This week marks World Adoption Day. Poignantly, it’s also my daughter’s 11th birthday, which she will spend waiting in an institution in China—her sixth such birthday since she was told that our family would soon come for her and finalize her adoption.
Penelope, as we call her, has no idea that millions of people have heard her story in news reports and that around the world, people are advocating for her and the other 300 Chinese children whose adoptions have been left in limbo to be allowed to join their intended families.
We adopted our first daughter, Grace, from China in 2017 the day after she turned a year old. She left the kind but temporary caregivers of her orphanage and learned the meaning and permanency of family even as she learned to talk and toddle.
Delighted to add a precious daughter to our family of four beloved sons, we made plans to return to China to adopt another child––a waiting older girl who shared Grace’s birth culture and heritage. As a waiting child’s likelihood of finding a permanent home decreases precipitously with each year of age, we specifically wanted to welcome a child whose hope of a home might be running out.
We were officially matched as Penelope’s promised family in September 2019, when she was five years old. In the photos we received, her bright smile—despite her medical needs and long wait for a family—captured our hearts. We chose her English name, Penelope, because of the ancient Greek myth that told of a beautiful woman who faithfully persisted in hope of being united with her beloved. It seemed providential when we learned that the Chinese name given to her by her orphanage meant “morning light”—especially light that comes after a long night of waiting.
We completed the remainder of Penelope’s adoption process as quickly as we could, and it was approved bythe governments ofboth China and the US. When she turned six, we believed it was the last birthday she would celebrate without us. By January 2020, we had entered the final stages of the adoption process. She was told we would soon become her family and bring her home to the United States.
But then the pandemic struck. China paused adoption processing, making assurances that matches would be honored when health concerns resolved. Instead of welcoming Penelope into our arms the weekend we should have finalized her adoption, we met her virtually on a video call. Her caregiver who served as our translator said, “She has never had a mother or father before.” Although shy, she didn’t hesitate to call us “Mommy and Daddy.” Our bond grew through packages, letters, photos, and videos exchanged.
Yet more than four years later, we find ourselves still waiting to be united, uncertain whether the promise of family made to Penelope will be honored.
In September 2024, the US Department of State shared China’s decision to end its successful inter-country adoption program, leaving Penelope and roughly 300 other children who had already been matched with US families in limbo for years, perhaps never to experience the loving homes they were promised.
The news is dire because 98 percent of the more than 160,000 children in China living outside of a family’s care—a roughly equal mix of boys and girls—have complex medical needs, making them unlikely candidates for domestic adoption.
International adoption was determined to be in Grace’s best interests because she was born without her left hand and forearm. While disability is stigmatized in some cultures, she thrives in our family and is celebrated for her difference and adaptability in the US.
Penelope has a serious but manageable lifelong condition; if she receives good medical treatment and the emotional care a family can provide, we’re confident she’ll flourish as Grace has. The other children whose adoptions are pending live with spina bifida, Down syndrome, genetic disorders, spinal muscular atrophy, cardiac abnormalities, blindness, or other conditions, many of which have only become more pressing as their promised adoptions have been delayed.
More than the sum of symptoms listed in their files though, these children are precious individuals created in the image of God, of infinite worth, perfectly designed (Ps. 139:14–18). Whatever their physical needs, their great and universal need is for the love of families. Their prospective families recognize the privilege it would be to welcome them as sons and daughters.
As Ryan Hanlon, president and CEO of the National Council For Adoption, said, no one questions Beijing’s right to discontinue international adoptions going forward, but the children whose adoptions were already in process should be accommodated: “The adoptions that were happening to the U.S. were older children and children with medical special needs.”
If these children were being placed in caring, permanent families in China, that would be something we could celebrate. But both the US and China determined that, for these children, international adoption was and is their best chance for permanent families.
Beijing should reassure children like our Penelope, who had already been matched with families, that their adoptions will be finalized—rather than leaving them to languish in institutions and, at best, launch into adulthood without adequate support.
In a recent statement, President Xi Jinping pointed out that the China-US relationship is “one of the most important bilateral relations in the world” and expressed a commitment to pursue “win-win cooperation,” working “with the United States as partners and friends, which will not only benefit the two countries but also the world at large.”
Completing the nearly 300 pending adoptions between China and the US is a prime opportunity to achieve these goals. As one of the largest and most successful adoption programs in the world, the China-US adoption partnership thrived for decades as a bridge of friendship and humanitarian cooperation, placing 82,000 children in grateful American families and creating a person-to-person bond of goodwill between our nations.
This is why, earlier this month, 103 members of Congress sent a letter to President Biden in a rare act of bipartisan and bicameral unity, asking him to personally “act in the best interest of these children and families by urging the PRC to fulfill and uphold the commitment the country has made.”
While governments struggle to adequately support vulnerable children, adoption helps them flourish. Adoption can make a world of difference for one vulnerable child at a time. As part of Penelope’s adoption process, we promised to provide lifelong love, care, and support, and we have never given up hope that we might be allowed to keep that promise. The pain of another family lost isn’t what the children in adoption limbo deserve. Nor is it a fitting end to three decades of humanitarian cooperation between the US and China to secure homes for tens of thousands of children.
As parents, we follow the example of the shepherd who left the 99 to seek the one who was lost, believing that adoption can be a partial, if imperfect, answer to the brokenness that leaves children in need of families. We believe these particular children, whom we have loved and prayed for from a world away, were woven into our stories for a purpose.
Waiting children officially matched with carefully vetted and approved adoptive families shouldn’t spend birthday after birthday in institutions. This World Adoption Day, on our sweet Penelope’s birthday, China should honor the promises made to these children and make a way for them to come home.
Aimee Welch is a former journalist and an adoptive parent. The founder of Hope Leads Home, she has been a leading parent advocate for completing China adoptions since 2020.
