Karin Evans

We follow the author as she completes the paperwork, the wait, and the trip to China to adopt a baby girl. She also discusses the social, historical, political, religious, and economic conditions that brought China to where it is today that forces parents to make the horrific decision to abandon a child. A well-informed story done with compassion. Excellent for parents waiting for their referrals; good for friends and family to understand the process; those already home with their children show more can re-live their journey. show less

The author adopted an infant, and several years later a toddler, from China but wasn't content to leave unexamined the conditions that caused her daughters and thousands upon thousands of other small girls to be available for adoption. She takes a clear and honest look at the one-child policy, its intended and unintended consequences, and does not even avoid the question of the morality of the Chinese government essentially selling off its unwanted surplus girls. Leaving the story in 2000, show more when her adopted children were 4 and 6 years of age, the question of their eventual self identities as interracial adoptees and natives of China raised in the USA remains open. It would be interesting to know how that worked out for them. show less

The memoir of an American mother of an adopted Chinese baby girl is a cultural history of the events that led to the controversial 1980 one-child policy in China and the subsequent generation-long abandonment of Chinese daughters to American families.

Having adopted a daughter myself from China, I at first had a difficult time understanding how a family could give up their daughter simply because she was a daughter. The Lost Daughters of China provides the reader with an alternate look at the process of giving up one's daughter.