China's One Child Policy....

It's interesting to me that some people have the concept in their heads that China's one child policy simply means that the Chinese prefer boys and "throw their girls away". I get this comment so many times and it makes me shake my head. But I can't blame people. I didn't even get it until I read "Wanting a Daughter, Needing a Son". It's not simply a matter “preferring to have a boy.” It’s so much more complex than that. Without a son, parents won’t have anyone to take care of them when they are too old to work. In China, when daughters marry, they go to the husband’s family where they are then expected to care for the husband’s aging parents. You have to understand the whole culture, in order to make sense of the situation. Parents don’t prefer to abandon their daughters. It breaks their hearts. Often, the mother doesn’t have a choice-- the baby may be taken from her as soon as she is born; the mother feels the pain of labor, hears the baby cry, hears the announcement that the baby is female, and then never sees the child again. Often another family member will clothe the baby, write a loving note with vital information, and take the baby to an orphanage or market place in secret. I also read in "Wanting a Daughter, Needing a Son", that many of the girls who are abandoned or given up have an older biological sister still living with her biological parents. I know in my heart that my daughter was born last fall and was given up many months ago. I also know that somewhere across the world, there’s a woman who grieves every day for having lost her daughter. I feel a strong responsibility to that unknown woman, to provide my daughter with the love and the life she was not permitted to. I will honor that woman and think and pray for her on my daughter's birthdays and on Mother's Day.