Adoptive Parents

The man from family planning liked to prowl around the mountaintop village, looking for diapers on clotheslines and listening for the cry of a hungry newborn. One day in the spring of 2004, he presented himself at Yang Shuiying's doorstep and commanded: "Bring out the baby." Yang wept and argued, but, alone with her 4-month-old daughter, she was in no position to resist the man every parent in Tianxi feared. "I'm going to sell the baby for foreign adoption. I can get a lot of money for her," he told the sobbing mother as he drove her with the baby to an orphanage in Zhenyuan, a nearby city in the southern province of Guizhou.

The balloons strung around the courthouse may have distracted other kids, but not Hector Arellano. The 11-year-old showed up at the Edmund D. Edelman Children's Court — shoes polished, hair styled and with one of his best tie and sweater vest combos — ready for business. "I'm here to see the judge so I can be adopted," he said smiling, standing just a few feet from his soon-to-be mom and dad, Susan and Clay Nichols, and his new big sister, Jessica. Photos: Adoption Day On Friday the Monterey Park county building that handles case after case of child abuse and neglect transformed into a place of celebration as more than 100 foster children were officially adopted as part of National Adoption Day. The event, held nationwide for 11 years, encourages people to become adoptive parents.

An Illinois couple who have adopted at least 11 children and once were honored by their home state as "adoptive parents of the year" have been jailed here on suspicion of attempting to purchase a year-old Mexican infant, authorities said. Charles H. Winks, 46, and his wife, Bette Winks, 49, whose last known address was the Central Illinois town of Hudson, were being held in the Tijuana city jail, according to agent Miguel Martinez Magana of the Baja California State Judicial Police. In 1985, U.

The rate of births among teenagers, preterm births, injury deaths for teens and binge drinking are all declining, and that's good news for America's children, according to a new government report issued Thursday. But more young teens are using illicit drugs, more are likely to be living in poverty and fewer have parents who are working full-time, according to the report , "America's Children: Key National Indicators of Well-Being 2011. " The report was compiled by the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics, a working group of 22 federal agencies that collect, analyze and disseminate data on issues relating to children and families.

When television producer Sibyl Gardner adopted a baby girl in China in 2003, the official story was that the infant had been abandoned on the steps of the salt works in the city of Guangchang, where a worker found the day-old child and took her to a social welfare institution. But after reading with "utter horror" the latest revelations of child trafficking in China in the Los Angeles Times, Gardner found herself contemplating a trip to back to Jiangxi province to investigate how Zoë, now 7, came up for adoption.

Our readers wrote letters throughout 1989 expressing their viewpoints on a variety of issues. Here are condensed versions of some of those letters. We appreciate their taking the time to share their viewpoints and look forward to hearing from more of them in 1990. I am livid every time a newspaper runs an article regarding the meeting of adopted child/birth parent. The reunion always reunites the child with the "real" parent, when in fact the child has met the "birth" parent. Please get it through your heads, we, the adoptive parents, are the real parents!

Two Russian girls have been returned to the custody of adoptive American parents accused of abusing the children on the airplane ride home from Moscow. The girls, now 5, were returned to live with Karen and Richard Thorne of Phoenix, said Maggie Lear, a spokeswoman for the Administration for Children's Services.

To many, the act seemed callous, even abusive: A Tennessee woman sent her 7-year-old adoptive son home to Russia alone last week, with a note that she no longer wanted him. Although the episode has been roundly condemned and authorities are investigating whether any laws were broken, adoptive parents of troubled children are speaking out.

I am livid every time the Los Angeles Times (or any other paper, for that matter) runs an article regarding the meeting of adopted child/birth parent ("A Mother Gets a Day She Can Call the Best," May 15). The reunion always reunites the child with the "real" parent, when in fact the child has met the birth parent. Please, get it through your heads, we, the adoptive parents, are the real parents! We have gone through the grief process and mourning associated with infertility.

A coalition of state, county and private social service agencies announced Thursday a two-year promotional and recruiting campaign designed to enlist more black and Latino adults as foster or adoptive parents of minority children. It was obvious that Niemieh and Gertie Owens, sitting proudly in the press conference audience with four young boys dressed smartly in coordinated sweaters and slacks, already had gotten the message.

