Baby hatches raise controversy
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E-mail China Daily, March 27, 2014
The last resort
Tianjin residents expressed contrasting views about the baby hatch. "It sends out the wrong message to society," said one man who was passing by the baby hatch. "Parents will have an excuse to leave children to the government and go away without feeling too guilty. It's a way of shirking parental responsibility."
Another resident was more supportive: "What can a low-income couple do if they have to pay 300,000 yuan ($48,400) for surgery? The baby hatch is the last resort for desperate parents."
Gao Yurong, director of the Child Welfare Research Center at Beijing Normal University, said: "Abandoning babies is illegal in China, irrespective of where you leave them. But that doesn't justify not having baby hatches. They are two different things. The baby hatch does not protect parents from being condemned; it protects the lives of the babies."
The first baby at the hatch in Tianjin was left on the floor in a handbag, well below the crib. "Those who came to abandon their babies were too nervous to even put the baby into the incubator or the crib," said one guard at the children's welfare institute who preferred not to be named.
"People were aware that their behavior was disgraceful, so they usually came to drop off the babies and ran away quickly," he said. "Some wrapped scarves around their faces and wore hats pulled low over their eyes."
Zhang Min of the Tianjin institute said the baby hatch opened on Jan 1 and the institute had received 35 babies by March 12, compared with 66 adopted by more conventional means during the whole of 2013.
"The baby hatch is intended for newborns, but we were shocked that children as old as 6 have also been abandoned, because the guaranteed anonymity means few restrictions," said Zhang Min.
Zhang Shuwen, who oversees the Tianjin institute's nursery for children aged 3 or younger, said the large number of abandoned children is posing severe problems. "The situation at our institute is a big headache. Few beds are available now. We are figuring out ways to build more beds and employ more dry nurses. Sometimes, three dry nurses have to look after a room of more than 10 babies with illnesses or disabilities," she said.
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