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An Era of Chinese Adoption Ends, and Families Are Torn Over Its Legacy

More than 80,000 children from China were adopted by American families. While many appreciate how the adoptions reshaped their own lives, they are also glad to see the program conclude.

A woman and a man looking at a photo album with three photos on a black table that has other belongings and board games.
Amy Cubbage, left, and Graham Troop looking through the adoption trip albums from when they traveled to China in 2008 to adopt their daughter, June.Credit...Jon Cherry for The New York Times

Amy Qin and

Amy Qin reported from Washington, and Vivian Wang from Beijing.

Amy Cubbage’s first foray into parenthood began as it had for tens of thousands of American families before her: in a hotel room in China.

Listen to this article with reporter commentary

In 2008, Ms. Cubbage and her husband, Graham Troop, had just been handed a 2-year-old girl named Qin Shuping, who was living with a foster family in the southern Chinese city of Guilin. The couple from Louisville, Ky., had waited more than two years to be matched with a child.

But in that hotel room, in a country the couple had never been to before, the toddler was inconsolable.

“I cried because I was like, ‘What have we done to this child?’” Ms. Cubbage recalled.

More than fifteen years later, the toddler is now known as June Cubbage-Troop, a freshman at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh who is on the acrobatics and tumbling team.

“I used to think about my birth parents, but not really anymore because I’m happy and I love my parents,” Ms. Cubbage-Troop, 18, said. “I’m pretty content with my life.”


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