Adoption: First Missionary & The Last Empress

Can Adoption be successful? A question I have often been asked as a Child Psychiatrist.

"What is the link between Robert Morrison and Soong Mi Ling (better known as Madame Chiang Kai-shek)" was the question I posed to fellow Morrisonians at Hong Kong University.

It was very interesting to see that a new book has just been published about Madame Chiang Kai-shek, The Last Empress by Hannah Pakula.

The Last Empress/Simon & Schuster

The link to Morrison was that of Madame Chiang’s father, Charlie Soong.

To understand Charlie Soong we need to look at some culturally-bound practices that may seem so strange and perhaps even "wrong” nowadays.

One such practise is “internal adoption”: that of allowing a brother to adopt one of your sons. In traditional Chinese families, a male heir is important and such practice is fairly common.


Charlie Soong was born as Han Jiaozhun (韓教準) in Hainan as the third son of Han Hongyi (韓鴻翼) some time between 1863 and 1866 and was adopted by a sonless uncle and was taken to Boston to work in his tea shop. He was not happy and soon slipped away onto a Coast Guard’s ship on the Eastern Seaboard.


The rest of his story is quite unbelievable and The Wesleyan Magazine has a reasonably easy to read summary. He converted to Christianity and was given a full western education before being sent back to China. 


Eventually he made his fortune in printing the Chinese Bible, the link with Robert Morrison who was the first Protestant Missionary to China. Morrison was responsible for translating the bible into Chinese amongst his many other achievements.


It was because of the money he made from his printing press that he could send his three daughters to be educated at the Wesleyan College. They became the three most famous women in modern Chinese history. They were known as the Soong Sisters: "one loved money, one loved China, and one loved power" and they became the subject of a film. One of the sisters married a banker, one the founding father of China, Dr. Sun Yat Sun and one married Chiang Kai-shek who led the exiled nationalist government in Taiwan until his death.


The whole story might have been quite different without "the family adoption" as Charlie Soong would probably be farming or fishing in Hainan and never received his Western education. Real life is often stranger than fiction.

The Last Empress, Soong Mei-ling: born Shanghai, China 20 March 1897; married Chiang Kai-shek in1927; died New York 23 October 2003, aged 106.

The Independent.

Good Intentions: Adoption! Adoption! Adoption!

Adopted Russian boy, 7, returned by US mother on one-way flight to Moscow... alone: Telegraph

“A confused and upset-looking Artem Saveliev arrived unaccompanied in Moscow on a flight from Tennessee via Washington, on Thursday. He had with him a rucksack containing colouring pens, sweets and biscuits, which had been packed for the journey.
“On his arrival, he gave immigration officials a typed note from his adoptive mother, Torry Ann Hansen, a nurse from Shelbyville, Tennessee, explaining in two succinct paragraphs why she no longer wanted a boy she adopted in September last year.”

In a chapter in The Cockroach Catcher called Good Intentions, I wrote:

.......“It is important for our own sanity to assume that government policies in a democratic country have good intentions.”

Good intentions:

   “Tony Blair set a goal in 2000 for a 50 per cent increase in adoptions, to reduce the time children spent in foster care. In the last round of targets, councils were offered bonuses totaling £36 million for increasing the number and speed of adoptions.

   Cash rewards for councils which put up more babies for adoption could be scrapped in a shake-up of government targets.

   Campaigners blame the incentives for a sharp rise in adoptions, some of which they claim involve babies taken from their parents for no good reason.

More than 2,000 babies aged under 12 months were taken for adoption last year, almost three times the level of a decade ago.”

   The rate for older children adoption actually dropped in that period. That was Tony Blair’s original intention.

   They were good intentions.

Again in The Telegraph: 
April 12. 2010

Social workers' actions befitted 'Stalin's Russia', says judge

“Lord Justice Wall said the failure of social workers in the London borough of Greenwich to support a mother trying to make changes to her life and get back her two children, who are in care, was ''quite shocking''.

The judge said what occurred would do little to dispel the perception of many that social workers were ''arrogant and enthusiastic removers of children from their parents into an unsatisfactory care system - trampling on the rights of parents and children in the process.''

TIMES

April 13, 2010

Lord Justice Wall will be sworn in today as the president of the High Court’s Family Division. Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, originally challenged his appointment. Lord Justice Wall has been an outspoken critic of some government policies, including the funding of family courts.

BBC 1999:

UK targets set to speed adoption –

As part of the government's £375m Quality Protects shake-up of services for children in care, the Children's Social Services framework set local authorities clear targets to improve the safety and wellbeing of children in care.  The intention is that vulnerable children will spend less time waiting to be adopted under these new targets.

   Government figures reveal the number of children being looked after rose to 55,300 - up 4% on 1998 and 11% on 1995.  In some 34,100 of these cases - 2,000 more than the previous year, local authorities were forced to go to court to obtain a care order to protect the child.  44% were under 10 years old.

As expected, these targets influenced behaviours, not always in a desirable way.

