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“The pains are starting. All right, breathe. Like this. In, out, in, out. Good.”
We’re in a delivery room, courtesy of Josei Jishin (Feb 11), at Fukuda Hospital in Kumamoto. The mother-to-be is on the bed, the obstetrician at her side. The father-to-be is there too, looking anxious. Everything seems quite as it should be. There’s just one anomaly. The mother’s belly is flat.
“Here comes the head. Deep breath now. In, out… Here it is, a fine, healthy baby!”
The obstetrician hands over the baby; the mother cradles it in her arms. Smiles and relief all around.
Why was the mother’s belly flat? Because she wasn’t pregnant. She wasn’t giving birth to a child, she was adopting one. The delivery? Pure theater. Not for entertainment. For bonding.
Fukuda Hospital in 2011 became Japan’s first obstetrics clinic to mediate adoptions. Adoption in Japan has traditionally meant adopting adults to carry on a family line or a cultural heritage. The adoption of infants is rare. It was only last year that the Japan Medical Association issued a statement encouraging the procedure as a means of stemming the abuse of children born of unwanted pregnancies.
Another Kumamoto Hospital, Jikei, had set another national first in the matter with its famous “Yurikago” “baby post” that opened in 2007. A parent could bring a newborn to the door, ring a bell, and walk (or run) away. The hospital would take the newborn in, no questions asked, and arrange its future.
In the six years since, 92 babies have been left there. Does that represent 92 lives saved, Josei Jishin wonders, or does the anonymity and invisibility of the procedure merely encourage parents who might otherwise have thought twice about it to slough off a responsibility?
One who suspected the latter is obstetrics nurse Kazuko Shimozono, 62. A Jikei staff member at the time, she was part of the creation of Yurikago. Her growing doubts led her to transfer to Fukuda Hospital in 2011 to help set up what seemed to her a more acceptable alternative.
"All I ever wanted,” she says, “whether at Yurikago or here (at Fukuda), is the child’s happiness.”
What troubles her most about Yurikago is the anonymity. A child would grow up with no idea of his or her parentage, and no possible hope of ever finding out. It didn’t seem right, somehow. “We must think of the child’s feelings in future.” Yurikago, she says, was conceived exclusively with the parents in mind.
There were other problems. Fukuda Hospital, Josei Jishin learns, in 40 years received three foundlings. That made the 92 left at Yurikago look like an inflated figure. Was the facility unwittingly encouraging baby dumping?
The debate is by no means settled, but Shimozono refers to conversations she managed to have with mothers leaving Yurikago. “Some were willing to talk (about their problems), but many simply said, ‘What are you chasing me for? It’s anonymous, isn’t it?’”
© Japan Today
19 Comments
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smithinjapan
Given the number of stories you hear of infants found dead after being left in toilet stalls, coin lockers, garbage bins and the like, I'd say the answer is self-evident. Irresponsible parents are going to ditch the babies one way or another, and I'd rather hear about them being left behind in a 'baby-hatch' and alive than hear about them being found dead.
The only problem I have with the hatches is that there are cameras and from what I've heard the facilities later try to track down the parents and convince them to take the babies back. I can understand the sentiment -- that it's better a baby be with its natural parents -- but if they were abandoned clearly it's NOT better, and there are many couples out there who can't have but want a baby and would take better care of one.
nath
There are few worse situations a child can grow up in than with parents who don't want them. It's sad that these kids are abandoned, and their lives may not turn out so good as a result, but even still likely better than if their parents were to raise them.
samwatters
I was born in 1969 and my biological parents immediately gave me up for adoption. Soon after a wonderful couple chose me and raised me. My straight blonde hair clashed comically with their black, curly hair. Later when these differences bothered me and my classmates asked why I didn't look anything like my family, my father recited a poem that I have never forgotten:
"Not flesh of my flesh, not bone of my bone but still miraculously my own. Never forgotten for a single minute, you didn't grow under my heart but in it."
Thank you to my mother and father who adopted to me and thank you to my biological parents who---for whatever reason---gave me a chance to live. I think the baby hatch is a wonderful idea and I wish the Japanese were less hung up on "blood ties" and would be more openminded towards adoption.
