Question: Should white parents adopt children of other races?

by Anti-Racist Parent columnist Margie Perscheid

Whenever I see a white couple with an Asian or Hispanic child, I can’t help wondering whether adoption — like the personal ads — is one of the last areas of American life where naked expressions of racial preference are acceptable.

mobius strip In Why Doesn’t White Adopt Black? , an op ed that ran in the Washington Post on December 24th, David Nicholson explored the racial dynamics of transracial and intercountry adoption. Although Nicholson’s question seems simple enough, getting my head around the answer was rather like trying to follow the surface of a Möbius strip, where you always end up on the other side of where you started.

In the article, Nicholson wonders if the preference of white parents to adopt Asian and Hispanic children rather than black children could be construed as racist behavior. Why, he asks, with so many African American children in need of permanent families, would prospective adoptive parents choose to adopt from other countries?

It’s a question that absolutely deserves consideration, but in my opinion there’s another he missed altogether: Is it acceptable for white parents to raise children of other races in the first place?

As the white adoptive parent of two Korean children, I can’t answer this question objectively. My adoption experience has been entirely positive – I have a close family and two confident children with strong Korean identities. But do my children feel as positive about their experience as they appear to? Or do they keep the negatives to themselves for fear of hurting my husband and me?

And what about their first mothers or fathers, how would they answer? Or adoptees who have experienced racism in their communities, their schools, and even in their families?

Critical mass and the internet have given adoptees and their first parents voice. There are so many forums, lists, and blogs sharing different transracial and intercountry adoptee points of view that adoptive parents really have no excuse anymore to plead ignorance of their points of view. And although communication with first parents is far less common, it is beginning – perhaps not online, but in other ways: at conferences, for example, and in film and print.

What many of them are saying is what we adoptive parents should have known all along: That being a part of our families doesn’t make them white. That they’ve experienced all kinds of racist attitudes and behaviors. And that being different from the rest of their families, the only one of their race in the place that’s supposed to be their haven, is hard.

This is what’s missing in David Nicholson’s article. For although he asks a question that makes perfect sense in the context of race relations in the U.S., it misses the point in the context of adoption.

So is it appropriate for white parents to raise children of other races? I don’t know, and honestly don’t believe I’m qualified to answer. But I do know that it’s time for adoptive parents like David Nicholson and me to stand aside and let the first parents and adoptees do the talking. They’re the experts.

What are your opinions on transracial and intercountry adoption? Do you think it should continue? Stop entirely? Be overhauled to better serve the needs of first parents and children? I’m interested in what you have to say.

Margie Perscheid is the adoptive mother of two Korean teens. She is a co-founder of Korean Focus, an organization for families with children from Korea with chapters across the country. Margie is on the Board of Directors of the Korean American Coalition DC Chapter, a former board member of KAAN, the Korean YMCA of Greater Washington (now KAYA), and ASIA (Adoption Service Information Agency). Margie writes about her intercountry adoption experiences at Third Mom. She, her husband Ralf, and their two children live in Alexandria, Virginia.

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Comments

Ibex67 wrote:

As the white adoptive parent of an AA daughter, I’m not particularly qualified to answer this question either. I can tell you that in my heart my answer is: Anybody that can provide a good, stable, loving, healthy home for any child should be able to do so. Period. What is the preferrable alternative? That children remain as wards of the state in orphanages, group homes, foster care? Part of providing a “healthy” home is being able to respond to the needs of the child and transracially or transculturally adopted children have particular needs. So of course, parents need to be up for that challenge.

In terms of the op-ed author’s original question: maybe I am naive but at least in terms of the white parents of internationally adopted children that I have met, the reason they chose international adoption has a lot more to do with their concerns about their ability to handle the issues that a child who had first been in foster care first in the US might have. [I know I am being only marginally coherent here. Iam typing as I am referring children squabbling over crayons.]

Posted 29 Jan 2007 at 11:15 am ¶
dawn wrote:

I think it’s less should transracial adoption continue and more what can we do to reform adoption so that 1) it needs to happen less often; 2) there is more diversity among waiting adoptive parents.

The focus is too much on white parents and too little on the lack of diversity in the adoptive parent pool.

Posted 29 Jan 2007 at 12:20 pm ¶
beloved wrote:

I have no qualifications whatsoever to answer this question, but in meeting some Korean adoptees (and their families) recently and reading blogs of KADs, I am beginning to think that a lot of people who adopt transracially are not prepared to do so and do not realize the issues and prejudices that their adopted children will face. I really hope that more work like the nature of that which you are doing Margie, can continue because I see a great need–especially in my area of the country.

Posted 29 Jan 2007 at 12:29 pm ¶
atlasien wrote:

Here’s one perspective that’s kind of a non-answer but still relevant…

As a prospective non-white adoptive parent, I sometimes get frustrated with all the emphasis on white parents in adoption debates. The debate is usually conducted on a white parent – children of color axis. While I agree wholeheartedly that a more child-centered perspective should be the primary focus, what about the secondary focus of including more adoptive parents of color in the debate?

I absolutely don’t mean to disparage anyone who is passionate about adoption reform. It’s great, and I have learned a lot from these debates… I just feel that debate tends to concentrate too much on that axis. To some extent the reason is understandable, since mainstream media adoption stories follow that axis as well, and so does a lot of the infrastructure.

For example, I don’t see a lot of focus in the mainstream media on the single largest group of people that ARE adopting black children: black adoptive parents. And I would love to read a well-researched, general interest article on attitudes towards international adoption in the African-American community. My hunch is that there is more negative or neutral feelings on it than in white communities, and more social pressure to adopt domestically or from the state, but at the same time, some AA parents do adopt internationally, from Haiti, Africa and even from Russia. Even if AA adoptions are not transracial, they are usually transcultural and are not exempt from problems and reform issues.

I’m not saying that the focus shouldn’t be on the voices of first parents and adoptees… just that adoptive parents of color share many of the issues that white adoptive parents have, but there are some important differences as well.

Posted 29 Jan 2007 at 1:21 pm ¶
SF Mom wrote:

Being a white mother to an African American child, many parents have decided to share with me that it was their concern about the issues a child in foster care might have, that made them adopt internationally instead of domestically. I think that is a code. I think David Nicholson hit the nail on the head.

Posted 29 Jan 2007 at 1:23 pm ¶
SF Mom wrote:

Oops hit send too soon – I meant to say that for many, it is code for feeling unequipped to handle the legacy of “America’s original sin” as the author put it.

Posted 29 Jan 2007 at 1:34 pm ¶
DS-L wrote:

I think atlasien has a very good point. There is not a lot of discussion about attitudes towards adoption in communities of color. As a white mother of 3 children of color (two biological and one adopted) I have to deal with transracial issues, but, as my husband is CHinese-American we don’t really consider our daughter transracially adopted — or maybe only partially. In any event, the issues around race in our family differ from a white couple who have a transracially adopted child and are not often addressed (as an aside I personally know 3 other mixed race couples who have adopted a child of the race of the non-white partner and they too feel a bit marginalized in this particular debate). I also must say it is hard to hear — can a white mother parent a child of color — when my biological children are not all-white. Can I not parent them??? You know what I mean. Finally, there are many many deep cultural issues at least in the Chinese-American community surrounding adoption that may / may not bear on Chinese-American couples willing to adopt from China. I know of one such couple who decided not to due to pressure from their families. So — the question should whites be allowed to adopt children of another race? Rambling here but it seems again to be too narrow a question. Like Dawn said — it should be how do we best prepare adoptive parents of any color to raise adopted children of any color and how do we reform adoption so it is not the privileged (most often white) adopting the less priviliged.
DS-L

Posted 29 Jan 2007 at 1:46 pm ¶
Suee wrote:

So much is said in this discourse that makes it appear that adoptive parents have an array of choices, and/or enough money to invest in those choices, that the child we adopt is chosen when in actuality referrals can be quite random.

(I just did a lot of deleting.) When I try to spin all that out, I sound like a typically entitled adoptive parent who thinks those choices SHOULD exist, but I don’t really think that, I think that more of us need to accept that we can’t have everything that we want. I just want to point out that many of us feel so very not in control of the adoptive process.

In our case we tried to adopt domestically, and were absolutely willing to adopt African American children, but the local waiting child agency slammed the doors in our faces. Not because anything about us made us less qualified–it was quite arbitrary and too much to delineate in a comment.

Our first international referral was an accident of email. There was a reason–having nothing to do with country of origin–that made us the right adoptive candidates (”right” being relative to a corrupt system.)

Later we would learn that agencies pitch India as a source of “caucasian adoption” because traditional racial categories apparently allow that assignment. A look into the history of racial categories reveals that it is basically about the shape of the nose without regard to color of skin! But our daughter knows darned well she is not white, and white/caucasian are considered interchangeable in the US no matter how we spin it..

But I digress. And I realize I sound like I am trying to justify my particular transracial international adoption because I could not choose the race of my child–either through fertility or adoption. But what I am really trying to say is that it is a generalization to assume AP’s have unlimited power and choices.

So much is funnelled to us in a highly controlled fashion, by a system that dictates our childrens’ lives before we even come into the picture. That’s not an excuse by any means. I believe passionately in adoption reform, and first and foremost in first parents’, grandparents’ and extended families’ rights to claim their own. That option simply does not exist in most of the world and that is totally f-d up.

As AP’s, unless we either choose to opt out or are told to stay out, our personal power does not really start to exhibit itself until after an adoption, and no matter how hard we try to get it right, there will always be things we cannot fix, cannot nurture away, cannot prevent. That is so hard to accept when our culture puts so much emphasis on psychological health being related to how we are nurtured in childhood. But as so many adult adoptee blogs reveal, even the most loving and accepting adoptive parents could not fill the hole created by their losses.

