adopting community: You are reflexively trying to spin away uncomfortable facts rather than confronting this reality in a spirit of bringing about positive changes and perhaps pressuring the institutions involved -- US-based adoption agencies, the Chinese and US governments -- for some accountability. You are blaming the messenger.

I visited Hunan and Guangdong and spent several months investigating the events in question. My piece quotes by name a lawyer for one of those convicted, as well as the mother of that defendant, in addition to a prosecution source and others familiar with events in Hunan and Guangdong. Let's revisit some of what they tell us: 1) Roughly 1,000 baby girls were brought from Guangdong for money to orphanages in Hunan and then put out for adoption, nearly all of them to foreign families. 2) The defense side claims the babies were first abandoned and then sold, a distinction that would determine whether their clients are executed or merely get lengthy prison sentences. In any event, they are copping to large-scale trafficking. That, again, is from the defense attornies. The mother of a defendant confirmed all of this. That the trafficking occurred is beyond question: It was reported in China's official state mouthpiece, China Daily, and confirmed by the people I spoke to. That it involved the abduction of children comes from the prosecution and the court verdict.

Roughly 40,000 Chinese kids have been adopted by foreigners in the years during which this ring has been operating. That means -- assuming this ring is the only one operating in China during that period -- that 2.5 percent of all foreign adoptions involve kids who landed in the adoption program illegitimately. This is according to the defense attornies themselves, supplemented by a prosecution source and a police expert on trafficking. You don't think 1,000 kids is a problem worthy of investigation? Do the Chinese families figure in your thoughts? Isn't it more than a little selfish to simply focus on the impacts of my piece for American families wanting healthy babies?

Your letter is dismaying to me because it illustrates how a lot of people whose emotions are on the line here are adversarially dismissing these uncomfortable truths with ad hominen attacks and name-calling rather than taking on what seems to me to be their moral imperative -- demanding from US-based adoption agencies and the US and Chinese governments a thorough investigation of the trafficking situation in China to ensure that the foreign adoption program is not affected.

Yes, the foreign adoption program has done an awful lot of good, for kids being raised in good homes and for well-run Chinese orphanages that now have funds for better facilities. Protecting it demands that it be safeguarded against abuse. And that can happen only if decent people press to unearth unpleasant realities and fix them, rather than self-servingly trying to cover them up.

During my now five years in China, I have seen repeatedly how reporting of sensitive issues by the foreign press can lead to action from Beijing. On SARS and AIDS, for example, initial government cover-ups of the extent of these problems eventually gave way to credible public health campaigns after sustained reporting by our paper and others. So I really have a problem with the position you are taking, suggesting that we should effectively self-censor ourselves lest China stop handing over healthy infants. The foreign adoption program is in so many ways an excellent thing, and may it continue -- above-board, scrutinized and protected from abuse rather that riven with problems that some would simply push under the rug to keep the babies coming.

I do appreciate that this is an issue you care about and that you took the time to write. I hope you take my response in the spirit in which it is intended -- as a way of clarifying and shedding light.

Best wishes,

Peter S. Goodman
Asian Economic Correspondent/ Shanghai Bureau Chief
The Washington Post

I read through this response several times. Each time feeling a bit more insulted by his tone. I should just let this crap go, but the stupid voices in my head just wouldn't let me. so I shot off the following:

Dear Peter,

Thank you for replying to my email. I appreciate that the intent was to "clarify and shed light”. I wish that intent were more clearly apparent in your original article.

You imply I have resorted to calling you names and have tried to discredit your article through personal attacks on your character. I have done neither of these things. In addition, your response makes a number of assumptions about my position, which I am not, sure how you arrived at based on what I wrote. I kept the comments in my original email to you very brief as I assumed you might be receiving a large number of emails on this article. I am sorry if my brevity confused you.

You accuse me of reflexively trying to spin away uncomfortable facts and promoting self-censorship. These are not my positions. I do not question that trafficking of infants has occurred in China. Nor do I believe this fact should be swept under the rug. The problem I have with your article is the way you have structured it to lead people to believe things for which you have no proof. You state, "assuming this ring is the only one ... 2.5 percent of all foreign adoptions involve kids who landed in the adoption program illegitimately." Obviously this is an issue that is more than worthy of investigation. However your efforts cheapen genuine investigative reporting when you twist things in order to generate lurid headlines. I am dismayed, but not surprised to learn money has changed hands in China over the exchange of children. But of these 1000 children, how many were "stolen" as your headline implies? Was it your intent to for readers to believe that a 16-month old named Fei Mei was taken to supply the international adoption market or was this simply the result of poor editing?

