In April 1999, Woody Allen and Soon-Yi Previn welcomed their first child, daughter Bechet Dumaine, whom they adopted from China. The adoption raised some eyebrows due to the past child abuse allegations against Allen, but he has insisted he was heavily vetted before being allowed to adopt. "Coming on the heels of the media circus and false accusations, Soon-Yi and I were extra carefully scrutinized by both the adoption agency and adoption courts, and everyone blessed our adoptions," he wrote in his New York Times op-ed.
Previn told Vulture she was initially terrified by the thought of motherhood but claimed that Allen assuaged such anxieties. "So I said to Woody, 'What do you think of her?'" she recalled, "and he said, 'She's just perfect.' And all my fears went out the window." She added that, through her negative experiences with Mia Farrow, she had learned how not to be a mother.
The couple adopted their second daughter, Manzie Tio, in August 2000. After becoming a mom, Previn opted not to work, though she previously volunteered at schools, raising her children in a townhouse on the Upper East Side. "They're two very normal girls," a family friend told The New York Post. "I talk to Woody on the phone all the time, and when the girls were growing up, he'd always be excusing himself to take them to school or go to some parent-teacher conference."
