Let’s say I marry my Taiwanese girlfriend. We’re both very progressive types who feel strongly on a number of issues, one of them being overpopulation. We’ve discussed kids, and decided that we’d like to adopt, so as to care for somebody who’s already here instead of adding somebody new. I’m quite sure I don’t need to have my own genetic offspring for my ego, and neither does she.
What if we were to adopt a (very young) child who had no roots in this part of the world, and tried to raise him in Taiwan as a normal Taiwanese kid? He’d have Taiwanese citizenship, have a Chinese name, and be a native speaker of Chinese and Taiyu, after all.
How well accepted would such a kid be in a Taiwanese public school? Would the other children take well to a kid whose mind and soul were entirely Chinese, but whose face and body were not at all? Would it make a difference whether he went to school in a major city versus the countryside? Moreover (and depending on the answer to my last question), how well would other Taiwanese adults and families accept our decision to adopt instead of having our own kid?
I ask because it seems that race, roots, and biological kinship ties seem to be a much larger component of the Chinese identity than the American one. Not as important as in Japan or Korea (where the aforementioned kid would stand a good chance of being rejected) but important nonetheless. I also get the sense that adoption is not the custom here. Am I off base with this?
If you are so concerned about these ‘fitting in’ issues why not adopt an orphaned Taiwanese or mainland child? A mianland child in particular would sate your concerns RE overpopulation and solve the fitting in problem.
Just out of interest, why not just adopt a child who is of Taiwanese/Chinese descent? (Assuming it’s possible, of course.) I don’t know any of the answers to your questions, but I imagine it would make life easier for him/her, if nothing else…
I assume you come from a Western country? In that case the child’s ‘mind and soul’ would probably not be entirely Chinese, but more mixed, as your own natural offspring would have been. That would create an additional cultural issue as well, although I think a lot of mixed children have attended school here with no problems.
Why wouldn’t you adopt a Taiwanese child. Why go half way around the world to adopt a non-Asian child assuming that you are already living here. Or maybe adopting a foreign child to bring here to see if they will be accepted is some kind of social experiment. I’m assuming also you’d adopt a baby as opposed to an older child who already has some cultural identity and language.
Since my girlfriend and I are moving back to the US for grad school and may marry and live there awhile, it’s quite possible we’ll adopt a baby of Latin American background, as most orphans in the US today are. Then in the future, we may relocate to Taiwan again. It could go very differently, and probably will. I’m just saying this is one possible scenario, and I was just throwing out a “what if”.
Of COURSE I’m not planning on pusposely adopting a really anglo-looking kid just for the purpose of dropping him in Taiwan to see if he could make it. That’s just cruel.
Who we adopt will depend on a lot of factors, but two things I can say for sure is that our search will be 1) completely race-blind, and 2) based on who we encounter that could use our loving care the most.
you say “based on who we encounter that could use our loving care the most”… my (limited) undertanding of the process, is that you as the adopting family have little say in choosing, as this process is deemed ‘cruel’… a bit like going to the dog breeder, playing with the puppies then choosing one.
No, there’s quite a bit of say. However, there is also a LOT of fraud in the adoption process, as children with “special needs” – anything from older kids with mental problems to babies with major medical problems – get dumped on unsuspecting couples. The former Soviet Union and Eastern European countries are especially bad in this regard, although China is doing it wherever possible also. I seem to recall one case in the papers in the late 1990’s where a baby died because the adoptive parents weren’t told that the infant had a nutrition-absorption problem which was fatal without a special diet.
I’m wondering if you’ll even be legally recognized as the adopted child’s parents in Taiwan… It would be a very messy process at best…especially when it got to the point where your child would start going to school.
Your kid would be more accepted in a major city, but it’s all relative. Adoption is basically unheard of in Taiwan so your kid would have to put up with a lot of taunting in school along the lines of “nyah nyah, your mom and dad didn’t want you” etc.
You would also get strange looks when going out in public if you had a latin american kid.