The "China Doll" thing

There is an FCC type group a town or two away from us. They call their group the China Dolls. They've been on the news doing charity stuff, and they are just generally on the news every couple of months. It drives me crazy. My mom wanted to call my daughter her little China Doll - I had to have a huge argument with my parents before we even travelled. They were going to call her that whether I liked it or not. After all, the group a couple of towns away uses it, so I obviously had no idea what I was talking about. I tried to explain to them that most Asians feel that it is a throwback on prostitution, especially since that is what the Asian prostitutes were called during one of the war's. Most Asian's consider it a horrible racial slur, not to mention demeaning to women. My mom said "if you don't tell her she won't know - and it's cute and I'm going to use it". I asked her if she thought her grandaughter would never read a history book, would never talk to other Asians. And how would she feel at 16 to learn that what she thought had been a term of endearment was actually a racial slur against Asians - she'd be pissed as hell and would have every right to be. My mom dropped it, and I haven't heard it from her since. The group in the next city is still calling themselves that, though. We were camping the first summer home with our daughter. While we were out walking we started talking to an elderly gentlemen. He told us he had 16 grandkids and four of them were adopted, but he often had a hard time remembering which four, as they were all his grandkids and it didn't really matter. He then said that his daughter and son-in-law had started a group in their city (not in the city beside us, another one, several states away) and were calling it the China Dolls. I put my hand to my mouth and said "Oh NO", and then I explained to him that the term is considered a racial slur that refers to Asian prostitutes. He was horrified, was sure that his daughter didn't know that, and was going to tell her. I hope that they changed the name, maybe I managed to save some grief for a handful of kids. We were eating out once and a lady stopped by our table and said our little China Doll was so cute. I said "Oh NOOOO, she's a real live person, she's not a doll". I could make a whole post out of the things people have said to us when eating out or when shopping or when in line at the grocery store. But, back to the group a town or two away from us. I think I would have a problem with them even if they didn't use such an offensive term. It is a pretty small town - you know the kind, they have two exits on the interstate. And this very small (but very affluent) town has about 40 families who have adopted from China. But, the kicker is that all but about five of them attend the same church. It has turned into the "trendy" thing to do for those churchmembers. Their child is like an accessory to them, a status symbol. I've seen newspaper articles that talk about it like having an internationally adopted child is the latest fashion accessory - but knowing how these families act, I know that those newspapers aren't so far off of the mark. And that sickens me. We chose international adoption for a number of reasons - the most notable being the sad legal state of domestic adoptions. There have been instances where the birthmom lied about who the birthfather was, and five years later the birthfather managed to get joint custody of the child with the a-parents. There are cases where the birthfather managed to get full custody a year later. And there are cases where grandparents manage to get mandatory visitation, every other weekend. Now, I would honestly have no problem with allowing birth grandparents to be part of a child's life, but the whole mandatory EOW thing would piss me off. Family vacations would have to be worked around it, classes and games would be a problem every other weekend - it's just not for me. Mentally, I just needed to know that once the adoption was final that it was final, and no one could come back and contest it later. That is 90% of the reason we went international instead of domestic. Of course, there are a zillion reasons we chose China over the other countries - but every family has to make their own decisions. What is right for one family won't be right for another family. But, if you choose to call your child a China Doll, maybe China wasn't the right country for you.