The Telegraph: 2008

Cash prize for council that hit adoption targets

Hammersmith and Fulham council, in west London, was paid £500,000 as a reward for placing more than 100 children for adoption in three years. The council is the first to acknowledge publicly a payout under the target scheme. It said that its social workers had "pulled out all the stops" and "cut down on the amount of bureaucracy" to boost the numbers.

The council announced its success in a press release headed "Adoption target met". Its disclosure appeared to contradict the claims of Kevin Brennan, the children's minister, who seemed to deny the existence of adoption targets when he said earlier this year: "The only national adoption targets, which ended in 2006, were on the number of adoptions of children who were already in care and waiting to be placed for adoption, and on the speeding up of this. There was never a financial incentive for local authorities to meet these national targets."

White baby girls: Telegraph 20 Jan 2008

Critics claim that financial incentives encourage social services departments to target children who can easily be placed in adoptive homes, rather than those at the greatest risk. White baby girls with no health problems are in highest demand.

EDM 626:

Babies 'removed to meet targets' - In an Early Day Motion, with cross-party support from 12 MPs, Lib Dem MP John Hemming, warns of "increasing numbers of babies being taken into care, not for the safety of the infant, but because they are easy to get adopted".

Hemming, John

“That this House notes that local authorities and their staff are incentivised to ensure that children are adopted; is concerned about increasing numbers of babies being taken into care, not for the safety of the infant, but because they are easy to get adopted; and calls urgently for effective scrutiny of care proceedings to stop this from happening.”

When Adoption Goes Wrong

"......Peggy Hilt wanted to be a good mother. But day after day, she got out of bed feeling like a failure. No matter what she tried, she couldn't connect with Nina, the 2-year old girl she'd adopted from Russia as an infant. 

"......Then Hilt did something unthinkable. She grabbed Nina around the neck, shook her and then dropped her to the floor, where she kicked her repeatedly before dragging her up to her room, punching her as they went. 'I had never hit a child before,' she says. 'I felt horrible and promised myself that this would never happen again.' But it was too late for that. Nina woke up with a fever, and then started vomiting. The next day she stopped breathing. By the time the ambulance got the child to the hospital, she was dead."

1,600 children were adopted by Americans last year. Russian children are the third most popular among US citizens seeking to adopt after Chinese and Guatemalans.

Related: Adoption Adoption Adoption

The Cockroach Catcher: full review on Amazon, Reader’s views.

 (10% discount until 30^th April 2010, by quoting “SHOWERS”)

Adoption Adoption Adoption

In yesterday’s paper:

“Judges attack council over baby adoption”

“Senior judges have made an unprecedented attack on the "disgraceful" actions of a local council for rushing through the adoption of a child against the wishes of her father.

Lord Justice Thorpe said that East Sussex county council appeared more concerned with meeting a quota than the best interests of the family.”

Many will say that such adoption is of course in the best interest of the child. After over thirty years dealing with children and their emotional problems, I am never too sure if there is any foolproof way of placing children when such important matter such as parenting is involved. Some adoptive parents are extremely wealthy and well known world wide. Others are educated and in positions of influence and power. Do they make good adoptive parents?


We only need to look at one recent case in Hong Kong that hit World news:

“Diplomat 'dumped his adopted child because she did not fit in'”

“Jade, a seven-year-old of South Korean origin, is the focus of an escalating dispute across two continents. At the age of four months she was adopted by a Dutch consular officer based in Hong Kong, Raymond Poeteray, and his wife Meta. But the couple have now surrendered Jade to the Hong Kong social welfare department for readoption, reportedly because the child could not adapt to Dutch culture.

The revelation has sparked protests amid claims that the couple were treating the child as if she were an unwanted present. She had been discarded like “a piece of household rubbish”, said the Dutch daily De Telegraaf.

The South Korean Consulate in Hong Kong said that Mr and Mrs Poeteray had complained that Jade was not adapting to Dutch culture or food. “That is the reason they gave for why they want to discontinue the relationship,” a South Korean official said.

This was met with incredulity. “They adopted her when she was a baby,” said Law Chi-kwong, a professor at the department of social work at Hong Kong University. “They are responsible for shaping the child’s mind and culture. How can you say that the child cannot adapt to the culture in which she was raised?”

Hopefully the child Lord Justice Thorpe talked about will fare better.

Adoption can go terribly wrong in other ways too. In Newsweek in December 2007 an article highlighted the problem of an adoptive mother serving a 19-year sentence for second-degree murder in a Virginia maximum-security prison.

“Her story is awful—and rare—but sadly it is not unique. Adopting a child from another country is usually a positive, enriching experience for both the child and the parent. Over the last 20 years, foreign adoption has become more popular, and Americans now adopt about 20,000 children from Guatemala, China, Russia and other nations each year.

…… Since the early 1990s, the deaths of 14 Russian children killed by their adoptive parents have been documented.”

Russia has now stopped international adoptions.

But what was the reason for the rush in the UK case quoted earlier. Could money be the driving force?

