Love, Half A World Away -- China's Abandoned Children Join Seattle Families

The Ptasnik family had just stepped out of an orphanage and were snuggled, like loaves of bread on a supermarket shelf, in the back seat of the Chinese version of a minivan.

Cindy, the mother, held Katie, 2, in her lap. Dave, the father, cradled Joe, 8 months, against his chest. Hugs and squeezes abounded.

But silence stole the moment.

"It was an emotional time," said Cindy Ptasnik, 35, recalling that day in China when she, her husband and adopted daughter picked up their new adopted son. "It was our first moment as a family, and tears were running down our cheeks. We were so happy. But it was bittersweet, because though we were happy to have our kids, we also realized there were hundreds of other kids in that orphanage we were leaving behind."

CHINA'S ABANDONED CHILDREN

In recent years, growing numbers of Americans like the Ptasniks of Seattle have witnessed firsthand the harrowing impact of China's "one child per family" policy, established to curb the country's population growth.

The law penalizes parents who bear more than one child. The penalties are so harsh that many Chinese parents abandon their second or third child - and often the first child, if it happens to be a girl. The society values male heirs so highly that parents may also resort to abortion if they learn through ultrasound tests that their unborn baby is a girl.

Sometimes, parents abandon unwanted infants on the porches of orphanages. Other times, they drop them off in alleyways, near police stations or social-service agencies. Most times, they never see their children again.

The result?

China has an infant population that is increasingly warehoused in the country's orphanages, which are ill-equipped to provide adequate care to this new group of abandoned children. There are no firm figures, but those familiar with the situation in China estimate the number of abandoned children is in the hundreds of thousands.

There is an upside to this otherwise tragic situation.

China's dramatic increase in abandoned children coincided with something equally dramatic: the opening of its marketplace to the West. This has allowed its children, particularly infant girls, to be adopted by Westerners at unprecedented rates.

The Ptasniks, for example, adopted both of their children out of China during the past three years.

"We decided to adopt primarily because I am an adoptee," said David Ptasnik, 38. "I thought we'd carry on the tradition."

ADOPTION EASIER THAN IN U.S.

Before China's one-child-per-family laws and the opening of the country at the start of this decade, Americans and other Westerners rarely adopted Chinese children. But those two factors, combined with the difficulty of adopting children in the United States and elsewhere, make China one of the most attractive places on the planet to adopt.

"I had an acquaintance who told me that she tried to adopt three different infants at different times in the States. She even held those babies in her arms, but later the parents changed their minds about the adoption," said Katie Gargano of Seattle, who adopted an 8-month-old girl from China last year. "I wasn't willing to go through that."

So she and her husband, Mike, opted to adopt from China.

Janice Neilson, executive director of the Seattle chapter of World Association for Children and Parents (WACAP), an agency that was involved in the initial negotiations to allow Chinese adoptions, believes there are several reasons Americans and other Westerners will continue to go there to adopt.

Some countries, she said, won't allow prospective parents in their 40s or older to adopt infant children, but China does.

"That's very important for families, because they feel the younger the child, the more likely they'll be able to make an impact on its life," Neilson said.

She added that the likelihood of the birth parents in China reversing themselves after the adoption is low, since most of the children had been abandoned in the first place.

Neilson said her agency placed eight Chinese children in U.S. homes in 1991, the first year of Chinese adoptions. Now her agency places about 10 each month.

Judi Secord, manager of adoption services at New Hope Child and Family Agency in Seattle, said her agency this year is placing four to eight Chinese children in U.S. homes each month.

The cost of adopting a Chinese baby, according to Seattle-area families and agencies that have adoption experience, can range from as low as about $10,000 to about $20,000, including travel costs and payments to Chinese departments, depending on whether the family does it on their own or uses an adoption agency.

A MATTER OF MONTHS, NOT YEARS

The Immigration and Naturalization Service says there were 333 U.S. adoptions of Chinese children in 1993, the most recent year for which figures are available.

Like Neilson, Secord suspects Westerners are choosing to adopt from China because of availability and access. She also believes prospective parents know that the turnaround time is quicker for adopting a Chinese infant than children from the United States and other countries.

"We're able to get people through the (U.S.) paperwork side of adopting in a few months - and that's fairly quickly," Secord said. "Then it takes the family about three months to get through the Chinese system. So basically we're getting people through the system within six months, but people who are waiting for babies domestically have to wait years."

This hasn't always been the case. When China opened up in the early part of the decade, the adoption procedure could be excruciating. Chinese officials had no consistent policy; every province had its own regulations.

But as Western requests for adoptions increased, the Chinese in 1993 standardized their adoption policies.

"They set up a central adoption committee, and now all adoptions have to be approved by the central government," Secord said. "Prior to 1993, there were no regulations. And there was a fear that what happened in Romania a few years back - when there was a lot of buying and selling of children - would happen in China."

It hasn't happened.

BONDING WITH ELLE

Elle Gargano, dressed in a denim hat and dress, strutted to the counter, peered through the glass window at the fruit juices lined carefully along the shelf, then romped back over to her father, Mike, and squeezed his leg tightly.

"How big is Elle?" Mike Gargano asked, after lifting her off the floor. "How big is Elle?"

Slowly, the 15-month-old raised her small arms to the ceiling, looked her father in the eye, and smiled from ear to ear.

Elle was 8 months old when the Garganos traveled to China and made her their little girl. She was small, aloof and often expressionless. But the Garganos knew she was the child for them. They had traveled extensively in the Far East, grown to love its people and culture, and decided that adopting a Chinese child would be best for them.

When Elle was made available, they made themselves available for her.

"It took her two weeks to bond with us," Katie Gargano said. "That's it."

Now she waves at people, smiles, shouts "meow" to those she likes, whispers Big Bird's name whenever she sees a picture or doll of him.

Elle Gargano, once an abandoned child in China, now has an American point of reference - and, more important, a mother and father who love and care for her.

-------------------------------------------- FOR MORE INFORMATION ON ADOPTIONS IN CHINA: --------------------------------------------

- WORLD ASSOCIATION FOR CHILDREN AND PARENTS P.O. Box 88948, Seattle, WA 98138 Or: 315 S. Second St. Renton, WA 98055 (206) 575-4550

- INTERNATIONAL CONCERNS COMMITTEE FOR CHILDREN 911 Cypress Drive Boulder, CO 80303 (303) 494-8333

- AMERICANS ADOPTING ORPHANS 12345 Lake City Way N.E. Suite 2001 Seattle, WA 98125 (206) 524-5437

- NEW HOPE CHILD FAMILY AGENCY 2611 N.E. 125th St., Suite 146 Seattle, WA 98125 (206) 363-1800

- NATIONAL ADOPTION INFORMATION CLEARINGHOUSE 11426 Rockville Pike, Suite 410 Rockville, MD 20852 (301) 231-6512