I haven’t answered your question yet! If you were to do the prosecutor in a TV courtroom thing and ask me to just give you a YES or NO anwer on whether it is appropriate to adopt transracially, I would have to say OK! NO!

And then if there was room to say it, I would add that I am doing my best with the choices that a broken system offered me, the choices that I made, the choices I am now responsible for.

Posted 29 Jan 2007 at 2:00 pm ¶
kim wrote:

You guys have got to get over to birthproject.wordpress.com to read LisaMaries thoughts on the privilege aspect, and the AA adoptive parent access aspect (ugly sentence, I know).

Posted 29 Jan 2007 at 4:30 pm ¶
atlasien wrote:

Here’s more of a real answer, a very personal one and really long…

I have zero patience for the “no transracial adoptions should be done at all, ever, period paragraph end” position. I think it’s stupid and even crypto-racist. That being said almost all critiques of transracial adoptions don’t take that position, which is very extreme, and I have never encountered it in real life and only in a very few places on the internet. I think the extreme position is more often used as a strawman by people who are defending against critiques of transracial adoption.

I don’t even think the NABSW takes this extreme position. They say “transracial adoption of an African American child should only be considered after documented evidence of unsuccessful same race placements has been reviewed and supported by appropriate representatives of the African American community.” I don’t agree with that specific provision, I know black social workers who don’t agree with it, but it doesn’t say “no transracial adoptions, ever”. I agree with the more general philosophy behind it, that race and culture should be a factor in adoptions, and the first choice should be a placement that preserves racial and cultural heritage, but I don’t think race should be the only factor or the overriding factor.

My problem with the rare, extreme position (again, more often invoked as a strawman than actually professed) is that it refuses to take into account that racial and cultural identity is fluid in all families. For example, this statement about transracial adoptees — “That being a part of our families doesn’t make them white. That they’ve experienced all kinds of racist attitudes and behaviors. And that being different from the rest of their families, the only one of their race in the place that’s supposed to be their haven, is hard” — describes my own experience as the biological, multiracial child of a single white mother, having to grow up a different race than my mother in a nearly all-white environment where I was classified as an automatic foreigner.

I don’t want to communicate anything as simplistic as “well I had it just as rough as a transracial adoptee!” because I don’t think that at all, in the slightest… I’ve shared my experience to other prospective adoptive parents and been a little frustrated when a few just hear me as saying “biological families have racial identity problems too, so it’s OK for adoptive families to have them” when I think the message they hear should be more complicated: it’s weird, it’s tough and it’s an extra burden to bear to for an adoptee who’s already carrying other identity burdens.

But because I had this experience, I also feel a bit protective towards white adoptive parents who are genuinely trying. If someone on any side invokes the “no transracial adoptions ever” position it instinctively triggers some anger in me and makes me think “so you want to make white women apply for a non-white procreation license? And what about multiracial children, what if you can’t find the right-sized hole to fit the odd-shaped peg?” I don’t react on that kind of anger, but I have to admit I still feel a little bit of it every time.

Posted 29 Jan 2007 at 6:13 pm ¶
Linda wrote:

I think a very basic answer is that adoption should attempt to replicate nature as far as possible. In the “old days”, adoption agencies used to try to match parents’ physical characteristics with childrens’, and to me this makes sense. Many many things were wrong with adoption in the old days, not least the secrecy and the shame, but something was instinctively right about this matching. A case of “throwing out the baby with the bathwater”? (pun intended!)

Posted 30 Jan 2007 at 8:30 am ¶
Margie wrote:

Jumping in.

I framed this question as I did not as a strawman to push a pro-transracial adoption perspective, but because I sincerely hoped it would trigger many different opinions. Although there aren’t many simple “yes” or “no” answers here, and not many – any? – from adoptees (which I had hoped to see), there are nonetheless a wide range or points of view. Thank you!

The honest reason I asked this question as I did is because I want to understand where people fall on the “yes-no” spectrum of answers, because that will guide where we go next. For better or worse, transracial and transnational adoption exist today. But they may or may not exist tomorrow, depending on our actions now and in the future. If our answer to the question posed here is “yes,” we’ll approach policy and reform from the perspective that transracial and transnational adoption are acceptable, good practices to continue. If our answer is “no,” we’ll take a different approach and push toward a different end. It’s the difference between those two courses of action that I’m trying to understand: Which of them is honestly, truly best for individual children in a harsh and unfair world.

A couple of other thoughts. It’s clear that everyone commenting here agrees that race, culture and identity are important to preserve. In the present context of transracial and transnational adoption, this should absolutely encourage us to find more adoptive parents of color. I think this would be another great topic of discussion.

You’ve raised some things I honestly hadn’t considered carefully before, and I thank you for waking me up. For example, I have to admit that I HAVE tended to view transracial and transnational adoption as a “white thing.” *head slap* How obvious it should have been to me that there are adoptive parents of color who are struggling with these same questions, and that they bring a completely different perspective – as atlasien showed – to the discussion!

But I also wonder about the absence of adoptee comments here. I encourage the transracial adoptees who might be reading these comments to add your thoughts.

Posted 30 Jan 2007 at 9:54 am ¶
Didi wrote:

DSL – I also must say it is hard to hear — can a white mother parent a child of color — when my biological children are not all-white. Can I not parent them???

I’m a white woman married to a KAD and we have a 4 year old daughter.

I think there’s a huge difference in having a nonwhite child via an interracial relationship vs adoption, the biggest thing being that my husband can relate – on a very personal level – to some of the racial issues that our daughter has already had to deal with, and tell her how *he* dealt with the same things when he was her age. Two white parents, no matter how good their intentions or education, won’t have had that same firsthand experience.

As for being the mother in this scenario, having been in an interracial marriage for a decade, I think that it’s helped me pick up on little things that otherwise might be missed, and it’s taught me that sometimes I need to step back and admit that I don’t know everything and let my daughter and husband share a bond that doesn’t include me.

Posted 30 Jan 2007 at 10:03 am ¶
Denise wrote:

Wow…”matching” by physical characteristics? I think there are some very good reasons why this practice is outdated. Or maybe you think we should go back to arranged marriages as well. Then our breeding practices will be more “pure” and the bio children produced will more accurately match their parents. Let’s draw those racial identity lines even more clearly, so we can look at everyone and know exactly where they came from!

Sorry…that just really touched a nerve. I am a white mom raising a black (Haitian) son along with my other white bio kids. It’s amazing how different my bio kids look too….a couple of them it’s hard to tell they are related, let alone have the same set of parents.

That said, do I think things would be easier on my adopted son had he been adopted by a Haitian family? Yes, I think it would make some things in his life easier. But the reality is, there were no Haitian familes looking to adopt him. He was sick, needing to get to the US for care and needing a family. We are it, and we are doing the best that we can to parent him, despite our physical differences.

My bio 5yo insists to everyone now that he is “half Irish and half Haitian”… because that is what he sees in his family. If only we could all have that perspective.

Posted 30 Jan 2007 at 10:22 am ¶
joan wrote:

Adopting internationally is not necessarily code for not wanting to parent a black child. I am a white woman, with a white husband, and a black child from Ethiopia, which is growing in numbers of children placed with American families (of all races). We are in touch with our son’s first family, which we pursued as soon as we could. (So international adoption is not necessarily a way to “escape” first families, either, which is something else I’ve heard.)

In regards to what first families think: I wouldn’t suggest this is universal, but many Ethiopians have said they don’t necessarily distinguish between white and black Americans (or Latino, Asian, etc). They see Americans, period. So, to them, the question isn’t necessarily about transracial adoption as race is not a major issue in Ethiopia. Local Ethiopian communities simply cannot take care of their own anymore. It’s a huge tragedy. In a small way, we hope we and our son will be part of the solution as we give time and effort to benefit Ethiopian charities and social justice issues.

When we decided to adopt from Ethiopia, I heard from a few folks, “But there are black kids in the US who need homes! Why go to Africa?” The issue for us wasn’t about finding a black child, any black child. First off, my understanding is that healthy infants of any race in the US are placed in homes quickly. I was also turned off by the domestic process for infants. And, honestly, we were scared of going through the foster system after talking with some friends who work with kids in the system. And, I also know folks who waited for years for a placement through the foster system. Adopting abroad tends to be more predictable; our son was home with us about nine months after we decided to adopt. He’s healthy and vibrant and benefited from over a year with a loving (if ill) first family.

I can’t think about this issue either without wondering how on earth anyone could think my son shouldn’t be my son. His first family is happy he’s loved and with us. This was their choice, one made in tragedy, but their choice all the same.

In regards to lessons learned from adoptees: I think the oldest group of Korean adoptees have suffered the worst of being transracial and cultural adoptees. I think we adoptive parents are learning a lot from their experiences, and we, I hope, won’t make the same mistakes as some of their families made (I know that’s really harsh phrasing, and I know those families did the best they could under the circumstances, and I also know that what agencies are teaching parents is really different these days.) I’m not saying we don’t have more to learn. We do. It’s an on-going process and something I think about work on just about every day.

But, I’m wondering about the last few lines of the original post: how are current practices not serving the needs of children and first families?

Posted 30 Jan 2007 at 11:00 am ¶
roxie72504 wrote:

Margie –

I’m certainly not qualified to answer all these questions, but, since asked, I vote for massive overhaul of adoption in general, as we know it. I really do think that the majority of the focus of adoption is on people who want children rather than children who truly need something, and I think race plays a huge part within that context, in transracial adoption. Social privilege and resources drive the system and somehow that has to change.