It was reported that:

“Tony Blair set a goal in 2000 for a 50 per cent increase in adoptions, to reduce the time children spent in foster care. In the last round of targets, councils were offered bonuses totalling £36 million for increasing the number and speed of adoptions.”

I decided to look again at the UNICEF Convention on the Rights of the Child

Article 3
2. States Parties undertake to ensure the child such protection and care as is necessary for his or her well-being, taking into account the rights and duties of his or her parents, legal guardians, or other individuals legally responsible for him or her, and, to this end, shall take all appropriate legislative and administrative measures.
……………….
Article 9
1. States Parties shall ensure that a child shall not be separated from his or her parents against their will…… Such determination may be necessary in a particular case such as one involving abuse or neglect of the child by the parents, or one where the parents are living separately and a decision must be made as to the child's place of residence.
2. In any proceedings pursuant to paragraph 1 of the present article, all interested parties shall be given an opportunity to participate in the proceedings and make their views known.
3. States Parties shall respect the right of the child who is separated from one or both parents to maintain personal relations and direct contact with both parents on a regular basis, except if it is contrary to the child's best interests.

In the East Sussex case:

“The adoption proceedings began while the father was in hospital after a heart attack, but as soon as he was fit he instructed a solicitor to write to the council and ask that he be allowed to care for his daughter. The council reacted by placing the baby girl with prospective adopters the day before a court hearing at which her father intended to challenge the adoption.
Lord Justice Thorpe said: The council's failure to answer that letter and subsequent placement on the eve of the hearing give rise to the clearest inference that the council was out to gain its ends by means more foul than fair.”

Strong words indeed. However, the April 7 blog of Dr Crippen warned that such intelligent and educated judges might not be around for much longer:

“Successive Labour governments have destroyed the English secondary education system. They are in the process of destroying the university education system by compelling the universities to admit under qualified students from sink comprehensives. They are destroying the NHS by undermining the medical profession so that they can be replaced with poorly trained but cheaper HCPs. It is only right and fair, therefore, that they should also destroy the English legal system.
English judges have traditionally been highly intelligent and have been educated at leading Universities. New Labour does not like that. So they are proposing to allow judges to be appointed from the Crown Prosecution Service, that well known bastion of legal mediocrity.”

Adoption

It was interesting to read Petite Anglaise’s very touching account of how she felt as an adopted child and how she eventually contacted her biological parents. She wrote:

“……Being adopted made me feel a bit special. It was also full of dramatic potential. I had (I suspect very common) fantasies about my biological parents being fabulously wealthy and my one day inheriting a fortune. A favourite daydream was that I would see someone with my face walking towards me in the street and just know that we were related. A half brother or sister, or my mother herself. Or I imagined being attracted to a younger guy, only to find out that he was actually my half brother……”

I once had a patient (an adopted boy) whose very committed adoptive mother took her own initiative to find his biological parents. She met with resistance from many quarters, and the only information she had was that the parents were Canadian. Imagine the shock when she found that the biological mother died within the week of her son being handed over for adoption. She died in a motor vehicle accident near home. Her next task was to find the father. No one would talk. She travelled to some remote part of Canada where it was still considered a shame to have a child before marriage. She went to the library and looked at the archives. There were six pallbearers at the biological mother’s funeral, and her instinct told her that the father would be one of them. She located one of them and asked to see him. Alas, it was the wrong man. He was good humoured enough and told her he knew who the father might be – someone who had moved to work in a big city in Canada. She followed the trail there, made contact with the man and arranged to meet him at one of the famous shopping malls.

An hour went by and no one showed. She decided to see what the fuss was about this new shopping mall and walked to the other end. Then in the distance she thought she saw her son, who by then was twenty one. This man was pacing and walking just like her son. She went up to him and said, “Are you …….?”

Of course it was. The rest was history. She even bought a condo in the big city so that her adoptive son had somewhere to stay when he went visiting his biological father.

There are a few stories about adoption in my book “The Cockroach Catcher”.

Buy the book: The Cockroach Catcher

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The doctor is the drug

The Shrink in his Lake Cocytus blog told a moving tale “Missing you”, about a lady in her late 70s who has been seeing him for a few years. He said “... overall I must confess it's the case that, as better folk than I convey, the doctor's the drug.”

I have tons of patients or parents of patients like that when I was still with the late NHS, the one with no guidelines -- not NICE to say that really. One mother in particular used to have her hair done and really look like she was going to a party when she came to see me once a month. It took me a while to realize it was her only outing.

Another mother kept in touch for the better part of thirty years. Whenever she phoned I left instructions for the secretaries to get me. She even called from Canada on matters like “Should I buy the Condo so that my adoptive son could visit his natural father?" His natural mother had died in a car crash shortly after giving her son up in England, away from the prying eyes of a small town in Canada.

Yes. They only wanted to see us and if they had to pretend to be ill they would. Or their child might.

This is a quote from my book The Cockroach Catcher:

“In time, I realised that I had a collection of mothers who never missed a single appointment. It gradually became clear that my role was less of a psychiatrist but more of a surrogate grandfather, father, husband or uncle. There were a few couples who stayed with me a long time too.”