Bal Jagat - Children's World Inc. 5199 E. Pacific Coast · PDF file―Christina Aguilera, Christina Aguilera: "Back to Basics" “Carpe diem. Seize the day, boys. Make your lives extraordinary”

Bal Jagat - Children's World Inc. 5199 E. Pacific Coast Highway, Suite #204 Long Beach, CA 90804 www.baljagat.org (562) 597-5029 [email protected]

Newsletter Editor- Mausami Momaya. For suggestions and contributions- [email protected]

March 2015 In this issue:

Bal Jagat- Children's World Inc.

2015 Country Programs

China group number

Adopting Boys article

You tube video on adopting boys

A few words from the Editor

ALP Class Special

"Boys are unpredictable. This maybe not be news, but

I'm starting to think it's one of the best things about

them.” ― Kate Brian, Megan Meade's Guide to the

McGowan Boys

“There’s nothing more dangerous than a boy with

charm.” ― Christina Aguilera, Christina Aguilera:

"Back to Basics"

“Carpe diem. Seize the day, boys. Make your lives

extraordinary” ― John Keating

“...freedom being the sauce best beloved by the boyish

soul.” ― Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/94091.Kate_Brian

http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/841287


http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1017158.Christina_Aguilera



http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/623693.John_Keating

http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1315.Louisa_May_Alcott




India and China

In China, there are healthy boys and girls as well as minor to moderate correctable special needs, and older children waiting to be adopted. We are currently accepting applications for new families in CA and ALL STATES. Single women may now also adopt healthy and correctable special needs children.*

In India, there are minor to moderate correctable needs, young & older children waiting to be adopted, boys and girls. The registration for healthy children recently opened. We are currently accepting applications for new families in Southern CA only.

Bal Jagat- Children's World Inc partners with many agencies that have country programs in all parts of the world. We will complete the homestudy and progress reports, and they will assist with Child Placement.

Remember, if you are working with another agency, we can complete your homestudy. We can also help you with child placement. Please inquire with us and make a personal orientation appointment to see which country program is right for you. There are so many children in the world that need a loving family.

We are also able to assist with progress reporting (both post placement and post adoption), Re- adoption (AKA California adoption) and homestudy services even if you are working with another child placement agency. Please inquire with us to learn how we can assist you.

There are always special needs children in every country waiting to be adopted. Please note: Country information is subject to change without notice. Other eligibility requirements vary by country program. If you are open to gender the wait may be reduced. In most countries (except for India) there are always more boys than girls. In China your wait may be lessened if you are open to boys or girls (keep both options open).

Current China Groups! Currently the CCCWA is processing Group #129 (Log in date 1-10-2007) and

Group #142P (Log in date 1-11-2008) for healthy children. Special focus referrals are also being processed as soon as they are ready.



Adopting Boys http://www.comeunity.com/adoption/boys/

When prospective adoptive parents consider adoption for the first time, most often they first envision adopting a baby girl. Indeed, when given an option, up to 80% of those seeking to adopt will ask for a girl. Adoption is a very personal decision for every adoptive family. However, the end result of our decisions may be that boys, even baby boys, wait in orphanages for long periods of time for their forever family.

Bringing Up Babes: Why do adoptive parents prefer girls?

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/hey_wait_a_minute/2004/01/bringing_up_babes.html By John Gravois John Gravois is an editor at the Washington Monthly.

In an October Slate column, Steven E. Landsburg deduced from

an array of data that parents, on average, prefer sons over

daughters. His evidence lay in a few recent studies that show that

daughters have a slight but marked tendency to break up (or else

forestall) marriages while sons tend to keep them together. But it

turns out there's a fascinating fork in the statistical trail of bread

crumbs.

For years, it's been common currency in adoption circles that

girls are far more popular than boys among adoptive parents.

Now there's data to confirm it, which has prompted another

round of speculation about gender preference among parents—an issue that is bound to rouse

more interest, and concern, as the era of assisted reproduction progresses.

This past August, the Census Bureau released an unprecedented report comparing adopted,

biological, and stepchildren based on results from the 2000 Census—amazingly, the first census

to differentiate between these groups. First of all, the report found that there are about 105 boys

for every 100 girls in the general population of biological children under the age of 18. Adopted

children, it turns out, present a very different picture, with a "sex ratio"—the sociologists' term—

of 89 boys for every 100 girls. What's more, adopted children under the age of 6 constitute a

group where there only are 85 boys for every 100 girls. (The Census Bureau reports that

stepchildren—a sizable population whose sex ratio is closer to the norm—are usually adopted at

later ages than orphans are. Hence the under-6 drop-off.)

http://www.slate.com/authors.john_gravois.html

http://www.slate.com/id/2089142/



Last but not least, the sex ratio of adopted children goes still further off-kilter if you look only at

international adoptions. The Immigration and Naturalization Service (now part of the

Department of Homeland Security) has kept up excellent data on international adoptions over

decades of processing visa paperwork. Its word: Girls make up about 64 percent of all children

adopted by Americans outside the United States. That's a mere 56 boys for every hundred girls.