Denise – I don’t think the concerns that lead us to discuss race-matching are about ‘racial purity’ at all, but rather recognizing that white parents are at a HUGE loss to do justice to the job of parenting a child of color on issues of identity and racism, especially. We’re really just trying to have a discussion about what is most beneficial for children….not about keeping the races ‘pure’. I am not at all opposed to race being considered a factor in adoptive placements. Now that I’m parenting in a transracial adoption, I can see how beneficial it would be to the child to have someone who can parent from experience in these areas, rather than from a completely different position in society.

Posted 30 Jan 2007 at 2:28 pm ¶
Denise wrote:

Roxie, I hear you on that. As I had said…I do think it would have been nice for my son to be raised by a Haitian family. But there are so many kids out there who are in my son’s position…older, sick and not seeming very “adoptable”. In this case, a white family is better than no family.

I guess the wording of Linda’s post just struck me the wrong way. “Matching” kids by physical characteristics just seems archaic…a step backwards if you will.

Posted 30 Jan 2007 at 3:34 pm ¶
Paula O. wrote:

I am an adult Korean adoptee who is married to a white man. We have one daughter who was born unto us, and one son whom we adopted from Korea in 2005. As a person who was raised by white parents and surrounded by virtually all white until my early 20s, my succinct, yet arguably ambiguous answer to this question would be “Yes. . . . BUT.”

In my opinion, often what is overlooked in so many dialogues about transracial adoption is the neglect on the part of the adoption community as a whole for not taking an honest, critical and raw examination of the true intentions of the prospective adoptive parent, regardless of color – - and for not demanding more – infinitely more – substantial, relevant and authentic education when it comes to parenting in transracial adoption. Though I’m not sure how it could be implemented or quantified, I also believe the adoption process should also include some kind of measurable assessment that somehow demonstrates that prospective adoptive parents truly do understand the magnitude of what transracial parenting entails.

I feel that my parents did many, many things right pertaining to transracial adoption. I believe that they were very forward thinking in regards to racism, discrimination and acknowledging the very real and painful loss I incurred as a result of being adopted. It is disheartening (to say the least) to me when I see some APs who have virtually unlimited access in educating themselves on transracial adoption, but for whatever reason, chose not to. My parents did not have the voices of adult Korean adoptees to learn from, but they did what they could with the information they could obtain. It’s demoralizing to know that we have an entire generation of adoptees to learn from, but whose voices still aren’t considered or deemed credible enough sources to warrant the ear of some APs.

Of course growing up in an all white family, white community, white school, white place of worship, etc. was not without its challenges. I don’t blame my parents for the decisions they made, but I have learned from them and will make different choices because of my own personal experiences. I feel my parents did a helluva job raising a daughter who can today claim she is happy, thriving and has a life surrounded by an abundance of love and laughter. But yet we all (me and my parents) recognize that in spite of that, there are inherent losses and pain that will never dissipate because in adoption, those permanent losses are the realities within adoption.

Despite all of my parent’s excellent intentions to raise me to be the best person I could be and to best anticipate all of my needs and wants at every stage of my life, there was and always will be a disconnect in their ability to truly understand and fully identify with my status as both an adoptee and as a person of color.

Two very important characteristics that my parents possess that quite honestly I would love to see more of in fellow APs is the ability to be humble and honest about their role, motivations and true intentions as an adoptive parent. Part of it, I would argue is that because of the white privilege, many white APs have really had no real reason to try and displace themselves from a position of perceived power, authority and credibility that our culture attributes to whites and to willingly put themselves in the shoes of one whose voice has been marginalized or dismissed simply because of the color of their skin. This is not a judgment, just my own observation from where I stand as both an adoptee and an adoptive parent.

And perhaps because of this, I feel there is an exaggerated and unjust sense of entitlement that some white APs have about their “right” to their children, which perpetually negates the losses incurred by both the adopted child and his/her first family. And sometimes I think this can lead to the very question that we are examining today.

Even I, as a Korean adoptee myself, do not for one second underestimate the potential internal and external struggles that I know our son will likely encounter along the way regarding the profound losses because of his adoption, and of course the racism, prejudices and discrimination he will be subjected to because of the color of his skin.

Just because I will be able to speak first hand about certain experiences that he and I can claim as common events, doesn’t mean that he isn’t his own person who won’t feel, process and internalize his own encounters as an adopted person of color entirely separate from my own.

I acknowledge that fact and am deeply humbled by it. It’s a fact that I grapple with and revisit on a daily basis, as I should. As an adoptive parent, adoption – especially transracial adoption – is not about me, nor should it ever be.

Posted 30 Jan 2007 at 6:27 pm ¶
Mom22 wrote:

Gosh – where to begin.
After being told by private agencies 12 years ago we were too old to be picked by birth moms (and probaly not affluent enuff) … Told by international agencies we were too old (over 40!) …..told by public agencies we would not be allowed to adopt any non- white child in our state ( i understand that has changed) and would need to go ‘fost- adopt’ with the older ones ( drug exposed), shocked at the cost of private adoption lawyers and generally feeling it was a nasty busines – we gave up.
And then we heard about China. I am now mom to two girls. We try to acknowledge the racial differences and have gone from the happy family toddler books to frank discussions. There have been two rather stark incidents of racism and we did our best to handle it. Is it perfect – no. How many families are? What shocks me is the lack of dialouge amoung many of my friends who have adopted non white children – their denial if you will – the ‘but we have asian friends, we don’t need a group, she isn’t interested in Chinese things…. ‘
I am not sure where I am going with my thoughts but I do know children need permanent families. They need parents who love them. And if they are angry later about not being the same race as their parents or not brought up sensitively enough, well hopefully there will be venues for them to process it.
My family certainly wasn’t perfect and I suspect my girls will be upset about me in some way too. But I am their mom and they are my daughters and right now it is pretty darn nice.
Oh cute story: I remember telling my oldest at 4 – her friend was adopted and she said – no way – she’s not chinese….

Posted 30 Jan 2007 at 6:48 pm ¶
Jae Ran wrote:

I personally think this question is unfair to ask of adoptees, which is why I did not comment thus far. The question once more perpetuates this idea that there has to be an either/or statement made, and as an adoptee, every thing I might say is assumed to be a statement towards one side or the other.

The larger question is: why are there so many children of color in the system (whether that is domestically or internationally) and why are the practices skewed towards middle- and upper class white prospective parents favored?

I know an African American family who wants to adopt a white child. This is a great family. They are great parents.

Their homestudy will definitely be approved.

How long will it take for them to get that child? What social worker will place a white child with them?

Posted 30 Jan 2007 at 8:14 pm ¶
Kim wrote:

“What social worker will place a white child with them?”

This startling question strikes me so simply because I do not question whether AAs want to adopt outside of the AA community, or at least the African-descent community.

One is brought to wonder, upon a shocking awakening, why that is…and, of course, I am going to speculate as to all the reasons that Blacks seek to adopt to begin with, with the first being to SAVE a child from the wretched hands of a corrupt and self-perpetuating system (foster care).

But, of course, that is not true for every AA family which seeks to adopt…some want a baby, unable to have one themselves, and able to give love and a home, an extended family and loads of love. These families want to contribute to the spread of hope, and connection to their fellow human being, as is probably true of many non-AA parents.

Truthfully, I always view the overseas adoption trend so personally, as an abject rejection of everything our beautiful, needy babies are deserving and worthy of , that I haven’t been able to whole-heartedly accept as true many of the reasons for the fashionable adoption of (particularly) Asian little girls, and now the more-appealing, and not so characteristically “Negroid” Ethiopian child.

These feelings, these responses I have are so uncharitable, as to be hard to express and remain open to receiving answers from others.

I inquired of a friend (White) years ago, who had adopted her little girl, my daughter’s best friend, from Russia, as to why she and her husband went through all the time and expense of doing so when I am sure both expenditures could have been lessened by adopting domestically. (This was in the middle of a long talk initiated by her of her daughter’s adoption, and the family they’d created and sought to create.)

I have no resentment, and she emailed an eight-point bulletin to me to help me see the ins and outs of the process she underwent, both internal and external (emotional and procedural). I have no lasting resentment of anyone who adopts whomever they adopt. My family is too full of adoptions for the process to be foreign, mysterious, or even elicit curiosity at this point. And, hey, a cousin is a cousin is an uncle.

I do know that a good friend of my aunt’s (Black, both) adopted a little white child, who was close friends with my fifth cousin, also adopted closer into the fold and, subsequently, was raised a first cousin. Some social worker somewhere did that (Black mother/white child), and I don’t think anyone blinked an eye.

Answer to Jae Ran’s last question: Someone, somewhere. It could happen.

Posted 30 Jan 2007 at 9:21 pm ¶
Margaret wrote:

In a word, yes…..provided that the family is adequately prepared and willing to take on the challenges and responsibilities of raising a child of a different race.

This also goes for the reverse situation, where a family of color adopts a “white” child. I know this is rare, but I have known of one case. At work, I’ve also heard of a case of a Korean woman raised in an African American family.

Jae Ran – I thought race could no longer be considered as a factor in placements. A social worker can make rules arbitrarily. Why would a social worker be permitted to let their own prejudices enter into the question of placing a white child with a black family?

Posted 30 Jan 2007 at 9:28 pm ¶
DS-L wrote:

DiDi – I agree there is a huge difference between a white couple adopting a child of color, and a white mother in an interracial relationship having a child. But the difference has to do with having that person of color co-parenting with you. In my family, as in yours, my husband identifies with my children, passes on coping strategies, fully and viscerally understands being a minority, confronted with racism and stereotypes, I could go on and on.

