When China abruptly announced on September 4 that it had terminated its longstanding international adoption program, it left in limbo hundreds of children whose adoptions were still pending, including my daughter-in-waiting, Penelope. Through tears of shock and disappointment, some 300 American families like mine are holding on to hope that China and the United States will collaborate to honor their promises to these children. International adoption between China and the U.S. has been a bright spot for humanitarian cooperation over the last thirty years. This partnership should not end with the grief of crushed hopes, but with the joyous celebration of the last matched children united with their promised families.
We were matched with Penelope in 2019 and five years of heartbreaking delays have passed since then.
My husband and I were already proud parents of a daughter from China, Gracie, who joined our family through adoption as a toddler in 2017, bursting into our house of biological sons with an explosion of pink and delight. Even as we traveled home with her, we planned to return to China. We had more love to give, we wanted our first daughter to grow up with a sister who shared her beautiful birth culture and heritage, and our hearts were open to an older child with medical needs whose chances of finding a family were running out.
I will never forget seeing a little girl’s profile on an advocacy site for children with medical needs late one night soon after we applied to adopt from China again in 2019. I awakened my husband to tell him, “I have found her, our missing piece.” We were soon officially matched as her family. We called her “Penelope” after the mythical figure who faithfully waited for her beloved because she had already been waiting for a family for years. We could never have guessed what delays loomed ahead.
By February 2020, we were expecting China’s formal invitation to travel to finalize Penelope’s adoption to arrive at any moment. Her soft bed was ready, her dresser full of clothes. We could hardly wait to meet her, sign the papers that would transform her from orphan to daughter, and bring her home.
But the invitation never came.
Broken promises and heartbroken families
In line with its zero-COVID policy, in 2020, China suspended processing of the roughly 400 U.S. families with adoptions pending, assuring families that matches would be honored once health conditions improved. Years went by. A few families were, at last, allowed to travel to China for their children in 2023 and 2024, raising hopes that the rest of us would soon follow.
Instead, after months of silence, families who had already waited five years were told the door had closed.
These precious children, all with special needs, have been stranded too long in institutions, which, at best, are temporary solutions. Each little one deserves the enduring nurture and support only a family can provide. I am haunted by the question: If we aren’t allowed to come for the children we were matched with, who will?
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Penelope was told we would come for her, and she has bonded with our family in the long years of waiting. She was five. She’s ten now. We’ve connected through video calls, gifts and letters; she has our photos and thinks of us as Mommy and Daddy in her heart.
How can a little girl, wounded already by the trauma of losing her birth family, bear the loss of her promised family too?
No one questions China’s right to discontinue future adoptions, although the program has benefited both our nations.
Our daughter Gracie is one of over 80,000 children from China successfully adopted into the U.S. between 1999 and 2023, thanks in part to China’s early commitment to a transparent and ethical international adoption process, in keeping with the principles of the Hague Convention.
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This number represents many lives changed by the nurture of families yet is dwarfed by the number of children still in need. According to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), “as of 2022, China reported 159,000 orphans…a clear underestimate.” These are both girls and boys, nearly all with significant illnesses and disabilities.
In our fragmented world, uniting vulnerable children with loving families is a cause that connects us in friendship and goodwill.
“At present, when China-U.S. relations are tense and mutual trust is lacking, such people-to-people exchanges are increasingly precious. Closing the door to international adoption indiscriminately might deepen overseas concerns about China,” writes CFR expert Yanzhong Huang.
Will China honor its word and its longstanding commitment to the principles of the Hague Convention by facilitating the completion of pending adoptions?
In a call with prospective adoptive parents on September 12, Pamela Bentley, a senior official with the U.S. Department of State, shared the Department’s engagement with the government of China to clarify this question.
Bentley recounted a situation similar to ours. After Russia ceased international adoptions in 2013, the DOS was able to arrange for roughly 250 children whose adoptions were already in process to join their families. “Do we hope?” she asked us. “We do hope, and we do more than hope. We are working for it.”
Families are working on it, too. An advocacy letter circulated by the National Council for Adoption, urging Congress to hold the State Department accountable for bringing matched children home, was signed and sent by nearly 13,000 constituents to their legislators within days.
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We appeal to China to honor its promise of families to these 300 children whose adoptions were already in process. It would be such a small thing for China to do, but for Penelope and the other little ones who wait, it would be life-changing.
Whatever the political differences between our countries, we can all agree on uniting children in need with loving families. It’s a collaboration of compassion, a win-win for both our nations. Please, President Xi, let Penelope come home.
Aimee Welch is a former journalist and an adoptive parent who lives in Louisville, Kentucky. She has been a leading parent advocate for completing China adoptions since 2020.
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