You accuse me of focusing on the impact of your piece for American families wanting healthy babies. You are mistaken. My focus is on the thousands of children languishing in orphanages in need of families. My newly adopted, special needs son waited for 33 months in an S.W.I. to be adopted. The PRC's official estimate of the number of orphans in its care is 500,000. Some outside groups put it at 2 million or higher. The number of all children adopted internationally out of China added together doesn't even dent this. For an article so riddled with inconsistencies it seems somewhat glaring to leave this fact out.

You ask if the Chinese families figure into my thoughts. They most certainly do. I wish the birth parents of my adopted son had had the resources to enable them to keep and raise him. I wish they lived in a culture that valued both genders equally and were accepting of people with physical defects. The unbearable social pressure generated by China's one child policy coupled with the traditional value placed on healthy sons forces women into abandoning countless children every year. The human rights issue here is huge, yet instead of even mentioning this, your article implies the demand of foreign adoptive parents has created a market for stolen babies. I apologize if I come across as selfish when I ask you to avoid sensationalism and to practice responsible journalism.

Sincerely,
Scott Ocheltree

Okay, I figured this would be the end of it. Probably wasted bandwidth on my part, but I just couldn't let the things he had written go. And then I got this next one back from him:

I appreciate where you are coming from. The foreign adoption program has been a very valuable way to provide homes for kids in need, and I applaud your concern for the kids. Now that program is being exploited by corrupt elements in China. That is simply beyond debate. As for the girl in the lead of my piece, nowhere do I say that she landed abroad. I am very clear in saying that we don't know where she is. But that's precisely the point: We know she was taken in a place where a trafficking ring has been operating. We have defense attornies for a convicted trafficking ring acknoledging that their clients have delivered 1,000 babies to orphanages for money for the foreign adoption program. How many kids are abducted as opposed to be being abandoned and then sold? Don't know. I'd like to, and it's an important question, one that I'll keep after. But I know that some kids have been abducted -- the court said that, and it was reported in China Daily... I mean, c'mon! -- and I know that the foreign adoption program is vulnerable to such abuse. I fail to see how it "cheapens investigative reporting" to highlight a problem and a vulnerability. I would hope that you would spend more time leaning on US adoption agencies now spinning reassurances for some accountability, as opposed to criticizing journalists operating in the public interest.

Peter

Now I'm really surprised. He does seem to be reading my emails. Still I am bothered by his hubris. He is completely ignoring my main point and has even spun my words around on me. Why can't I let this crap go?
I write again:

Peter,

Your habit of spinning words around to change the appearance of things is apparent even in your last reply to me: I never said "highlighting a problem and a vulnerability" cheapens investigative reporting. I said twisting a story to generate lurid headlines cheapens investigative reporting. And THAT is my point. You have taken a very serious issue and spun it for its shock value.

I don't believe the international adoption community has sided against you for your reporting of the facts surrounding baby trafficking. People are upset because you have used this tragedy as a tool to smear them. You say I should be pressuring agencies who are "spinning" reassurances instead of bothering you. I haven't been exposed to any of their spin, but then they don't have the front page of the Washington Post as a platform.

You printed the headline: "STEALING BABIES FOR ADOPTION" . Then went on to say Americans pouring into China with dollars in hand have transformed once-unwanted Chinese girls into valuable commodities worth stealing. I find it amazing that in an article of this length concerning the adoption of abandoned children from China you managed to not even mention China's one child per family policy.

"...i mean, c'mon!"

I am glad you view your role as a "journalist operating in the public interest"; I believe a big part of that job would be to report the facts honestly instead of shading the truth and omitting parts of the story to create a sensational headline. Again, I take no issue with the facts you presented in your article. It is the way you spun them, exactly like you spun what I said into something else.

Scott

And now it appears to me that the Asian Economic Correspondent/ Shanghai Bureau Chief for The Washington Post is just as stubborn as me and doesn't have anything better to do either, for he responded again:

Scott,
We could bandy about on the headline. (Reporters don't write headlines, by the way, as lame as that sounds. I wouldn't have written it that way.) And I take your point about the one child policy. I had a paragraph in there originally about it. It got chopped for space, but I didn't argue strenuously against the change because I felt we were covered by noting that child trafficking predates the foreign adoption program by a lot.