What explains the disproportion? If we didn't know better, the most

obvious conjecture would be that these numbers simply reflect an

imbalance in supply. After all, America's leading source of adoptees is

China, where the legacy of female infanticide is the grimmest hallmark

of that country's overwhelming preference for males. The organization

Families With Children From China reports that about 95 percent of

children available for adoption in China are girls. Other Asian adoption

hubs (like Korea, the erstwhile lead supplier) have orphan sex ratios

that tend in the same direction. So Americans adopt more girls because

other countries don't want them, right?

Wrong. Unlike biological parents, who must simply make do with what the procreative coin toss

affords them—as in a market determined solely by supply—adoptive parents get to be upfront

about their gender preferences. And a look at those preferences suggests that, in fact, the

adoption market in China represents a happy coincidence of supply and demand.

Numbers vary, but it's pretty safe to say that somewhere between 70 percent and 90 percent of

parents looking to adopt register some preference for a girl with an agency. It doesn't matter if

they're adopting from China, where girls far outnumber boys; from Russia, where the numbers

are about even; or from Cambodia, where there is typically a glut of orphan boys and a paucity

of girls. Everywhere, demand tends to favor the feminine.

And, as the case of Cambodia suggests, demand can in fact exert an influence on supply—and

not a happy one. In the late '90s, Cambodia became a popular source for American adoptions,

thanks to a relatively quick, cheap, and tidy process. But for whatever reason (some cite a

Cambodian tradition that girls are expected to take care of their parents when they get older),

Cambodia didn't offer the standard Asian profile of adoptable children. Boys outnumbered girls

by a healthy margin. So what happened was what you would expect to happen in an under

policed free market: Market pressure built up, until certain enterprising Cambodian adoption

suppliers, or "facilitators," stepped in and found a way to meet demand.

Evidence of child-trafficking came to light in late 2001 and early 2002, when several poor

Cambodian women stepped forward saying they had been approached by someone from an

"NGO" who offered them a sum of money—significantly more for a daughter than for a son,

though never more than $200—in exchange for their children. When that "NGO" turned out to

be an orphanage, the U.S. Embassy and the then-INS slammed the gates on all U.S. adoptions

out of Cambodia. They haven't reopened the gates yet.



Scholars inside the adoption community are quick to admit that the historical aura of secrecy

surrounding adoption has hobbled research efforts to account for the decided preference among

parents for girls. Still, there are a few decent indicators. First, there are certain norms and

stereotypes peculiar to the world of adoption that have been wafting around since adoption

became a modern institution. Take, for example, the following quote, an excerpt from the 1916

annual report of the Spence Alumni Society, one of the very first American adoption agencies:

"Why do so many people prefer girls! The majority seem to feel that a girl is easier to understand

and to rear, and they are afraid of a boy." Quaint, yes, but the same view still crops up regularly

enough in adoption-talk that it invites some probing. Parents might be "afraid of a boy" because

the adoption market stalks frightful circumstances like poverty, instability, and violence around

the map: When taking the somewhat risky step of bringing a foreign element into their family,

parents might perceive little boys to be inheritors of their homes' uneasy fortunes, whereas little

girls can more readily seem to be hapless victims of circumstance. Or it might be that, as

Landsburg suggested in a follow-up piece, adoptive parents choose girls out of an inference that

his theory is true—that most biological parents like sons better—and therefore they gather that

"boys will tend to be put up for adoption when there's something seriously wrong with them, but

many girls will be put up for adoption simply for

being girls."

According to Adam Pertman, the real answer lies

elsewhere. Pertman, the executive director of the Evan

B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, a New York-based

think tank, and author of the book Adoption Nation,

suggests that the most important step in figuring out

why so many people want to adopt girls is to look at

who wears the pants in most adoption processes. Hint:

It isn't the men.

"The extent to which women are the driving force in most adoptions is probably a factor," he

says. "It's usually true that the women are filling out the paperwork, going to the conferences, the

support groups." He adds, "If I speak at a conference—whether it's on adoption or family

issues—at least 80 to 90 percent of any of these audiences are women."

If men are indeed largely silent partners in most adoptions, it could indicate that men's

preferences with regard to their children's gender are simply not as strong when patrimony is not

an issue. A man might hanker pretty strongly after a biological son to pass down both his name

and his genes; but if that grand prize, so to speak, is not on the table, he may not care as much

either way. Furthermore, if women are the ones running the show in most adoptions, and

daughters are the ones getting adopted, it might nudge us toward the overall conclusion that

parents merely tend to want children who are like themselves. Absent a strong paternal vote,

mothers adopt daughters—and, as Landsburg noted, "fathers stick around for sons when they

won't stick around for daughters." If adoption has any light to shed on the larger questions of

http://www.slate.com/id/2089756/

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=2XSAX7AL09&isbn=0465056512&itm=1



gender preference among parents, this is probably it: More often than not, the view from

adoption has it, mom wants a little girl, and dad wants a little boy.

