China Daily Global Edition (USA)
Back and forth
‘Satellite babies’ born in US, sent back to China, wonder what’s home
Lindy Tse can’t forget the first night when the couple brought her back to the US from Fujian province at age 4. She cried silently all night because she didn’t want to cause them any trouble. She thought they were total strangers. They were her parents.
Tracy Lam still remembers feeling “unknown’’ when she was brought back to the US from China at the age of 5. She didn’t know the two strangers standing in front of her, even though she called them “Mom’’ and “Dad’’.
Lindy and Tracy are “satellite babies’’ — children born in the United States to Chinese immigrant parents who worked long hours and couldn’t afford child care. So they were sent back to China when they were infants, raised by relatives, typically grandparents, and returned to the US to enroll in school when they were 5 or 6. Some parents of satellite babies also choose to send their children back to China in part to preserve their culture.
It took one year for Tse to speak to her father. “I think it was because we both lost four years that could be important to our relationship,” said Tse, now 16.
Lam, 17, said, “Sometimes I still feel a distant connection between me and my parents. I just don’t know how to show my emotion to them.’’
David Chen’s parents sent him to China’s Fujian province to be raised by his grandparents when he was less than a year old. At the age of 5, Chen’s parents brought him back the US to enroll in school in New York City.
‘Suicidal thoughts’
Chen said the separation from his grandparents, the difficulties of learning English and a bully at school made him have suicidal thoughts in the third grade.
“I definitely had emotions bottled up. I kept everything inside,’’ said Chen, now 24 and a medical student at Touro College in Middletown, New York.
When Chen lived with his parents, they worked 14 hours a day spread out at several restaurants, often seven days a week.
He said he didn’t display his feelings or thoughts to them: “I didn’t know who they were. They were strangers to me. I was pretty distant with them.’’
The term “satellite babies’’ was coined by Dr Yvonne Bohr, a clinical psychologist, and researchers at York University in Ontario, Canada, who have studied such separations since 2006.
“Babies are often sent away just around the time when they have just developed a strong attachment to their biological parents and as a result they may experience distress during [this] separation,” Bohr told CBS News. “When they return, the parents in turn may expect the child to be very happy to be home, often not understanding that for that child this isn’t home anymore.” In 2016, film director Jenny Schweitzer’s nine minute long documentary Satellite focused on the trauma that the children experienced after being shuttled between two worlds. Lois Lee was featured in the film. She is the director of the Chinese-American Planning Council, a non-profit in the New York City borough of Queens, that provides childcare services and helps satellite babies adjust. During her 45 years at the council, Lee has been working with immigrant families and helping thousands of children, including Tse and Lam (not their real names).
Working parents
Lee said most parents of satellite babies in New York work double-digit hours every day of the week and can’t afford early child care, which averages $14,144 per year in the city.
“These young couples work long hours at jobs like restaurants, nail salons, grocery stores, dry cleaners and hotels, doing jobs that no one wants, and yet they can’t get child care services for their families to keep the children here,” she said.
Lee said a reunion can be difficult for both parents and child after the long-term separation they have experienced.
“They didn’t see their child’s first steps. They didn’t hear them when they first learned how to talk. They lost five years bonding with their child,” she said.
Even after they live together, the parents can’t combine taking care of their child and working long hours for a better future for the family, Lee said.
“The parents still work till 9 o’clock; they even work in Connecticut, in New Jersey. They come home late, and the children have to eat dinner by themselves with prepared food,” she said. “The children will wonder, ‘ Why did you bring me back here? You don’t want to spend any time with me.’’’
She said the children feel guilty because their parents can’t take care of them, and now they feel they are a burden to their family.
Lee said she doesn’t expect the parents to create a family atmosphere like American families do by eating dinner together or carrying out a full set of bed time routines, but at least, they should talk to their children and try to understand each other.
“They (children) need to know their parents love them and want to talk to them,” Lee said.
For more than 50 years, CPC has been offering a free program for children from pre-K to fifth grade whose parents have a tight working schedule. She said 70 percent of the children now at CPC are Chinese Americans, and 70 percent of those children are satellite babies.
CPC is open from after school to 6 pm every school day and on holidays when public schools close. The staff helps children with homework, takes them to the beach, to a park, to movies – what parents normally would do but don’t have time to do.
“We are like their substitute parents,” Lee said.
To help solve problems in parent-child communications, CPC also has a class for parents to teach them how to communicate better with their children and how to discipline them.
Lee said the children show more understanding of their situation “because we talk to them’’.
“We try to help them embrace their identity, appreciate how hard their parents work, appreciate that their parents did not want to give them but they had no choice,’’ she said
And now that they have you back, they are still sacrificing, which doesn’t mean they don’t love you.’’
Chen said that being a satellite baby has put a strain on his relationship with his parents, but that it also has made him more independent.
“It made me understand why my parents did what they did when I was younger, in terms of working hard and sending me to China as a satellite baby,” he said.