Yes, this is a serious issue, and, yes, the front page of the Post has real impact and that carries real responsibility. You sound like a reasonable and serious person, and I'm sorry if I've lumped you in with some of the less reasonable people with whom I've been unfortunately corresponding these past days. But I do think that your judgment is being clouded on this one by your position as an adoptive parent -- a perfectly noble position from where I sit, by the way, for whatever it's worth. Given that the DEFENSE admits they illegally procured about 1,000 babies to feed the foreign adoption market, how can you possibly argue against the reality that the program has turned healthy baby girls into commodities?

Now, it is true that the defense contends that the kids presented into evidence so far in Hengyang were abnadoned and then sold and not abducted. And that is obviously a very significant distinction. It is also true that the court found otherwise, and my prosecution source says that the other several hundred kids did include cases of abduction.
None of which fundamentally indicts the foreign adoption program. But it seems an inescapable fact that a byproduct of the program is that healthy baby girls have been turned into a commodity, as the very people who have participated in the trafficking have told us.

Peter

Okay, I surrender. Peter is incapable of conceding that his reporting of this tragic story might be colored through his rhetoric to portray international adoption and adoptive families in a negative manner. At best this will be a verbal stalemate, and he is much better than me at quickly crafting a reply which redirects my argument.
The CCAA made an announcement today stating that no abducted children were placed with adoptive families from the U.S. You can read the AP version of this story HERE. For a clear, and not so happy interpretation of this announcement see Brian Stuy's analysis on research-china.org.

Sorry for the long boring post. Anybody out there still reading? Post a comment and let me know you're there.

Since we've been home from China, this blog has pretty much been about the fun stuff going on in Hui-Hui's world (along with a few updates as to the antics of Stinky-Mouse). However, over the last month or so, there has been a fair amount of press coverage regarding the issue of child abduction within China, and allegations that it is related to China's international adoption program. I am bringing this up here because of the obvious connection our family has with this program, and I hope that by directing a bit of light on this issue I may help to inform a few family and friends as to what the "facts" are regarding this issue as best as they may be known.

At issue here is a recent case in which a Chinese orphanage director and nine other people were sentenced to prison, and another 22 officials were fired in the southern city of Hengyang in Hunan province. Allegedly the director of the Hengyang County orphanage (an orphanage that participates in the international adoption program) brokered children into his orphanage, as well as orphanages in other Provinces. Anthony Kuhn of National Public Radio (NPR) reported this story on February 23rd. You can hear his report by CLICKING HERE. While this case clearly shows that corruption and greed has tainted parts of China's international adoption program and SOME of the Social Welfare Institutes that work within this program, it does not support the inflammatory allegations appearing in current headlines. When this story first broke I followed it closely, as I do almost any news story regarding adoption from China. However, as of late, this story has appeared to spin into something different.

On Sunday Peter S. Goodman wrote an article in The Washington Post entitled, "Stealing Babies for Adoption". In this article Mr. Goodman states a number facts, then creates connections to allege things which cannot be proven. As a parent who has been through the process of adopting a child from China, I obviously have a bias here. However, I also have a fairly clear understanding of the program, and feel that this article does a great disservice to many, many families. In this article, Mr. Goodman references Brian Stuy. Mr. Stuy writes a fascinating blog on issues related to adopting from China called RESEARCH-CHINA.ORG. I have had a link to his site on my "Interesting Links" page for several months now. He has written a number of entries on this particular issue, and if you take the time to bother reading the Washington Post article I strongly encourage you to read what Brian Stuy has to say in response to it.

It seems to me that Mr. Goodman's article is little more than an attempt at generating a sensationalized headline at the expense of the international adoption community. In rebuttal, I will quote Mr. Stuy who wrote:

"Goodman begins by detailing the tragic abduction of a child from the streets of Dongguan in Guangdong Province. He artfully transitions to China's adoption program, leading readers to conclude that somehow the seven month old girl had been kidnapped to satisfy an adopting American family.

Unfortunately, there is no evidence to establish this link, and in fact considerable evidence to disprove it. By Goodman's own admission, 50,000 children were adopted to the U.S. since 1992, an average of 4,000 per year. I suppose Goodman proposes that these 4,000 children represent a significant number of China's 1.2 billion people to result in kidnapping rings to develop, but the sad reality is that annually an estimated 250,000 children (mostly girls) are abandoned in China, 35,000 of which end up in China's foreign adoption program. One can readily see that there is no shortage of adoptable children."

All of this is very unfortunate and confusing. It is my hope that the truth will prevail, and that ultimately the children of China and the rest of the world will one day all benefit by having the loving families they deserve.

Last November Tina and I participated in a Radio program with our adoption agency. I have put a copy of the audio on our site in MP3 format. You can listen to it by clicking on the radio...