But even after 18 years with my husband, with two Asian looking boys having come from my body, I am not much different from a white mother who just brought her baby home from China — I may have been able to educate myself more, have experienced more, but the struggle to understand white privilege, racism, constantly advocate for my children and be anti-racist, that is the same work she is going to have to do to parent a child of color well. And I have to do that work to mother my biological children well (and my adopted daughter). And no one thinks to ask should I mother them (just should I mother her). I maintain the question ignores mixed-race families. The better question is how white privilege blinds A-parents to the needs of their children and how best to educate and support them.
DS-L

Posted 30 Jan 2007 at 9:48 pm ¶
atlasien wrote:

I believe in my state adoptive placements from the foster care system don’t rely on the judgement of just one social worker. That’s true for “general” or “straight” adoption (no foster period) as opposed to the morely widely known foster-to-adopt path… in all the general or straight adoptions I know of, there’s a process of “going to committee” where a committee of workers judges between your application and that of other comparable families and votes on it. The committee system is different from state to state I also think.

Race is officially not a factor in placement, but I think that it’s unofficially very often a factor. Again it depends a lot from state to state and department to department.

I live inside Atlanta… in my licensing classes most of the parents were black and none were planning on transracial adoption. They treated the transracial adoption portion of our class more as a very interesting academic exercise, whereas it obviously stirred up some really strong emotions for the minority of white parents.

Posted 30 Jan 2007 at 9:53 pm ¶
StPat Jack wrote:

My answer is very simple to you questions. Inter-racial adoption is something we need to recognize as a non issue, if we truly have the best interesr of children in mind.
The reson why I beleive this to be true is b/c I am married to a man that spent 9 years in the foster care system. He ALWAYS says he would not have cared about the race/sexuality/religion of his adoptive parents, as long as they loved and cared for him. Period.
So, if there are prospective parents available for a child and they are willing to love and care for the child, is denying them due to race and prolonging the child’s existance w/out parents worth it? I think not.

Posted 31 Jan 2007 at 4:15 am ¶
Jae Ran wrote:

It’s true that the laws prohibit factoring in race; but we must be realistic and honest and understand that it still happens all the time. Only I see the bias towards privileging white parents with kids of color rather than the other way around.

It does happen that families of color receive white children in the foster care system, but in an investigative report by a local paper, a journalist spent two years calling both private and public agencies in all 50 states in the US, specifically stating that he and his wife (as an African American family) specifically wanted to adopt a white child. And the racism they faced – being called outright the n-word even, by the head of an agency, shows that there is still so much racism in our institutions and agencies that even if a social worker wanted to make a decision on their own, agency pressure might change the decision.

I have personally experienced white children in African American foster homes where the foster parents wanted to adopt those kids, but felt they could not adequately address the racial and cultural needs of the child. It was heartbreaking to see them facilitate those children in to an adoptive home because they truly loved those kids. I have NEVER witnessed a white family do this. If anything, they might tell me that despite the fact they live in an area that has NO families of diversity, NO friends or acquaintences of color, NO knowledge of the culture, No diversity in the schools, that they felt completely prepared to adopt a child of a different race and that they’d “attend a training” or “read a book.” And if the child is biracial, forget it! Then I am told that “since s/he is light skinned, everything will be fine.”

(This is not to say all white prospective families are like this, of course, I feel compelled to point this out lest I get called on for stereotyping).

Posted 31 Jan 2007 at 9:39 am ¶
joan wrote:

I want to respond to this comment from Kim:
“Truthfully, I always view the overseas adoption trend so personally, as an abject rejection of everything our beautiful, needy babies are deserving and worthy of , that I haven’t been able to whole-heartedly accept as true many of the reasons for the fashionable adoption of (particularly) Asian little girls, and now the more-appealing, and not so characteristically “Negroid” Ethiopian child. ”

Kim, I might be reading this wrong, but it seems to me you are suggesting that parents who adopt from Ethiopia are doing so because American blacks are too dark or “Negroid.” This issue is so much more complex than that.

First, the facts. 731 Ethiopian children were issued orphan visas in 2006; that means that 731 children were brought into the country to be adopted by American parents. This is a drop in the bucket compared to the number of children, including black children, adopted domestically in the US.

Ethiopians have a range of skin tones, from very light to very dark. Most families are referred a child they must accept without regard to skin color. The agency I work with (an established, reputable, large agency) places many children from southern Ethiopia, many of whom are very dark. We traveled with a family adopting dark-skinned children with so-called “Negroid” features.

Ethiopia is the only country in Africa with a stable international adoption program. Adopting from Ethiopia is not about rejecting other African countries. And Ethiopia is being ravaged by AIDS and other illnesses. An entire generation of adults of parenting age are dying. I know many families who sought to adopt from a country where the need for parents is created by health crises, not necessarily government policies. My son faces the double burden of being an immigrant (who experienced tragedy at a young age) and a black person. I hardly think cops won’t pull him over because his features aren’t “Negroid.” I hardly think he won’t face racism because he’s Ethiopian, not West African.

And I’m not rejecting our “beautiful babies.” Healthy American infants of every race find homes quickly. What we did reject was the process of domestic infant adoption, in large part because we didn’t feel the need to parent an infant. Our son was 13 months when he was referred to us, and we are now looking to adopt again from Ethiopia a boy ages 3-5. This kids are often considered “undesirable” because they are older boys.

The average American things of starving kids with bloated bellies when you say “Ethiopia.” They don’t think of fashionable beauty.

Next, adoption is incredibly expensive. Private domestic adoption can cost $35,000 or $40,000 sometimes (not always, but you can’t know from the start). International adoption expenses are predictable and more within our (middle class) budget. We are not wealthy just because we are adopting. We are also not infertile. We chose to adopt because it seemed to us the best way to grow our family.

Paula O, thanks so much for sharing your perspective on this. I agree that I wish more white parents, especially adoptive parents, were working harder to live in diverse areas, to be actively anti-racist, to try to eliminate white privilege. There’s no way we can eliminate the tragedy our son suffered at a young age. But it’s important to remember that we didn’t create that tragedy. We are just part of a solution to it.

Posted 31 Jan 2007 at 11:29 am ¶
Jae Ran wrote:

Paula, I meant to say in my earlier comments that I agree wholeheartedly with so much of what you wrote. Thank you for your perspective.

Posted 31 Jan 2007 at 12:01 pm ¶
SF Mom wrote:

RE: domestic adoption: Adopting from foster care costs the adoptive parents zero.

Posted 31 Jan 2007 at 1:07 pm ¶
Kim wrote:

Joan:

I am rushing, but I would like to say, I know that Ethiopians come in varying hues, but that is not the basis of “Negroid.”

I’m talking about the aversion to the less aquiline, less narrow jaw, less smooth hair shaft, broader, thicker limbed and featured African of American media-driven nightmares. The more widely understood “Western African” featured person.

I have a sister -in-law whose sister adopted two children from Ethiopia, and just as has been echoed at Anti-racist Parent by someone else in another thread, the comments from this in-law once removed were, “Oh, well at least they don’t have bad hair, so I don’t have to worry about that! In addition to ‘ we gave them American names because who can pronounce those weird Ethiopian names?’”

I asked her if we might keep in touch, and if she might take advantage of her proximity to me and my children, and call if she wanted to ask anything she felt funny saying to another parent.

There is an aversion to the African-ness of Black Americans, something even Black Americans have internalized.

I certainly did not single you out, nor would I have, but I do have those underlying questions.

I also know that a Black American child, particularly one who is not an infant can be yours for just…under $6000.00 (in private adoptions!) Whereas SFMom wrote, and I am inclined to believe based on my experience with fostering, that a ” foster care [adoption] costs the adoptive parents zero.”

And, I would not begrudge the extension of a comfortable homelife to any child, and do not. I suppose the begruding comes in on a rather theoretical level, when I know how many AA children languish in foster care, until they age out, with no one even considering their basic need to have the dragons and beasts from their dreams extinguished with a little of the hard work it takes to help any child heal.

Posted 31 Jan 2007 at 1:23 pm ¶
SF Mom wrote:

Once again hit send too soon. Here is my full comment:
Re: domestic adoption: Adopting from foster care costs the adoptive parents zero, in terms of fees. And as for the overinflated concerns about the “issues” a child from foster care might have. Yes, a child might need extra support to deal with the history that led them to be placed in foster care, but that support is not beyond the capacity of “ordinary” folks. It is not so different from what parents routinely provide their children. Yes, there are some children in foster care who need therapeutic placements with AP’s who can provide that kind of support. A competent agency will take care to match the children with families who can meet their needs. This is not only my own personal experience as an AP and part of a large community of fost adopt families, but also as someone who works in the system. I need to say all this to respond to the misconceptions perpetuated in comments on this blog and others about fost-adopt. I feel like I need to start a one woman public information campaign about foster care adoption! At very least, perhaps those who read this comment will stop and think before repeating harmful and inaccurate portrayals of foster care adoption.
Thanks.

Posted 31 Jan 2007 at 1:31 pm ¶
Jae Ran wrote:

I need to also add that while many children in foster care in the US do have lasting issues due to the neglect of abuse they’ve experienced, I believe it to be very short sighted to think that younger children adopted from other countries, will somehow be immune from some of those same issues. Younger does not equal better; in the words of a friend and colleague of mine (who adopted two children domestically as infants) it means you know less about their issues and needs.

Posted 31 Jan 2007 at 1:44 pm ¶
atlasien wrote:

Joining a chorus…

Here are some common misconceptions I have run across when it comes to adopting from foster care… I’ll try and qualify some of them.

1) all the children are drug-impacted or have FAS
2) all children come from parents who were abusive or neglectful (abuse and neglect are common reasons why a child might end up in foster care but there are also several others)
3) all the children are minorities (see this link for national statistics, but regional ones are very variable).
4) there are too many black children in the system because black parents don’t adopt enough (this is the worst misconception I’ve seen… it is totally false but plays well to racist mindsets)
5) it’s impossible to adopt an infant from foster care
6) older children adopted from foster care will always abuse other children, kill pets, burn houses down
7) children from the foster care system all have expensive medical or behavioral problems (sometimes true, but they come with Medicaid)
if you adopt from the foster care system, you may have to wait years until the adoption finalizes, and meanwhile the biological parents might regain custody (true often in foster-to-adopt, but not for all)

When I started out I had a few of those misconceptions. I think this thread has mostly stayed free of them but I see them a lot in other places.

