Editing One-child policy (section)

===Adoption and abandonment===
[[File:PRC family planning don't abandon girls.jpg|thumb|A roadside sign in rural [[Sichuan]]: "It is forbidden to discriminate against, abuse or abandon baby girls."]]

The one-child policy prompted the growth of orphanages in the 1980s.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Lary |first=Diana |title=China's grandmothers: gender, family, and aging from late Qing to twenty-first century |date=2022 |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |isbn=978-1-009-06478-1 |location=Cambridge, United Kingdom |pages=37 |oclc=1292532755}}</ref> For parents who had "unauthorized" births, or who wanted a son but had a daughter, giving up their child for adoption was a strategy to avoid penalties under one-child restrictions. Many orphanages witnessed an influx of baby girls, as families would abandon them in favor of having a male child.<ref name=":17">{{Cite news |last=Feng |first=Emily |date=4 July 2021 |title=China's Former 1-Child Policy Continues To Haunt Families |url=https://www.npr.org/2021/06/21/1008656293/the-legacy-of-the-lasting-effects-of-chinas-1-child-policy |work=National Public Radio |access-date=April 30, 2023}}</ref> Many families also kept their illegal children hidden so that they would not be punished by the government.<ref name="JohnsonKA" /> In fact, "out adoption" was not uncommon in China even before birth planning. In the 1980s, adoptions of daughters accounted for slightly above half of the so-called "missing girls", as out-adopted daughters often went unreported in censuses and surveys, while adoptive parents were not penalized for violating the birth quota.<ref name="johansson1991">{{Cite journal |last1=Johansson |first1=Sten |last2=Nygren |first2=Olga |date=1991 |title=The missing girls of China: a new demographic account |journal=Population and Development Review |volume=17 |issue=1 |pages=35–51 |doi=10.2307/1972351 |jstor=1972351}}</ref> However, in 1991, a central decree attempted to close off this loophole by raising penalties and levying them on any household that had an "unauthorized" child, including those which had adopted children.<ref name="JohnsonKA">{{Cite book |last=Johnson |first=Kay Ann |url=https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo22977673.html |title=China's hidden children: Abandonment, adoption, and the human costs of the one- child policy |date=2016 |publisher=[[University of Chicago Press]] |location=Chicago |language=en |access-date=25 September 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180925065248/https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo22977673.html |archive-date=25 September 2018 |url-status=live}}</ref> This closing of the adoption loophole resulted in the abandonment of some two million Chinese children, most of whom were daughters;<ref name="GoodkindBIllion" /> many of these children ended up in orphanages, with approximately 120,000 of them being adopted by parents from abroad.

The peak wave of abandonment occurred in the 1990s, with a smaller wave after 2000.<ref name="JohnsonKA" /> Around the same time, poor care and high mortality rates in some state orphanages generated intense international pressure for reform.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://archive.org/details/deathby_xxx_1996_00_9976 |title=Death by Default: A Policy of Fatal Neglect in China's State Orphanages |date=1996 |publisher=[[Human Rights Watch]] |isbn=978-1-56432-163-3 |location=New York |language=en |url-access=registration}}</ref><ref>{{Cite report |date=March 1996 |title=Chinese Orphanages: A Follow-up |url=https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/china96.pdf |url-status=live |publisher=Human Rights Watch/Asia |volume=8 |number=1 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160313022832/https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/china96.pdf |archive-date=13 March 2016 |access-date=4 December 2016}}</ref>

After 2005, the number of international adoptions declined, due both to falling birth rates and the related increase in demand for adoptions by Chinese parents themselves. In an interview with [[National Public Radio]] on 30 October 2015, Adam Pertman, president and CEO of the National Center on Adoption and Permanency,<ref>{{Cite web |title=Adam Pertman |url=http://www.nationalcenteronadoptionandpermanency.net/adam-pertman.html |access-date=31 October 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160220223030/http://www.nationalcenteronadoptionandpermanency.net/adam-pertman.html |url-status=live |website=National Center on Adoption and Permanency |archive-date=20 February 2016}}</ref> indicated that "the infant girls of yesteryear have not been available, if you will, for five, seven years. China has been ... trying to keep the girls within the country ... And the consequence is that, today, rather than those young girls who used to be available – primarily girls – today, it's older children, children with special needs, children in sibling groups. It's very, very different."<ref>{{Citation |title=How China's one-child policy transformed US attitudes on adoption |date=30 October 2015 |url=https://www.npr.org/2015/10/30/453217108/how-chinas-one-child-policy-transformed-u-s-attitudes-on-adoption |access-date=5 April 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180215122208/https://www.npr.org/2015/10/30/453217108/how-chinas-one-child-policy-transformed-u-s-attitudes-on-adoption |url-status=live |publisher=NPR |archive-date=15 February 2018}}</ref>