Adopting from China?
Read this review on Wanting a Daughter, Needing a Son
by Kay Johnson

Kay Johnson is a professor of Asian studies at Hampshire College. Wanting a Daughter, Needing a Son is a collection of essays she wrote over a decade. It summarizes her studies about population policy, child abandonment, orphanage care, and adoption in China. The book is both substantively scholarly and warmly engaging. The author synthesizes information about a huge, complex country very well.

I have been interested in the situation of orphans in China for a long time, but discovered new, helpful information from this book. When thinking about something as enormous as government and family in China, it is easy to generalize and stereotype. The author gently points out that some of our generalizations are not completely accurate. We tend to think that Chinese families don’t want daughters: Johnson claims that the Chinese now value daughters more than ever before; that they think of a complete family as having one son and one daughter, but that when forced to choose just one, they feel compelled to sacrifice the daughter because of societal need for a son. Another popular conception is that Chinese culture does not encourage adoption: Dr. Johnson found many Chinese singles and couples adopting orphans and raising them as their own, even at great cost. They do this even though the government often fines them for ‘over quota’ children.

This book explains and describes some of the consequences of China’s population policy on children, families, and the social welfare system. Wanting a Daughter, Needing a Son by Kay Johnson is honest about the enormity of the problems brought on by China’s population policy, but also hopeful about the potential for change.

Highly recommended.