I also don’t think anyone should adopt from foster care solely out of a sense of duty; you have to really want to do it, feel called and know you can fully commit. It’s definitely not for everyone.

Kim, from everything I’ve read, foster care adoptions are always subsidized and never cost money, no matter what the state. As such, they are the only formal adoptions (i.e. not counting relative) that are within the reach of many lower-income parents.

Posted 31 Jan 2007 at 2:07 pm ¶
joan wrote:

“I’m talking about the aversion to the less aquiline, less narrow jaw, less smooth hair shaft, broader, thicker limbed and featured African of American media-driven nightmares. The more widely understood “Western African” featured person.”

Yes, I agree some people might feel this way. But, again, Ethiopians vary in facial characteristics as well. There is a classic Ethiopian look (triangular face, high forehead, etc), but many children in Ethiopia have broader noses (Sudan is only just across the border). I hear what you are saying, but I just don’t think people who pursue international adoption are necessarily avoiding black American kids. I’m probably not going to convince you. I’m also suspicious of reasons people have for choosing certain countries over others, but, ultimately, it’s not up to me to decide who should adopt from where. The last person you’d want raising a black child is one who would rather raise a Russian child. And I don’t feel I should question another parents choices because AP get harassed enough about their choices as AP.

“I have a sister -in-law whose sister adopted two children from Ethiopia, and just as has been echoed at Anti-racist Parent by someone else in another thread, the comments from this in-law once removed were, “Oh, well at least they don’t have bad hair, so I don’t have to worry about that! In addition to ‘ we gave them American names because who can pronounce those weird Ethiopian names?’””

This is really awful, and I hate to hear this, though I believe you that it’s true. I have commented here (maybe you meant my comments?) that some people, not the AP, but others, have said, “Oh, they hardly look African.” But I find that AP of Ethiopian kids get really angry about those comments and really embrace their kids’ Ethiopian heritage. My son can say “Africa” and “Ethiopia” but not the same of our state or town yet, so that gives you an idea of what we talk about in my house.

In regards to hair: I find white mothers of Ethiopian daughters to be pretty obsessed with hair, which all white AP of Ethiopian kids have learned ranges from fine and curly to quite kinky and/or coarse. So it sounds like the in-law was the problem, not the AP. Right?

And as far as names go: I also know many Ethiopian kids in the US (including my own) who have Ethiopian names. So not all AP are trying to push away that heritage, either.

Anyway, I know you weren’t singling me out, and I also feel like I could do a better job of presenting these ideas.

More about why Ethiopia is appealing to parents: as far as international adoption goes, it’s relatively affordable. There are established Ethiopian communities in the US so there’s a way for families to keep kids connected to the communities. The care centers run by American agencies are almost all really great. They have a great ratio (2:1 for infants, 3:1 for toddlers, better than most American daycares). The kids usually have lived with their families until relinquishment, so a child who is, say, 5 years old may just have arrived at the care center after living with the first family all his life. These kids aren’t rotting away in institutions, as Ethiopia works hard to place them in homes quickly, once they are established to need homes.

I know I’m rambling on, but my point is that there are so many issues that family consider in international adoption. Race is one, but just one. We were far more concerned about the quality of care our child recieved in Ethiopia, our ability to get good information on the first family, our affinity for the culture, and the relatively quick process.

Posted 31 Jan 2007 at 3:08 pm ¶
joan wrote:

Here’s my (short) question to you all: why is bad for a parent to adopt from, say, an African country?

Posted 31 Jan 2007 at 3:15 pm ¶
joan wrote:

Okay, another post from me. I realized this is really what I’m stumbling over.

Do you all think that white parents who adopt from Ethiopia are doing so out of a basic desire to avoid parenting a black child with features more typically West African, like broader noses? That that’s at the hearts of the parents of those 731 kids who came into the US from Ethiopia last year?

Honestly, as an AP, I get so tired of hearing my decision to adopt from Ethiopia be questioned, first by the America first jingoists (usually people who have never adopted) and now within the anti-racist community. It’s coming from all sides. Am I really the problem here?

It sounds like you all are saying I should have pursued a domestic infant adoption or a domestic foster adoption. Why?

Posted 31 Jan 2007 at 3:39 pm ¶
atlasien wrote:

Personally, I don’t think adopting from Africa is bad. Several years ago I actually had an intensely negative view of any international adoption, but I don’t feel I was very informed back then. Now that I’m a bit better informed I feel intensely neutral, if that makes any sense.

I don’t want to get into a straight-up state adoption vs. international argument… I think that debate gets played out over and over again in the mainstream media and nothing good comes out of it. I know a lot of people who have a kneejerk “we need to take care of our own first” attitude and I know why they say it but I think the reality is more complicated. I just think adoption from foster care gets denigrated too much in favor of international, and there is more misconception and confusion about foster care adoptions than any other form of adoption.

I also think every adoption has an often conflicting duty vs. desire/selfless vs. selfish component. Adoptive parents have a duty to consider the ethics of where and how they are getting their children, and to try not to perpetuate systems of inequality. But they also have to deeply want their children in a very loving, greedy, selfish way. Otherwise they are taking on a job, or a charity case, not a child.

Joan, even if at times you feel like “damned if you do and damned if you don’t” I think you should try not to take critiques of Ethiopian adoption in general as critiques of your particular situation. In the foster care adoption system there are lots of problems too, with placements and oversight… I know good and dedicated parents, but they rarely make the news, instead every couple months it’s another abusive adoptive family making the headlines for putting their special needs children in cages or beating them to death. I really hate reading about that stuff, but it happens.

Posted 31 Jan 2007 at 4:02 pm ¶
chicagomama wrote:

I think one thing that I have not yet seen in this discussion is the why adoptions are always framed in the no-win situation of which child is ‘more’ needy and/or deserving of being adopted.
Whenever I read the type of article linked to in this post – it seems that often the author (intentionally or not) seems to equate adoption with saving/charity. As if an adoptive parent should [when thinking about wanting a child] consider which child they could give the most ‘benefit’ to.
I think that is one of the biggest problems in this discussion. Because, while there are some people in the adoptive community who adopt ‘to help a needy child’ – most SW and adoption agencies and adoption advocates actually say that adopting as charity is one of the worst reasons to adopt. And I believe that the vast majority of people adopting aren’t doing so to “save” a child, but rather doing so because they want to parent.
And once you take the discussion away from adoption as charity…I think the idea of adoptive parents somehow showing ‘racism’ due to the children they want to adopt needs to be addressed the same way we address the ‘racism’ that is shown in how people choose their partner/spouse/whatever designation you want to give.
We (for the most part) do not question why someone chooses to marry or share their lives with a certain person. And yet…in adoption we somehow seem to be suggesting that by choosing one method of adopting – the parent has somehow ‘confessed’ to a deep hidden well of racism. And that adoptive parents should somehow be required to work through the racism and privilege that they might enjoy as part of their adoption experience, in the ways to others have decided are most ‘correct’ or most ‘worthy’.
What is the difference between adopting transracially or not and marrying transracially or not (and I ask this as a serious question – not a rhetorical one) In both situations – a person is building their family. Do we really want to open a door about the rightness of how we form our families and the ‘moral’ value of our choices? Doesn’t this start to lead down the same road as saying that one shouldn’t ‘mix’ races unless it somehow fits whatever moral authority is in vogue at the time?
The other issue that bothers me about this discussion (and I do believe this is unintentional, for the most part) is that when a discussion is framed as “why doesn’t anyone want the Black children?” – I think in some ways – this validates the idea that Black children who are available for adoption are less valued and more needy and therefor most deserving of homes. And I hope that everyone would agree that every single child deserves a loving home. But no single child deserves a loving home more than another.
When the question becomes “why not Black, domestic adoption?” it also seems to be that the overall theme is to try to shame people into wanting to adopt domestically and transracially. Do we really want families ’shamed’ into choices they wouldn’t naturally make? Perhaps in some circumstances we do, I really don’t know. But I am not comfortable thinking of using children available for adoption as a tool for shaming parents who want to adopt. Adoption isn’t meant to right social wrongs. It is a method of building families. And I don’t think that adoptive families should be held to some higher standard of having to justify why they chose to build their family one way as opposed to another. It invalidates the idea that adoption should be another equally valid way to build a family. Unless we want to ask every person who wants children to justify why they want to give birth instead of adopting a child who already needs a home.
I am probably not being incredibly articulate here. And, for the most part, I think that the people missing in this conversation are the Black families who do adopt (at twice the rate as any other ethnicity) children. And the other thing I think is missing from this type of discussion is why over 2 million families a year look into adopting, but only 50,000 adoption a year are actually completed (I believe – my numbers my be a bit off). What is happening between those two numbers? Why are so many families ultimately dissuaded from adopting? Is it lack of information, is it racism on the part of parents, is it racism within the adoption process, is it the lack of certainty that scares people?
But as long as this discussion is framed as “what do white people find wrong with Black children?” I think solutions are going to be in short supply.
Do we want a majority or even a lot of children of color adopted transracially? Do we want more white families to be raising children of color?
It sometimes does seem like a catch-22 for the parents. Like everyone wants white parents to profess a deep and abiding desire to adopt Black children, but also to acknowledge that they are the least desirable candidate to raise that child, unless the child is hard to place, or older, or part of a sibling group. At which point (it seems sometimes) the white families looking to adopt are supposed to say, “I totally want to change my dream of having a young child because it is a more worthy cause to adopt an older child, sibling group or child that has not been able to be adopted by someone else. And I also want to hear about how I should be willing to add several layers of complexity onto parenting since I have to adopt anyways – why shouldn’t I create my family based upon what someone else believes would be best.”

