In Your Language

Thursday, January 23, 2014

Reflection on Korea's "Baby Box"

There are so many points in which this topic relates to my life, past and present. I was adopted from Korea. My birth mother adopted a child. I have two unofficially adopted sons through marriage. This is BIG in my life.

To be clear, I am not for or against adoption. Adoption in of itself is fairly neutral; it has potential for good and for bad. For me, adoption has brought me many blessings, of course not without the curses- but who has the perfect life anyways? I am FOR relationships, biological and otherwise. I'm for blurring the lines between who SHOULD love whom.

There's an argument that only the birth parent can love a child the most in the arena of blended families. But let's pull that idea apart. So- in essence we're saying, we want to exclude the stepparent from being able to love the child JUST AS MUCH as the biological parent. Now let's also factor in the aspect of shared parenting and parenting time. Do we really want to limit the high quality of love available to our child just over a feeling of ownership? As a biological parent of a divorce, I hope to GOD that the stepmother loves my daughter as much as me, or at least strives to do so.

In the construct of the Korean society, single parenthood for the most part has been shunned for all of its history. Within that construct, even if a parent WANTED to keep the child, their world would make it nearly impossible to do so. There is a lack of support available to these potential single parents. Then, if a single parent would want to marry (the society is also against raising children that are not their own) that would be highly unlikely. This single parent would be socially ostracized and be left to drown in a sense.

Now let's say we just take away the box, well- that would not solve the problem of abandoned babies. It would not change their society. I think the point of the box is for the Korea to be so disgusted with itself that it would take on the shared responsibility to helping those babies thrive WITHIN said society instead of on the outskirts. My only idea that will make a dent in this horrible penchant for unwed mothers is to give them a free Visa to go to the USA or Scandinavia that has laws to support single parenting.

I would not criticize the pastor who created the "Baby Box" because he was just creating a humane solution to the societal problem of not valuing their babies. I doubt he'd be driven to do such a thing if he were in the United States of America. It was in the construct of their social environment that such a "solution" would be warranted. What most people don't realize is that the USA WANTS to keep adoptions flowing with other countries because it makes for better International Relations. So it's not entirely a "Korean Problem" knowing that there is a "demand" for their children and babies.

Is it that people are indignant that a religious person came up with a solution? Why is it so ingrating that an imperfect and yet selfless person of God provide such a ministry to strangers? I still find it odd that our individualist society is so PRO single parenting when that practically clashes with our self centered mindset entirely. You cannot be a good parent if you are stuck in that self centered mindset. Even when I wasn't a born again Christian, I didn't take "offense" to religious people doing their thing. Do we ever ask ourselves WHY we take offense to things like this? It's not a personal attack, and yet this gesture toward disadvantaged yet valuable babies creates such an uproar.

I don't think it should take a "baby box" for a society to wake up and take responsibility for their own especially when they profit from it. It's one thing to have such a horrible penchant, but then to profit from it just makes it that much more deplorable. In contrast, this pastor was not benefiting at all- yet he is the target for much criticism. But then again, God never said we would be immune to persecution.

I want to send warm wishes and hugs to all of you out there who read my blog or even the ones who don't know about me that are loving on people regardless of their DNA or legal relationship. This is a spiritual matter and a concern that invokes the question of our level of humanity. We need to see ourselves as a global family to some extent for advancement of world peace. Sending God's love to you and my own. Blessings~

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