"Baby hatch" highlights Japan fears over adoption
By Isabel Reynolds
TOKYO (Reuters) – When a newborn baby girl was left in Japan’s controversial "baby hatch" last week, the child’s life may have been saved, but her chances of finding new parents were slim due to a cultural aversion to adoption in Japan.
The baby is one of four tots — one of them three-years-old — so far left at the "stork’s cradle" baby hatch at the Catholic-run Jikei Hospital in Kumamoto, southern Japan.A small door in the outside wall of the hospital opens to reveal a tiny bed inside, allowing parents to leave their child safely and anonymously. Once they do, an alarm goes off to alert hospital staff to the new arrival.
Harlow's Monkey 
“When women give birth they must enter the child’s name on their family register, a powerful incentive for single women to end a pregnancy or even abandon a newborn rather than risk its being discovered by a potential employer or future husband.”
I’m adopted… born in USA… my mother is Japanese from Hawaii… second generation… was this family register something women in Hawaii, of Japanese descent, were still using? Do you know?
Is it true that, as my mother told me, “Asians think the children do not need the parents?” If so, how can this be? What does it mean?
Mark,
“I’m adopted… born in USA… my mother is Japanese from Hawaii… second generation… was this family register something women in Hawaii, of Japanese descent, were still using? Do you know?”
The article is referring to official registers that are kept by the Japanese government. If your mother was from Hawaii, she would probably not be on the register, unless her parents were Japanese citizens. She may have been put on her own family’s registry.
“Is it true that, as my mother told me, “Asians think the children do not need the parents?” If so, how can this be? What does it mean?”
That is a really ignorant statement. I’m assuming it was your adoptive mother who told you that? It’s not true.