An agonizing wait: Families adopting from China face slow process

NEW YORK — China remains the country of choice for thousands of Americans seeking to adopt a child, but the time frame for new applications is now often triple what it was a few years ago, and many families are enduring uncertain, emotionally draining waits.

“I've gone up and down with it — like a roller coaster ride,” said Barbara Duarte Esgalhado, a single mother in Manhattan. She has a 7-year-old daughter adopted from China and filed paperwork in January 2006 for a second adoption that has yet to materialize.

“You find yourself rethinking it a lot more — is this still a good idea?” said Duarte Esgalhado, 50, a writer and psychologist.

Her daughter, Uma, was a big fan of getting a sister when the idea surfaced three years ago. Now, she's ambivalent. “A 4-year-old thinks differently about a sibling than a 7-year-old,” her mother said.

Why the long wait?

The longer waits — projected at three or four years for many new applicants — officially are attributed to the large number of foreigners trying to adopt from China coupled with a smaller pool of available children and a slower review process. The China Center of Adoption Affairs, long respected for its ethics and efficiency, avoids specific promises about how long applications might take.

Texas-based Great Wall China Adoption, one of the largest agencies focusing on China, says its caseload is down by half.

“Unfortunately we've had families who have decided to withdraw from the process,” Great Wall spokesman Leigh Ann Graf said. “We have some families who are very angry about the wait times — and others looking at the time as a way to get all those things in that they won't be able to do after they become parents.”

The uncertainty has fueled rumors and speculation within the tight-knit community of Americans who have adopted from China or hope to do so. Some believe the longer waits are part of a temporary Chinese effort to scale back international adoptions ahead of the Beijing Olympics in August. Others wonder if China may be phasing out foreign adoptions almost entirely.

'Embarrassment factor'

“Our agency made clear our wait could be three years, four, five — they just don't know,” said Mike Suomi, a Manhattan architect. He and his wife, Jenn, have applied to adopt a second child to become a sister to 5-year-old Olivia, whom they adopted from China in November 2003.

“China is becoming an economic powerhouse,” Suomi said. “As far as we know, there's an embarrassment factor to having an inability to take care of your own children.”

The Suomis are working with Spence-Chapin, a venerable New York-area adoption agency whose caseload for China has dropped sharply due to the delays. Ann Hassan, the agency's China coordinator, said the wait can be much shorter if parents agree to adopt a child with a physical handicap such as a cleft palate or congenital heart disease.

The Suomis, both in their early 40s, are willing to consider such a child, depending on specifics of the impairment. They also considered adopting from elsewhere in Asia but found South Korea, Vietnam and