China adoptions: the good, the bad and the ugly

American Family just gave me a Thinking Blogger award! Thanks so much!

AmFam is one of the few China adoption blogs I regularly read, and I love the supportive but critical perspective found there. And this is an interesting coincidence, because I've just been thinking about China adoption a lot lately.

One thing that bothers me about China adoption is that so many of the parents don't seem to involve themselves in Asian-American issues. Asian-American culture isn't easy. It's deeply fragmented and often swirling with repressed anger and self-loathing. But forming a healthy Asian-American or Chinese-American identity strikes me as more important than "keeping a cultural connection" to China. I could be wrong on this, but it's definitely a criticism I've seen before.

There are parents out there (the good) like AmFam (or other non-Asian adoptive parents) that don't ignore that kind of stuff (the ugly).

And then there's the bad. The really, really, really bad.

I got caught up reading the mess over at cHEW. For those who haven't read it, it's the story of a woman who recently disrupted a Chinese adoption. The story points out a lot of things that are wrong with the system.

I'm going to do a long post really soon expressing what I think about the blog. As a semi-informed outsider to China adoptions, I don't come to it with an agenda, or anything at stake. I've also read a fair amount on the topic of disruption because it happens a LOT in the foster care system.

I believe that blog should be taken down, because it has some pretty horrible misinformation.

Stay tuned for more, in a much longer post...

Thanks again for the award, AmFam! I'd give it back to you if you didn't have it already. Also, I hate to become the blog where memes go to die, but I can't even begin to think about picking five of my thinkingest blogs.