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

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.

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.”