Girls Versus Boys

As I watch Quinn toddle around our living room, looking just as cute as she can be, I contemplate the series of events that brought her all the way from Datong City, China,  to my living room in Viborg,  South Dakota.  Mainly I think about the decisions that her birth mother had to make when she discovered that Quinn was a girl...with spina bifida.

Was she abandoned because she was a girl, or because she was a girl with a handicap?  The One Child policy in China has caused some problems in China that has been surfacing over the past few years due to the lack of potential wives for the many sons raised during the past 30 years since this policy began.

Cultural preferances are usually based on necessity.  My great grandparents raised 11 children on a farm, but large families were the norm back then.  The more hands available to work on the farm, the more land that could be farmed.  As our culture changed to 8-5 jobs and families living in the suburbs, the need for large families declined.  We became a "One girl, One boy" society, with the average family being 2.4 children.  (The .4 comes from those "crazy" families who went ahead, flaunting convention, and having "GASP".... 3 children!)

I think it's interesting that China is now having to rethink this policy and begin taking steps to address the gender imbalance that they are seeing.  This article below touches on some of the changing viewpoints, and some of the steps being taken currently to amend the gender imbalance trend.

http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/show/single/en/4702-China-s-gender-crisis

I think that someday down the road, China will regret shipping off so many of their little treasures, like Quinn, to other parts of the world.  Hopefully they will come to understand that every child is a treasure and special, no matter what limitations they have. 

Our group's three treasures~  (yes, ours is the crabby one!)

Quinn was not happy having her picture taken!