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China's one-child policy likely to have subtle impact in the suburbs

While there eventually might be some positive business impacts from last week's change to China's 36-year-old one-child policy, experts say the local effect on adoptions from China will be small.

Other factors have already significantly lowered the number of Chinese adoptions from its peak of a decade ago, said Joan Jaeger, director of outreach and communications for The Cradle adoption agency in Evanston.

From 2005 to 2014, the number of Chinese children adopted in the U.S. dropped 74 percent, she said.

This is largely because the Chinese economy has changed and strengthened enough for more parents to raise their own children, even girls who historically were considered of lower economic value to struggling families, Jaeger said.

Furthermore, the Chinese government has been taking steps to encourage more in-country adoptions of abandoned children, she added.

That being said, Jaeger said she has little doubt the one-child policy had a lot to do with the number of children being abandoned. How much that influenced the number available for adoption in the U.S. is harder to say. Children with special medical needs were more likely to be abandoned. The wait to adopt a healthy child can stretch into years, she said.

Annette Pritz of Geneva said she and her husband, John, entered the process of Chinese adoption twice, both times with the aim of making a child in need of special attention part of their family.

And in the case of both their daughter Taytum in 2012 and another girl with whom the Pritzes were matched just weeks ago, the adoptions were able to take place within a year, Pritz said.

While Taytum needed surgeries for a cleft palate, the new daughter whom the family expects to pick up in about five months has some developmental delays.

Siva Yam, president of the Chicago-based U.S.-China Chamber of Commerce, said the one-child policy was never intended to be permanent, and that the time to change it had clearly come.

Not only is the current population of the country aging, but it's been further handicapped by a disproportionately higher number of men than women, he said.

Changing to a two-child system should not only restore China's competitiveness in manufacturing, but also create new opportunities in China for American firms providing everything from baby formula to higher education, Yam said.

Though unpopular in its enforcement, most Chinese people would recognize there to have been a practical value to the one-child system, Yam said. But that benefit has now obviously passed, he said.

The system has created a relatively new cultural phenomenon of childhoods that are both lonely and spoiled, Yam said. While most children don't have the peer support of siblings, they typically grow up the center of attention of six adults — two parents and two sets of grandparents.

But Yam doesn't believe the change to a two-child system will create a dramatic spike in young people in China.

“We don't know how it's going to play out because the culture has changed,” he said.

The cost of living is so high in China that many people have been remaining single. Culturally, a man in search of a wife has been expected to own a house first, but such a thing is beyond the means of many today, Yam said.

The one-child policy probably hasn't been a strong motive for those who have emigrated from China, he said. More common reasons would be a desire for a higher quality of life, less pollution and better educational opportunities.

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Joan Jaeger
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