Americans have already outsourced manufacturing of garments and electronics to China, but the latest trend in overseas labor is more personal – a new study of Chinese immigrants in New York shows that 57% of the mothers surveyed are sending their babies back to China for the infants’ early years.

Facing enormous debt and six-day workweeks, the majority of mothers said the lack of affordable child care in the city forced them to send their babies to relatives in China. Parents typically bring their children back when they are old enough for school.

“It’s an economic calculation they have to make to deal with survival,” the executive director of the Chinese-American Planning Council, David Chen, said.

The study, “Prolonged Separation Among Chinese Immigrant Families in New York City,” was based on interviews with 219 pregnant women using prenatal services at the Charles B. Wang health clinics in Chinatown in Manhattan and Flushing, Queens.

The lead researcher, Henry Chung, is the assistant vice president for student health and a clinical associate professor of psychiatry at New York University.

Women who planned to send their babies to China tended to be new, younger immigrants from the Fujian Province in southern China, the study found. The practice is widely known within the Chinese immigrant community but has never been quantified by researchers.

Business cards printed in Chinese can be found littered around the streets of Chinatown offering to courier babies back to China for about $1,000.

On Monday, an illegal immigrant, Xiu Zheo, gave birth to a beautiful 6-pound girl she called Angela. Yesterday, the beaming mother swaddled her daughter in a pink Winnie the Pooh snuggly and carried her to the St. Vincent health clinic off Canal Street to ask about breast-feeding, baby jaundice, and the avian flu.

In four months, the new mother will send little Angela to live with her grandparents in a small town in the Fujian Province, she said.

“I would love to be able to look at her face every day, but financially I can’t have her,” Ms. Xiu, who lives in a one bedroom apartment she shares with another family, said through a translator. “I have to go back to work.”

Ever since arriving in America, Ms. Xiu and her husband have worked at least 12 hours a day to pay off the $50,000 debt they owe to smugglers. In the next few months, she plans to spend all of her time with Angela. Her husband took a new job delivering food just five hours a day so he can get to know his daughter before she leaves.

“For Angela, to move to China is the best for her future. This way my husband can save money for our own place when she comes back,” Xiu Zheo, said.

Asked if she would prefer to keep Angela – who she clutched in her lap – she simply said, “Of course.”

About 80% of the women surveyed said they would keep their children here if they could find somebody they could both afford and trust to care for them.

But waiting lists for subsidized childcare centers in Chinatown can be daunting. At one of the most popular centers, Chung Pak, the list reaches 200 and parents often wait years without ever gaining a spot. Parents pay on a sliding scale ranging from $3 to $107 a week.

Illegal immigrants whose children are born in America can qualify for subsidized care, but many parents are afraid to provide proof of employment and worry about disclosing their immigration status. Private day care costs hundreds of dollars a week and is out of reach for most. The mothers have to work outside the home to pay off immigration-related debts and to make ends meet given the low wages for unskilled labor in New York and the high cost of living here.

Children often return to America in time for kindergarten, but the process of reunification can be difficult.

Some children face several problems learning English, adjusting to American culture, and becoming acquainted with their parents who they have often only spoken to on the phone.

“They need time to adjust because their grandparents spoiled them in China,” a family worker at P.S. 124 in Chinatown, Yun Ho Poon, said. About a third of the pre-kindergarten class lived in China before returning to America, she said. During a recent cooking class, several students hid under the table when the teacher turned on the blender because they had never heard a machine like that before.

But health workers and advocates in Chinatown said they have seen other more serious problems develop.

A garment worker in Chinatown, Amy, who asked that her last name not be used, recently brought her daughter Carrie back from China when she was granted one of coveted slots at the Chung Pak day care center.

Amy said she is elated to have her daughter back after three years apart but is filled with worry that she did the wrong thing. “I feel guilty,” she said with tears running down her cheek. “I keep thinking that if I hadn’t sent her back she would have even more knowledge of English and be even happier.”

Dr. Chung said that he plans to next study the impacts this trend will have on future generations.

“If they have a greater risk of developing childhood diseases, depression, and behavioral disorders, this could be penny wise and pound foolish,” Dr. Chung said. “People ought to remember that these children will be paying our taxes, and being a part of the fabric of our society. And providing child care will produce great dividends down the road.”

Researchers said that the 57% figure only applied to the population that frequents the health clinics. They are poorer and tend to be more recent immigrants than are the overall populations in Chinatown or Flushing.