Reasons Why Children Given to Thailand Orphanage

One of the main questions which many adoptees and their parents wish to have answered is why the child was not kept by the biological parents.

To fully understand the most common reasons for adoption, it is important to understand some of the key differences between life in Thailand at this time and life in western civilization. Thailand is a newly industrialized country which has experience great changes in the past 50 years.

In Thai society, there still is practically no government social security or welfare, and there are still many millions of poor people. There are many people living on the edge, often desperately. You don't see this in Bangkok, but Thailand is a very large and diverse country. Indeed, most people in Bangkok are migrant workers distantly separated from their extended family and support structure, and are in Bangkok for the purpose of making money and sending it back home.

Older members of the family depend on younger members to send money and support them in old age. There is a lot of responsibility and pressure on the young, more educated, and more economically productive to go out and work to make more money and improve the life of the family, or just help the family hold the line.

It is not at all like in western civilization where you move out from your family home at around age 18 and your parents come out living by themselves happily and independently. Extended families often live together in the same house or the same close cluster of houses. Parents often have no career except as a farmer or run a small shop or food stand. As education has improved dramatically over the decades, there are expectations that children will do better than their parents, and will send money and material things back home.

If a young couple has a child before they are ready to form a family, or if a lady has a child outside of marriage, it not only adds additional burden on the family, but it also derails an economically productive member of the family.

We have found the following reasons for a child being put into the care of an orphanage or abandoned:

• Poverty -- the most common reason, with many considerations which people from western civilization can hardly comprehend

• Migrant workers of low income, unable to support baby and both work (often upcountry Thai people working in Bangkok)

• Husband/boyfriend abandoned wife/girlfriend (and possibly family), single mother with baby could not work, gives up baby to go to work

• Teenage or college pregnancy, parents too immature or unable or unwilling to change lifestyle to housewife / family

• Pregnancy without marriage whereby child is hidden from families or community

• Abusive extended family or dysfunctional family, deemed unsuitable for a child to be raised in, orphanage would be better

• Female infidelity or prostitution or rape, whereby female cannot absorb child into extended family or community

• Illness, including tuberculosis (still common in Thailand), other natural ailments, alcoholism, drug addiction, HIV, etc.

• Natural calamity such as drought or flooding of the farm, or pest infestation, creating an economic crisis for the family at the time

• Migrant workers from an adjacent country (Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar/Burma), just cannot start a family in Thailand (one or both parents)

• A few reasons other than the above

Sometimes, there is one or more of the above involved. However, poverty is the most common reason by far, solely or in part.

If you've never gone upcountry and seen how people live on the farm and in the countryside in many places, then it is difficult to understand this. It is difficult to understand the Thai experience unless you live it yourself. It is vastly different from the western existence.

Sometimes, the biological parent(s) will abandon the child in a way that they cannot be traced. This may be because Thai government social workers will often try to bring the child back to the couple or extended family. This could bring shame to the family, or just the wrath of overbearing and demanding parents. It is also illegal to abandon a child, and they may fear the police. In these cases, they may just run away or they may submit false or incomplete names. We've had a few cases where the biological parents even used the name of somebody they knew. In a panic, people do a lot of strange things which makes little or no sense at all upon further thought.

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