In Congress and the courts, supporters of gay rights are attacking the Defense of Marriage Act, which among other things allows states to refuse to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states. But there is no law that gives states a similar ability to reject another state's adoption. That's why we're puzzled by a ruling issued last week by the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which held that Louisiana rightly refused to issue a birth certificate including both names of a gay couple who adopted a child.

"Like Dandelion Dust" is a well-acted, earnest film about adoptive parents' worst nightmare, dealing sympathetically with all parties in a lose-lose situation. Jack and Molly Campbell ( Cole Hauser and Kate Levering) very happily made Joey ( Maxwell Perry Cotton) part of their family six years ago; biological parents Rip and Wendy Porter ( Barry Pepper and Mira Sorvino) have recovered from their severe troubles to reclaim Joey on a technicality. Rip's alcoholism and violent tendencies resulted in the seven-year prison stay that enabled the legally tainted adoption to occur, which would seem to unfairly tilt the dramatic scales in the Campbells' favor.

Living with a secret is psychologically destructive — that concept was nearly an anthem for Annette Baran, a clinical social worker and psychotherapist who co-wrote "The Adoption Triangle," an influential 1978 book credited with giving early shape to the open-adoption movement. Baran died July 11 at St. John's Medical Center in Santa Monica of complications from an infection, said her son Joshua. She was 83 and lived in Santa Monica. "If there ever was an activist who changed the world of adoption, it was Annette," said Joyce Maguire Pavao, founder of the Center for Family Connections, an educational and counseling center in Cambridge, Mass.

The Red Thread A Novel Ann Hood W. W. Norton: 304 pp., $23.95 Destiny is tricky in fiction. In real life, destiny's best quality is clarity — the cleared path, the right decision, the way things are. So I'm told. But in fiction, destiny can seem forced, Hallmarky. The omniscient narrator looks forward and backward, weaving a clumsy pattern among seemingly disparate people and events. The trouble is, the omniscient narrator is only a false god, only an author.

To many, the act seemed callous, even abusive: A Tennessee woman sent her 7-year-old adoptive son home to Russia alone last week, with a note that she no longer wanted him. Although the episode has been roundly condemned and authorities are investigating whether any laws were broken, adoptive parents of troubled children are speaking out.

Over decades now, infertility or the simple desire to offer a child the chance for a better life has sent would-be parents to China in search of a baby to adopt. For so many, it was the perfect match. On one side of the Pacific were well-to-do couples yearning to share their love and good fortune; on the other were a plethora of little girls abandoned by impoverished parents in need of a son to support them in old age, or in violation of the country's so-called one-child policy. No one liked to think of adoptions in unseemly market terms, but in fact this was a case of supply and demand.

In a sharp rebuff to a state appeal panel, the California Supreme Court on Thursday refused to allow a Romanian refugee to withdraw her consent to the adoption of a child she bore after fleeing her native land and winning asylum in America. The justices unanimously overturned an unusual legal action taken by the state Court of Appeal here that would have enabled the woman to belatedly block the adoption on grounds she had been improperly advised of her rights and alternatives to adoption.

The sprawling home in Fife, Wash., where Father Jack Branche reared many of the 35 children he has cared for will continue to be a full house even after Branche moves east. Robert and Linda Cornyn and their 28 kids will be moving in. Branche, a Catholic priest who began taking in homeless and ill Indian children in Peru and is currently rearing nine children, is selling the house to the Pierce County Development Authority.

When television producer Sibyl Gardner adopted a baby girl in China in 2003, the official story was that the infant had been abandoned on the steps of the salt works in the city of Guangchang, where a worker found the day-old child and took her to a social welfare institution. But after reading with "utter horror" the latest revelations of child trafficking in China in the Los Angeles Times, Gardner found herself contemplating a trip to back to Jiangxi province to investigate how Zoë, now 7, came up for adoption.

The man from family planning liked to prowl around the mountaintop village, looking for diapers on clotheslines and listening for the cry of a hungry newborn. One day in the spring of 2004, he presented himself at Yang Shuiying's doorstep and commanded: "Bring out the baby." Yang wept and argued, but, alone with her 4-month-old daughter, she was in no position to resist the man every parent in Tianxi feared. "I'm going to sell the baby for foreign adoption. I can get a lot of money for her," he told the sobbing mother as he drove her with the baby to an orphanage in Zhenyuan, a nearby city in the southern province of Guizhou.