Posted 31 Jan 2007 at 4:38 pm ¶
chicagomama wrote:

umm – just to say, Atlasien just stated what I was trying to in her comment above much better, and much more succinctly.

Posted 31 Jan 2007 at 4:40 pm ¶
Kim wrote:

(Really, really long…sorry)

I think the IDEA of the horrors experienced in foster care, by AA children and others, is a very real wall to climb over, and a very real (not-so-white) elephant in the room.

That the experiences of these children is not all horrible, and not all of them leave foster care ready to become the next ax/fire/mask-wearing/ anything is certainly to be said, and is understood.

I think incorporating the understanding that many former-fosters will come needing the time and attention to normalize into a family setting, and learn to trust, follow new rules, absorb new (perhaps) customs and behaviors, is a work that will entail many hours upon hours, upon revisited and revised hours by the families, (just as one would do with a bio-child when things are not working), is an important consideration.

The dragons and beasts may be there, too, and I think, loom large for many people unfamiliar with the ‘others’ in the world…others who may not always have salad dressing in the house, who may hang pictures on the wall with tape and never frame a photo, who may not always have the rent and may never pay down on a mortgage. There are some real aversions to that ‘other’ side of life, and the people who inhabit it.

And I think the foster child is the poster child for such aversionists of the many facets of life that are out there, not very far away.

The discussion, where one would both speak and listen, is necessary for me, as more than exercise…and so I put out there a jarring thing or two, because …well, why not? Let’s have the conversation. But the dragons and beasts, as someone stated, can be attendant in the internationally adopted child as well.

And, yes, people are suspected of marrying their spouses (or “into” families) all the time for cynical reasons (”he’s so oooold,” “she’s got that trust she’s going to come into,” “he doesn’t like black/white/asian women,” etc.) Of course, those who do the inquiry, are the cynics, and such may be the case here, as well. But that analogy doesn’t exactly make your case.

To answer, It was the adoptive parent who made the comments about the hair and the names, of the kids that she had just brought home that evening. My offer to her is still on the table.

I’ll say this, not to pull out a trump card, but to actually out myself, as except for an instance two years ago with a newly adopted child I met at a playground, I hadn’t thought of the many ways in which I could define myself.

I am a former foster child. All of my infancy and up until maybe the first day of kindergarten. I was placed with a loving Black family just before the age of ten months because the white family who had me did not want to take the little black baby on vacation (really a laugh, when you consider what I look like to Black folks), for which they had received permission but at the last minute found they could not bear to do.

That family (Black) is part of my family till this day, and provided for me an extended family that none of my siblings have ever had. They would have adopted me, and only declined due to knowing my mother wanted me back.

I don’t have nightmares, don’t have a single bad memory, not one, of being with them. They became my godparents, put away money for college for me (talk about love).

But my story is not the story of others, not even some of my brothers. My story is mine.

At the deepest level, while I really mean it when I say I do not begrudge the loving home that is extended to any child (and I get the feeling some of you did not read that ), I do wonder about the sub-text, and the back story, of the comings together. Why?

Because I was raised in this country, and have heard all sorts of things about the reasons we cannot bridge the racial divide, have known the reasons some offered, and reject them all.

Because I am a Black woman, who looks at things from a particular perspective, and find that, like for the pessimist, it helps to keep me from being disappointed.

But, man, when I smile, when I laugh – let’s just say it comes from the bottom of my soul. And I share that smile everyday of my life.

Posted 31 Jan 2007 at 8:14 pm ¶
Jae Ran wrote:

Historically, adoption *has* been used as a method to “right social wrongs” and it’s only been in the past 50 years or less that it’s been about building families.

Look at the Orphan Train movement and the Native American Boarding school movements as two examples. Korean adoptions are another population that came from Holt’s self-proclaimed mission to “rescue the Amerasian children of the Korean
conflict. . . They were they backwash of war, the outcasts of society.”

It’s not just one or the other. Adoption has fit in with both paradigms, that of helping “needy” children and that of building families.

Posted 31 Jan 2007 at 8:21 pm ¶
Margaret wrote:

Joan – you state: “It sounds like you all are saying I should have pursued a domestic infant adoption or a domestic foster adoption. Why? ”

I have found that, as an adoptive parent of a daughter from China, that many people do not feel shy at all about expressing their opinion about this rather private decision. Folks also don’t mind telling me what choices they think I should make regarding subsequent adoptions.

I’ve learned to ignore them. They do not live your life, they do not know everything that went in to your decision to adopt from Ethiopia and they do not live with the consequences of your decision. You’ll find every imaginable opinion out there and if you really think about them all, your head will spin. I’m often amazed at how many opinions come from folks who have nothing to do with adoption at all.

Posted 31 Jan 2007 at 10:05 pm ¶
atlasien wrote:

Thanks for “outing” yourself and sharing your perspective, Kim. I hope you’ll share more of it… there are not that many blogs and websites out there from adults who have experienced foster care. There is a great foster child advocacy site I like to read: Sunshine Girl on a Rainy Day.

Posted 31 Jan 2007 at 10:15 pm ¶
atlasien wrote:

Oops, this is a more current link: http://sunshinegirlonarainyday.blogspot.com/

Posted 31 Jan 2007 at 11:13 pm ¶
Margie wrote:

My brain is working to absorb everything above – I think there’s a lot to learn here.

One thing I hadn’t considered when I invited more adoptees to post was that being asked to “weigh in” could be uncomfortable. That invitation came from my desire to ensure the discussion wasn’t dominated by adoptive parents, but it never occurred to me that being put on the spot was really in appropriate. I’ll remember that – it because of it I appreciate the comments adoptees have made even more.

Taking a swag at Chicagomama’s question “What is the difference between adopting transracially or not and marrying transracially or not (and I ask this as a serious question – not a rhetorical one) In both situations – a person is building their family.”

I think the difference is that the child in the adoptive family had no choice. When two adults of different races, ethnicities or countries choose to marry, they bear the consequences themselves. Their biracial or bicultural children may not be immune from identity issues, but they will have their parents’ racial and cultural knowledge to draw from.

But in a transracial or transnational adoption, a child with his or her own racial and cultural identity, and no choice in the matter, is brought into a situation in which, in most cases, the parents can’t offer the same support.

It’s sometimes argued that since no child chooses his or her family or birthplace, birth and adoption into a family are the same. But children placed in adoption are born before they’re adopted, somewhere else and to other families. The fact that a powerless child loses family and heritage in transracial or transnational adoption separates that experience dramatically from building a family through transracial or transnational marriage. TRA/TRN adoptive parents have a responsiblity to acknowledge those differences in the choices they make while raising their child.

Posted 31 Jan 2007 at 11:20 pm ¶
Kim wrote:

Atlasien: thanks for that. Should be interesting.

Margaret: Are the comments and inquiries from people who have adopted any more relevant than those who have not? Any more or less intrusive, or opinionated? Any more (un)solicited?

I think that in your response is the presumption that those who have not adopted would have some in-depth aversion or deeply held opposition to adoption, (and there are those in the world indeed), and so seek to engage merely to blast the choice made by the adoptive parent.

Nothing intrusive need be entertained, to be sure. People who are not a part of your world are passersby, spectators, sometimes voyeurs. But sometimes, there is a real opportunity for discussion there, and that is made through inquiry. And sometimes, in inquiry, each of us will falter, step over a line, unwittingly offend.

Consider the ways you do this in your life, consider the ways (outside of adoption) you have known this to be the case.

Posted 01 Feb 2007 at 12:24 am ¶
Denise wrote:

I am really enjoying all the different perspectives here.

My own story of adoption with my son is very different than most. We did not set out to adopt at all at the time. We were contacted by a friend working in Haiti about our son. He was an orphan, and very sick, and needing to get out of Haiti quickly. In the process of getting him here, the one thing that my husband and I thought about the most was what he would be leaving behind, what more losses he may experience after all the losses he had already experienced. That was and is a big fear of mine, and because of that, we have made a huge effort to keep as much as we can for him. I taught myself as much Creole as I could, hung a Haitian flag in his bedroom, and bought Haitian story books and history books to read to my bio kids. After he got here, we sought out Haitian families in our area, and have made some great friends. He and I cook Haitian meals together, and we have pictures of his first family and his first home throughout our house. I am thankful to live in a fairly diverse little town, where even his school has embraced his past. He is in the process of compiling his own stories of his childhood in Haiti with his teacher at school. We still correspond with his grandmother who is still living in Haiti, and have plans to meet an aunt we just found out he has in NY.

Maybe I am justifying myself here, but I honestly do wonder all the time if his life would be easier being raised by a family who shares his background. But I can’t imagine another faily, balck or white, loving him more than we do. And I am grateful everyday by how much he teaches us, and for the beautiful new culture our famimly is sharing.

Posted 01 Feb 2007 at 9:26 am ¶
Kim wrote:

denise: I am thankful to live in a fairly diverse little town, where even his school has embraced his past.

Consider that it never gets wiped out, and as you certainly do not sound like you have an unconscious or conscious desire to do so, how about … embraced his beginnings/origins.

Suee: Later we would learn that agencies pitch India as a source of “caucasian adoption” because traditional racial categories apparently allow that assignment.

The spin IS there, equating caucasian with white, forcing the mind to see only one subset of caucasian, and usurping its basis.

To say “apparently allow” is to want the larger, first category to be viewed as skewed, and to place the American’s perspective as a global perspective, and is to offer resistance.

It is such resistance (everyone’s/not merely Suee’s) that causes the language and the contact, the motivations and desires, to seem to be oppostional and agenda-filled.

