Why the long wait?

There are many theories and much speculation about what is happening with Chinese adoptions and why adoptive families are having to wait so long to receive their child.

We all know about the China one child policy and the preference for boys. We have heard the stories about Chinese orphanages that are filled with little girls. So if this is the case, why the wait?

The only official statement that has been provided by the CCAA is that the wait is dependent on the number of children that are available. Period. So that leads one to believe that since the wait is well over 2 years, that there are not that many children available for adoption. Many Chinese adoption "experts" say this is simply not true. Who should we believe???

Here are a few THEORIES. Remember, this is pure speculation. Nothing has been confirmed or denied by the CCAA.

These are the positive THEORIES:
1) As the Chinese economy continues to prosper, more and more families are able to pay the penalties for having more than one child. Also, in certain regions and circumstances, the government is allowing families to have more than one child and abandonment is on the decline.
2) Domestic adoption is on the rise in China. Again, more families are beginning to have more money and domestic adoptions are occurring more and more frequently.

I truly hope those two theories are true.

These are the not so positive THEORIES:
1) The Olympics are being held in China in the summer of 2008. The world's spotlight will be on China in many different areas. Many believe that the Chinese don't want to appear as the world's leading exporter of babies. They think the slowdown has been directly related to the Olympics and the need to save face.
2) The CCAA has been given a direct quota by the government as to the amount of children that are allowed to be adopted internationally. They cannot go over this quota, regardless of the number of children that wait in orphanages.
3) Adoption seems to be sort of the "in" thing to do, and over the past 2-3 years China was flooded with applications for international adoption. The amount of applications far out number the number of available children.
4) China is wanting to increase the number of adoption of special needs children. They are making the wait much longer for children that do not have special needs in hopes that more families will adopt children with special needs.
5) China is wanting to keep healthy girls in their country to help balance out the gender imbalance (this one I personally think is ridiculous because the number of girls adopted internationally is a drop in the bucket compared to China's overall population...I personally think international adoption plays a VERY minuscule part in the gender imbalance. VERY minuscule.)

Again, NONE of these theories are confirmed. The bottom line is, no one knows for sure why the long wait.

We have grown to the point of acceptance of knowing we have zero control of our adoption process. The wait is what it is. So we wait. We hope and pray that things will speed up, but we have decided to plant ourselves firmly in the line until our day comes. We believe that eventually we will hold our little girl.