Who Will Hold up Half the Sky?

"But Jesus called the children to him and said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these."
Luke 18:16

"耶 稣 却 叫 他 们 来 ， 说 ： 让 小 孩 子 到 我 这 里 来 ， 不 要 禁 止 他 们 ； 因 为 在 神 国 的 正 是 这 样 的 人 。" 
路 加 福 音 18:16

Most children, when asked who their biggest role model is in their life will quickly shout out an answer like, "My Mommy!" "Dad." "My big Dai Dai!" But what happens when you ask a child that question, and you get this answer: "I don't have a family." Whatever warm fuzzy feelings you had - whooosh! - gone. Whatever your beliefs on the family unit are, most people would agree that for a child to grow up without a family to love and nurture them is sad, depressing and just wrong. And in China, where the family unit is everything, for a child, specifically females, to be abandoned to grow up without a family - who will hold up half the sky?

Chinese proverb states, "Women hold up half the sky." In the 1950's with the communists "Great Leap Forward," society saw it as their patriotic duty to produce children. But as the population began to rapidly expand, in order to curb the growth China implemented the one-child policy, which did indeed slow the population growth, but at the cost of their female population. A patriarchal society, male children have always been preferred over female children, and thus the implementation of the one-child policy left many young girls abandoned by the wayside, and many more aborted and never given a chance to live. Oftentimes, it is not merely healthy girls that are abandoned, but those with special needs. So what becomes of these girls? These girls that are supposed to grow up to carry half the sky? In a few years, will there be a Chicken Little that cries out, "The sky is falling! The sky is falling!"?

KayKay* was one of those girls. An abandoned infant with special needs, she was one of the lucky ones. She was taken into the loving care of an orphanage organization aptly named Half the Sky. A majority of those given up or abandoned by their parents end up in government welfare institutions, with only their basic needs of food, shelter, and basic medical care are taken care of. Half the Sky realizes that it takes so much more than that for a child to have a healthy start in life: "the nurturing love of someone who truly cares." Founded in 1998, their Baby Sisters Infant Nurture Centers, Little Sisters Preschool, and (in 2002) Big Sisters Program have worked around the idea that family-like nurturing and loving care of these orphans does matter and that it leads to the healthy development of the child. In the Baby Sisters program KayKay was played with, cuddled, and loved. The medical needs for her condition were met and she is simply one of the happiest little girls you could ever meet. Adopted by close family friends, I have watched her grow from the curious little girl in a new environment to the "terrible two's" stage she is in now. And from her adoptive mother's experience with the adoption process through Half the Sky, I know that KayKay wouldn't be the way she is today if it weren't for Half the Sky's patient nurturing.

Upon her arrival, her adoptive parents had a little trouble at first with the English to Chinese conversion. But while she may not have understood their commands, she did understand one thing: play. You could give her a toy and she'd know what it was and what to do with it. Many children adopted from China's welfare institutions would have very little idea of play. KayKay would run around, explore, LOVED the family dog (a big fuzzy Golden Doodle), and immensely enjoyed running her older brothers around (much to my amusement). She connected well with her new family and loves and is loved by them. Granted, if she had come from a welfare institution the results may have been the same in the end, but the process would have been much longer. I still laugh at one of my earliest memories of her. I was visiting the family and she came out into the room in her nifty squeaky shoes (a popular thing for small children in China) and did a little dance, laughing and giggling the whole time at the sound her shoes were making.

Holding up Half the Sky
One day an elephant saw a hummingbird lying on its back with its tiny feet up in the air. "What are you doing?" asked the elephant.

The hummingbird replied, "I heard that the sky might fall today, and so I am ready to help hold it up, should it fall."

The elephant laughed cruelly. "Do you really think," he said, "that those tiny feet could help hold up the sky?"

The hummingbird kept his feet up in the air, intent on his purpose, as he replied, "Not alone. But each must do what he can. And this is what I can do."
— A Chinese Folktale

There are millions of little girls like KayKay in China and not very many of them are as fortunate as she. Half the Sky may be small now, but they are having a big impact on the lives of so many young girls. Every child deserves a chance to succeed, and I am so thankful for all the work Half the Sky has done to advance that.

The one-child policy in China has left two very big gaps in society: 1) enough young people to help care for their aging population and 2) too few women to hold up their half of the sky. China has been trying to re-educate the public to value women and to hopefully erase completely the anti-female mindset, but it is still likely that China will begin to see a few cracks in its sky as the innovation, creativity and management skills that women can bring to the economy are simply not there. As China has already realized, it is not simply cutting edge technology or a large army that makes you a world super-power; rather it is the people, both men and women, that become a countries pillars of strength, each holding up half the sky.

For more information on Half the Sky and how you can help, visit their website here or watch this informational video here.

*Name is fictional, child is not.