Posted 01 Feb 2007 at 3:15 pm ¶
MichelleL wrote:

As a new adoptive parent of a beautiful African American (AA) little girl, I have to chime in here with my thoughts. My husband and I are both caucasian (CC). We adopted domestically because we wanted a newborn and we liked the idea of being the “solution” to a difficult situation occurring in our own country. But mainly because we wanted a child to raise together.

I strongly believe that even though my husband and I have never experienced racism personally, we can instill the self-confidence and coping skills in our daughter that she will need to deal with racism as she grows. She will have contact with the AA community in our town and see role models of all races and genders with the goal of becoming a well-adjusted, productive member of society.

I think it is unfair and dare I say it — prejudice — to believe this is impossible for us to do this for an AA child just because we are CC.

I agree that our daughter had no choice in this and that her life will be different with us than it would’ve been raised by her birthmother. Not better or worse, just different. But the reality is she did have this choice made for her by her birthmother and birthgrandmother — and they did what they felt was the best choice for her at the time.

My husband’s and my job now is to honor our promises to her birthfamily and do our best to raise a child who is happy and confident in her own skin.

Posted 01 Feb 2007 at 3:33 pm ¶
Kim wrote:

MichelleL:

Good for you.

One thing, I don’t think you’ll find the comments here coming down on ‘others can’t raise a child who is This, or That,’ but find that there are questions about what the work to be done is, and whether there need to be considerations made for the access, or lack thereof, that some groups experience in their desire to do as your family has done.

I think it is indeed prejudicial to feel that it is impossible for the transracial/cultural family will not meet all the needs, per cultural and racial identity, of the adopted child. But that is not racial prejudice, it is a concern that if one is not OF something, then how do they TEACH it? It is a consideration made in classroom settings, in families when it comes to puberty education and the other-gendered child, etc., etc.

Much ignorance, or the type of benign avoidance, of cultural/racial issues, and how they affect one’s transracial adoptive child, has sent adoptive parents into a camp of resentment and unwillingness to consider how the child is being received, how the world is perceiving and responding to the child, and how the family can help the child to navigate, positively.

One thing to consider is the effect of the camera on the observer, when it comes to “introducing” your child to Black families, and making contact. You will have to make contact, you will need to find some moms who respond positively to you, who are willing to befriend you, and open up to you, or you will forever find that you and your child are visitors-conspicuous, odd, suspect-in a strange land (unless you live in Montclair, N.J., that is).

Posted 01 Feb 2007 at 5:10 pm ¶
Marla wrote:

Paula, Thanks for sharing your perspective with us– especially us AP’s who really do want to listen and learn.

Posted 02 Feb 2007 at 4:42 pm ¶
Erika wrote:

this is such a “black and white” question that really doesnt come with a one size fits all answer.In the world of adoption,many many issues come into play.To me it is the land of grays and people on all sides try to make it stark.
As a rule I am ANTI ADOPTION.I dont believe in giving other ppl’s babies to others.unfortuanately,there are real cases of child abuse,devestating poverty across our country and the world, and INFERTILITY at an all time high.
If an adoption must happen,the child’s identity should be preserved.No name changes,no sealed records and the complete and honest truth to the child as age appropriate.Every effort should be made to maintain contact with natural parents even if it has to be supervised,even if its photos and letters once a year.
As far as TRANSRACIAL adoptions,I believe that LOVE KNOWS NO COLOR.But white adopters however well meaning and however loving, can never teach or show another person of color, what it is to be WHO THEY ARE.Even with visits to the home country/culture,even with all the books videos and support groups.Once you raise a child into your own cultures,they can never get back WHO THEY ARE. Adoption is an unnatural state of being for all parties involved and even if placed with adoptive families of the same race and culture – it still goes against humanity.
If adoption needs to happen, then god bless the adopters who are doing it for the kids and doing it with LOVE AND TRUTH.

Posted 03 Feb 2007 at 6:50 pm ¶
kim wrote:

Anti-Adoption.

Great.

The first woman I met who held to that standard was an arrogant, complacent, non-thinking, materialistic middle-class mother of one who openly expressed to me , “mothers who cannot have their own children are not really women at all.”

We went back and forth with that for a while, and all she could offer was, “a female does not become a woman until she has a baby.” Ignorant.

We talked about biological predetermination, and reproductive functions determining value, and the antiquated aspects of those philosophies, and she would not budge. I found out later she did not understand my language.

My hoped-it-would-be-humbling retort during the insane conversation: Some people would say that women who can’t have babies vaginally, and without medical assistance, would ever really have a live child, so they are actually not supposed to be mothers at all – science helped them out where their own bodies were deficient. (The last six weeks of her pregnancy she’d spent laying in a hospital bed, constantly monitored, and the baby was taken by caesarian.)

She took issue with my statement; wonder why?

Posted 03 Feb 2007 at 9:11 pm ¶
Lyonside wrote:

Kim: What you said, sister!

Erika: Against HUMANITY? Genocide, nuclear war, adoption? One of these things is not like the other… Adoption is FAR from being against “humanity,” since basically it has always existed inn some form by every human society.

Between high maternal (and paternal) mortality rates, extended family and kinship structures that would place babies and children with adults who may or may not have a biological tie, abandoned children being taken in, outright fosterage especially in times of need, etc., adoption has been a way to CONTINUE humanity, in various social frameworks. I’d consider that a positive, thanks.

Not to mention chaos caused by wars, diseases, famines, migrations (forced and otherwise), or the needs for more physical labor, and you have situations were adoption, regardless of name, was essential for keeping communities going.

Lest you think adoption is modern, think of all the foundling stories and myths in every culture. Folktales do not take their structural elements in rarely-seen events, they take their basic elements from the common everyday, and weave the fantastical/spiritual/miraculous elements into them.

Posted 04 Feb 2007 at 12:13 am ¶
Lyonside wrote:

Slight correction upon rereading: “Unnatural” to me meant “against humanity” – if that means something else to you, Erika, please enlighten me, since that’s not exactly your words.

But the rest of my post? I stand behind.

Posted 04 Feb 2007 at 12:28 am ¶
Kathy wrote:

I am an adoptive mother, and I agree with Erika.
Taking children away from their mothers to
solve the problem of infertility is not a very
good solution. Finding homes for children who
are in need of a family is quite a different topic.
Erika, please know that I support you.

Posted 04 Feb 2007 at 12:43 am ¶
Lyonside wrote:

Kathy:

>Taking children away from their mothers to
solve the problem of infertility is not a very
good solution.

Is this actually happening ANYWHERE? (not talking about a surrogate motherhood situation – totally different concept). But are there actually adoptions in which a mother who would otherwise raise the child says, Oh, but I can help another woman who’s infertile? Or is adoption generally a “2 (or more) people with 2 different needs” situation?

Posted 04 Feb 2007 at 1:22 am ¶
kim wrote:

Kathy…

would you mind expounding?

Lyonside…is there some Campbell rolling (swimming) around inside of you? I must start from there, and start tackling some of my kids’ big questions. Thanks for that.

Posted 04 Feb 2007 at 11:42 am ¶
Kathy wrote:

What I think is that adoption has become a
huge industry focused on finding children
for infertile families. I think women in a
crisis are at risk of losing their children to
adoption to satisfy the demand. I know that
this is a sweeping statement and doesn’t
apply to all adoption and it doesn’t in any
way implicate adoptive families. I think
adoptive families for the most part are
interested in building families in an
ethical manner.
There is a lot of information on
“Exiled Mothers” that Erika links to.
I think in the case of international adoption
that there is so much money involved
and so many poor women who do not
have much power or control of their
life or that of their children combined
with the power of the relative wealth
of adoptive families that fuels this
enormous industry.

Posted 04 Feb 2007 at 12:28 pm ¶
kim wrote:

Kathy:

I missed any link (was that word to show parallel and agreement?) from Erika.

That which is offered up as considered option and choice for the desperate, ailing “first mother,” is indeed in the minds of many who express concern over creating a shift in the process of offering aid (not related to this thread). But, offering aid is not the basis of adoption, not aid to all parties concerned.

There are personal, selfish-without-intent-to cause-direct-harm-or-hardship, reasons for adoption (especially for the infertile couple), which may indeed reflect the global imbalance of access to resources and power that is true of the U.S. , and all her citizens, to other nations and peoples across the globe.

I wouldn’t think people are salivating to pull a child away from a parent with limited options, but, is that a consideration throughout the process? I think a few have spoken to it here, and elsewhere across the net, and children lingering in orphanages comes to mind.

I’ve wanted to ask, and this is slightly related, but I am not recalling as clearly as I want: Does anyone recall a POV (Point of View) production done about four or five years ago, (along the time that a guy named Phil, a biracial adult, raised by a White adoptive family, went looking for information on his first family) about a family (White), in Minnesota I believe, who decided to “adopt” a family, to share the raising and care of this child whose mother was just unable to do so, having no way to care for her other children and the new baby?

That show introduced something that my heart had me crying out about as I watched, before the solution for all was revealed, and was the only time I’d ever heard of adopting families in a hands-on AND extension of monies way.

