One of the largest and steadiest adoption programs for transracial adoption over the past years has been the China program. China, a country struggling with a very large population, has thousands upon thousands of orphaned baby girls at any given time, due largely to the one child policy in China and the strong cultural desire for families to have a son.

Along with baby girls, China also has some baby boys, special needs children and older children available for adoption.

Over the past year or so, the wait for a referral from China has lengthened and lengthened, and while this has happened in the past (and the wait then shortened again), this time, China is making some significant changes to the program.

Here are two articles that discuss the changes…
-“China Tightens Adoption Rules” from the NYTimes

-“China says Unmarried, Obese and Over Fifty can’t Adopt” from CNN.com

The biggest changes are the steps that China is taking to narrow down the field of perspective parents. Parents must now be over 30 and under 50, they may have no more than four children in the home, they must be in good health physically and meet a body mass index requirement, people taking certain medications will no longer be able to adopt, and single moms will no longer be able to adopt.

Last year, Americans adopted almost 8,000 children from China, and these new requirements are most certainly going to affect that number next year.

It has been said that the new rules are to have more babies available for the “most qualified families”, and to help open things up for domestic adoption in China.

I have not heard that the one child policy has changed, which makes it hard for me to imagine that there will be many families in China willing and able to adopt a child, but obviously it would be a good thing if this were the case.

Another good thing is that the article above stated that they were going to strive to improve orphanage care, especially for very small and sickly babies, to help them live and become healthy babies. This would be a wonderful thing.

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