TravelingSales
Both
Maria
Whenever options like this appear, that change the perceived 'norm', people with rigid principles and blinkered views shudder and say it'll only make matters worse:
The contraceptive pill? Women will become promiscuous and leave their families. Same-sex marriage? People will marry goats and their own children. Baby hatch? people who hadn't considered it before, will dump their babies.
The baby hatch is a great thing, and there do seem to have been fewer reports if babies dumped in a station locker / trash can / toilet lately, haven't there?
Frungy
Yes, it saves lives.
However, I would prefer if someone talked to the parents and asked their reasons. The reason I'm interested is that people are quick to call the parents irresponsible, but there might actually be compelling reasons and we're just not hearing their side of the story at all.
shanabelle
We need more of them in this country. Japan needs to get over its aversion to adoption too. Sam Watters thank you for sharing your story, my two big brothers are adopted too, and I love them so much.
kimuzukashiiiii
I think its wonderful. Much rather see that than babies abandoned or growing up in homes where they are not wanted. Plus Japan should be encouraging adoption, rather than encouraging 40+ IVF. An expensive procedure with a very low success rate.
Now if we could only do the same for the hundreds of thousands of kids living in childrens homes, whose parents refuse to give up guardianship, so the children could have a proper family, but continue to claim child benefit.
samwatters
@shanabelle. Thanks to you, too!
LFRAgain
There were 16,246 babies born throughout Kumamoto Pref. in 2010, an increase of 25 over the previous year, a number that is statistically insignificant, particularly when compared to the national average that show a year-on-year decline in births. The 92 babies left at the "Baby Post" averages out to roughly 15 babies per year, or 0.0923 percent. Statistically insignificant.
To answer the question, "Is baby post saving lives or simply making it easy for irresponsible parents to dump their babies?" the answer would have to be that it's saving lives. Clearly.
Child abandonment is not going to go away any time soon. Until society learns to eradicate the underlying issues of poverty, lack of a partner to help with child-raising, and/or emotional immaturity, the "Baby Post" is a far better idea than most and a damned sight better idea than what exists in other cities, i.e., nothing at all.
As to this worry that "Baby Post" children will wrestle in anguish with "anonymity," horse-puckey. The pressure to identify with a group is wholly external in Japan. What's the most brutal form of bullying one can endure in Japan? Being forced out of an in-group for being, as the members of that group judge, "different. This issue of identity confusion is one Japanese society needs to recitfy within itself. No one could or ever should know a child was once abandoned, thanks to annonymity and privacy rules. But in a society where something so simple as baby adoption is still viewed as unfathomable, well-meaning but ultimately misguided folks like obstetrics nurse Kazuko Shimozono are, IMO, the ones most likely to violate this promise and create the very problems for "Post" babies they wish to avoid.
gokai_wo_maneku
If the parents are "irresponsible", it is probably a positive turn of fate for the baby.
Vernie Jefferies
A baby saved = A baby saved
nath
What a silly question behind this feature. And the nurse's problem with anonymity is bewildering. Babies left in coin lockers or dumpster have to deal with the anonymity plus a lot of other problems. There's no right to know your real parents.
bruinfan
Most cases I think are saving lives. If even 10% of these babies are saved from dying or a terrible abuse it is worth it. What in Sam Hill ...
NathalieB
As opposed to not growing up at all? I notice this nurse disapproves of the baby hatch, but doesnt really come up with a viable alternative to the babies found in dumpsters and trash cans in places where there is no baby hatch.
philly1
Except that it doesn't work that way. People talk: adopting couples to their biological parents and they to their friends. Adopting couples can't be assured that their own parents will support their choices. Old prejudices run deep. Eventually someone is going to spill something, no matter how hurtful. It's inevitable.
My own grandmother never failed to differentiated between us cousins. Two were always identified as my adopted grandchildren. As a child, I never understood why she made the distinction; however, I did understand (but always disliked) the implication that two of my cousins were somehow less than the rest of us. They must have felt it, too.
Bear27840
What if the child eventually needs a medical procedure that requires something from the parents with no knowledge of who the parents are that child is condemened to die.
Tessa
There seems to be a great aversion to adoption in Japan. What I find paradoxical is that so many Japanese people have an aversion to each other (refusal to marry, or have children, and about a third of Japanese households consist of one person). Japan is going to die out.