But perhaps it's worth considering whether deeper motivations might also

be at work. Let's assume that the parenting instinct combines two different

components: a procreative and a nurturing urge. Some might say women

disproportionately answer to the call of nurture, and men are more

susceptible to the leaner procreative impulse. In most instances, adoption

provides people who cannot satisfy the latter part of that instinct

(procreate!) with a means at least to satisfy the former (nurture!). By that

reasoning, parents (mostly women) who initiate adoptions do so because

they want children to nurture and love, and they adopt girls out of a

common perception—however accurate or inaccurate it may be—that girls respond better to

nurturing than boys do. Perhaps adoption simply isolates one of the variables involved in why

people become parents, and that variable happens to be one that favors girls.

Any institution that grafts altruistic motives, and ends, onto stubborn instinctual

predispositions—which is what adoption does—is a cause for rejoicing. (Full disclosure: I have

two adopted siblings.) But the adoptive parents' freedom to choose their child's gender can, as

recent events in Cambodia suggest, cast a potentially darker light on this cuddly scenario. When

little girls or little boys become preferred commodities—instead of just glints in the eye—there

can be unforeseen, and unfortunate, consequences.

In this, adoption may be a bellwether of things to come, as rising technologies of assisted

reproduction begin to afford biological parents a similar freedom to stipulate the gender of their

children-to-be. If nothing else, the case of adoption shows that gender preferences can indeed

skew pretty far to one side if parents are free to jot them down before the fact of parenthood

(after which point one's theoretical desire for either a son or a

daughter usually breaks up against an actual, beloved child of

either gender). Perhaps, all speculation aside, we should regard

this particular freedom with a wary eye—

and applaud the growing number of

adoption agencies that don't allow

prospective parents to stipulate any gender

preference in the first place.

Please note: the views expressed in this

article may or may not reflect the views of

BJCW Inc. The article is presented in order

to initiate a discussion and decide what is

best for your family.

Check out this great YouTube video on adopting Chinese boys! http://youtu.be/5ij

ggNs2Ask



A few words from the Editor.... Over many years I have thought about all of the adoptive applicants who tell us at Orientation, "I always wanted a little girl." I wonder if a family had given birth, they would have a 50/50 percent chance of a boy or girl, right? Then why is it, that many seem so adamant about a girl? Some applicants are adopting to balance the gender of boys and girls in their family (understood). While others tell me it was always a dream of theirs. They imagine her as a doll, with dresses and bows in her hair (a cute dream, though many little girls play soccer and hate dresses). Still others tell me that they realize the plight of orphan girls in many countries is daunting and that they want to give a girl a chance for a better life and a future (this is true). Others didn't even know that boys are available or never really thought about adopting a boy (that is why we are dedicating this newsletter to adoption of boys). Finally, many single women believe that they are better off with a boy (this is a myth). Meanwhile in orphanages around the world, boys are languishing, waiting to be part of a family. Sometimes the wait for a male is 1/2 the time of a female. Many boys just did not get adopted because everyone requested a female, so just remained at the orphanage and grew older. I have seen for myself how wonderful and sweet boys can be. Many boys who came at an older age are very helpful around the house and want to please their parents. They love sports and make friends very easily. In single mother households, they are proud to be the "man of the house." Boys are not expensive to raise. They are extremely happy with a ball and a game of catch. You can't convince me that boys are not just as cute in their overalls and little suits as girls in their princess dresses !

If you are in the process of adopting and waiting for a referral, ask yourself this question: "Have I thoroughly processed my child request? Am I open to a boy? why not?" Ask yourself, "Can I make a difference in the life of a little boy?"



Adoption Learning Partners

March's $10 monthly feature is the

recorded webinar

"Are You Sleeping?" The presenter is Dr.

Julian Davies.

http://www.adoptionlearningpartners.org/c

atalog/webinars/are-you-sleeping.cfm

Bal Jagat- Children's World Inc. is a non profit intercountry adoption agency, licensed by the State of California. We serve Los Angeles, Orange, Ventura, Santa Barbara, San Bernardino, Riverside, San Diego, Kern and San Luis Obispo Counties directly and our country programs are nationwide. Bal Jagat- Children's World Inc. is a member of the Joint Council of International Children's Services and is fully Hague Accredited by the Council on Accreditation. We are not affiliated with any religious organization and accept all religions. Our goal is to unite orphaned children from around the world with loving and stable families in America.

Opinions expressed in this newsletter are not necessarily those of the Bal Jagat- Children's World Inc. newsletter editor, Executive Director, Director of Social Services, Board of Directors or Adoption Social Workers. We reserve the right to edit any and all materials received for this newsletter.

Adoptive families are free to forward this newsletter to individuals who support international adoption.

Bal Jagat - Children's World Inc is accepting donations year round. Tax deduction certificates will be provided. A Fully Hague Accredited International Adoption Agency, Building Forever Families Since 1983. Please join us on Face book (two profiles- Bal Jagat and a page- Bal Jagat- Children's World Inc.) Follow us on Twitter! @baljagat1

* All of Bal Jagat's previous newsletters are available on our website: http://www.baljagat.org/social-media--blogs-newsletters/category/newsletters-2014

Documents

Bal Jagat - Children's World Inc. 5199 E. Pacific Coast · PDF file―Christina Aguilera, Christina Aguilera: "Back to Basics" “Carpe diem. Seize the day, boys. Make your lives extraordinary”