Posted 04 Feb 2007 at 1:12 pm ¶
Erika wrote:

Unethical adoptions unfortuanatlely occur domestically and abroad. I don’t think it’s a matter of a woman offering up her child to help an infertile party, it is usually along the lines of a crisis pregnancy and the woman exploring the adoption option.
The scales are tipped to the adopter’s side, in that once a woman chooses to consider adoption and starts exploring potential parents, it becomes very hard to change their mind.And there are thousands of cases where mothers changed their minds, but lost their babies anyway.The case of the teen mother in Ohio is a perfect example.The judge ordered the baby returned and the adoption agency is defying the order by not revealing the child’s whereabouts.So that attachment occurs over a period of time and then more likely be able to keep Baby Evelyn because of the attachment.
Because of the huge demand for babies, disadvantaged mothers are targeted, from television ads to internet sites and counselling centres set up to “help”.Poverty and lack of social support is a major reason why first mothers lose their babies.
I know unethical and fraudulent adoptions happen because it happened to me in 2001.
I asked for social support and instead was taken into court and threatened. Open adoption was the carrot used to get me to sign.without proper legal assistance or counselling, i was railroaded into giving my baby up. Suffice it to say, open adoption is another tactic to get mothers consent, and once recieved adopters often close the adoption.
In a perfect world there would be no need for adoptions. But that isnt the world we live in. I’ve seen first hand over and over, women coming to my website expressing great sadness and grief over the loss of their babies. It’s an industry plain and simple. We poor women have the product.

When I see the question is it okay for white ppl to adopt babies of other races and cultures, it is a major signal that the desire for babies has become insatiable.

Posted 04 Feb 2007 at 1:48 pm ¶
Erika wrote:

Until you’ve experienced the loss of your baby, you can never really understand the terms in which i speak.

if adoption was so wonderful, why are there so many problems and issues with it? which one of your children would you like to give away?

what i went through was inhumane to me and to my children. it was unnatural and wrong on so many levels.

and even the women who actually made an informed “choice” did so with great burden and suffer a life long trauma and grief.

I am ANTI adoption because I was raised by an adoptee, who has major attachment issues. my family is now 3 generations of adopted children, and I have experienced the negative effects through out.

I am all for Guardianships, extended family care and kinship placements. I believe that if a child must be adopted, it should be done with the most amount of openness and truth.
I am not arrogant, middle class or prejudiced. I know alot of professionals who deal with adoptees and all the painful issues that adoptions bring.
I salute adoptive parents, the ones who truly are in it for the best interests of the child, rather then their need to become a parent.
What kind of a society first creates orphans and then promotes adoption? Why arent single mothers given more support? I live with the aftermath of adoption and so does my 10 yr old daughter who lost her younger sister. I also have to deal with a mother who cannot attach to her children. then theres the adoptive mother, an adoptee herself and pulled every dirty trick in the book(including befriending me and lieing about me) in order to gain my child.

maybe now you can understand where I’m coming from.

Posted 04 Feb 2007 at 4:19 pm ¶
Erika wrote:

“Neither society nor the (adopter) who holds the child in
Her arms wants to confront the agony of the mother
From whose arms that same child was taken.”
(Margaret McDonald Lawrence)

Posted 04 Feb 2007 at 4:43 pm ¶
Lyonside wrote:

Erika: I’m sorry for your painful personal history – this isn’t the story I hear from most adoptees (personally I only know domestic adoptees), and I don’t think it’s overwhelmingly common.. maybe it it.

However, there are adoptive situations in which the birth mother (parents – lets not forget the fathers too) are deceased, or incapable of raising a child (mental illness, drug abuse, neglectful parenting, all of which sometimes result in the termination of parental rights). So no, there is not always a grieving birth mother. And sometimes, the birth mother is actually OK with her decision. That’s not to trivialize your story, but there are other scenarios.

I still have a problem with the idea of saying that adoption is unnatural by its very existance. Is the US system, domestic and international, perfect? Nope – but tell me, what is?

Kim: Yeah, I was probably channeling Joseph Campbell – the dude got me through a Science and the Sacred course my freshman year, I owe him a huge debt.

Posted 04 Feb 2007 at 10:55 pm ¶
kim wrote:

Erika, thank you for your candor, as it does indeed allow us to better understand the perspective you hold.

“What kind of a society first creates orphans and then promotes adoption? Why arent single mothers given more support?”

I am completely in-line with this type of questioning, and find that, ultimately, a foster system , such as that run here in the States, finds ways to keep itself in business, and does this by expanding its parameters of power and the broad ranging definitions that such quasi-legal organizations (meaning, agencies invested with the force of law, even when cases are not adjudicated) use to lend legitimacy to their processes and determinations.

I am from a community that has felt preyed upon by state foster care agencies, and do not know anyone who would turn to such agencies for temporary rest, respite, or support. (There are initiatives in some states whereby stressed parents are encouraged to turn to “temporary” care providers, to de-escalate any rising tensions or simply to have a much needed breather from the solo parenting gig, who are then betrayed by “the system” and have to fight to wrestle their kids back from being wards of the state.)

I do know that life will throw curves at a family that can never be foreseen, and in the case of suddenly orphaned children, especially for the poor, such a system has been looked at , and indeed may have been created to act, as a social safetynet, taking in the kids, and finding home placements. In some instances, if the kids are shined upon by the Gods, they find a second, permanent home.

And, yes, even then there is great loss that travels with them.

I must acknowledge the haunting that I know you and your daughter are going through, and say I wish for you the patience and fortitude to keep tight your memories of, and your resolve to be reunited with , your adopted-out daughter one day. Life may open that door for you, and find she is looking for you, and then you’ll have that long road to travel, filled with its own ups and downs.

Posted 04 Feb 2007 at 11:56 pm ¶
Erika wrote:

I agree with you that children will always need to be placed with loving families due to the reasons you stated. I wish I could say that what happened to me was an isolated incident, I know that it wasnt. There’s a few reasons why you might not hear about it. One is that women are only now beginning to come out of the darkness and tell our stories. Another is because we are poor and lack status our voices are generally not heard anyway.More and more natural parents are posting blogs, putting up websites and writing books. We’re trying to expose the industry for what it is and to educate others on the perils and horrors adoption can bring. We are almost never well recieved particularly by adopters and agencies, because we challenge the status quo. We challenge the myths and dehumanization of “birth” parents and we challenge ppl to examine their motives for adopting. I have said in previous comments that adoption should be reformed. It should be done with openness and I advocate to preserve families wherever possible.
If you are not familiar with the adoption healing literature, the Primal Wound is well documented.
The demand for babies has reached an all time high in human history. Never before has adoption thrived in a billion dollar business. I’ve been networking and researching for 5 years. I’ve met black market adoptees, birth parents who were lied to in “dead baby scams”, to adoptive parents who adopt babies in order to help them reconnect with their families. I’ve met just about everyone in the adoption world.
There are no fast and easy answers, but I will say for sure that for me, my daughter is being forced through an unnatural situation. She has to call someone Mom, who is not Mom. She knows this on a primal level. Unnatural to me, to live separated and deprived of her year after year. Unnatural to you, the adoptive parent, because you have to adjust, read up on other races and cultures, read up on attachment all the while (in some situations) not having resolved the real motives for adopting.
This issue is political and emotional, but if there’s an open discussion then thats progress.

Posted 05 Feb 2007 at 12:02 am ¶
kim wrote:

Without seeking to continue to dominate this thread, I wanted to also say to you, Erika, that my family’s relationship to adoption is radically different from your own, and probably better termed “social aid” adoption than not, with only one infant being adopted, and the rest, nine cousins and one uncle, having entered at various stages in their development.

Every adoptee, even the cousin who was legally adopted and is now a first cousin as opposed to being a fifth cousin, has gone through the need for searching and establishing relationships with the “first family,” and many of those efforts have resulted in a sort of pain to my cousins that they have had to reconcile against the hardship and lack of care they might have been left to falter in, had they not been adopted.

No one is our family is thought of as a qualified-cousin (”adopted” cousin), though of course I use the terms here in this thread, and perhaps the general, seemingly easy absorption of them into the larger “us,” has seemed easy because I am not the adopted child, and because we were all raised together, with the adults never making any distinctions within earshot of any of us.

The point: every adoption experience truly is different, for both the child and the new family unit that the child essentially creates, though through the actions of the adoptive parents.

With all of the work, sweat, spilled pudding stains, time-outs, new shoes, and unexpected smiling-dimpled-cheeks that happen in a family, the families that put in great work, nurturing, and dig deeply into a natural wellspring of reason and instinct, (and support from other family members!) can make a family work. And it can be positive for many families, many adoptees.

Posted 05 Feb 2007 at 12:14 am ¶
Brenda wrote:

The ideas and comments I’ve read in this thread have been very interesting to me.

I am a single adoptive mom (white) to my daughter (AA). I am also an adoptee. While I grew up in a same race family, sometimes I felt different, but that was just how it was for me–that was my normal. All the relatives on my mom’s side–many of the 43 cousins–look like each other, and though I could “pass” as a bio kid, and certainly more than my daughter would be able to, that really didn’t matter–I didn’t see any reason for pretending that I was a bio kid. I knew that I had big unanswered questions about my identity, but seriously didn’t know there was social stigma attached to being adopted until I began researching adoption as a prospective adoptive parent.

My sister (also adopted) and I thought that she and I had to wash the dishes and help do housework while our brother (the bio kid) did not because he was our parents’ bio kid–we didn’t know about patriarchy. I guess I’m trying to say that being adopted was normal for me, but it was not without pain and confusion.

I went through a prolonged identity crisis, much due to not knowing who or where I came from . I learned that to sort of c0-exist in two realities… I am a part of the family that raised me, but I also have a shared biology with others. I am, and I am not.

I met my birth mother when I was 37. I had many of my questions answered, and I don’t feel like ‘free agent’ out in the world like I used to since finding out who I look like and about my family of origin. I did not expect that after I met my birth mother I would feel more bonded to my adoptive mom–I understood at a deeper level that family is who you are raised by, and raised with.My birth family is delightful, and I feel proud and lucky to have found them. But my b-mom is not my mom, though she’s someone I love.

I have an open adoption with my daughter’s b-mom. It is important to me that there not be any secrets there, though the b-mom’s life situation has prevented us from having contact. But the door is open on this end– I want my daughter to have that connection and not have to wonder about some basic facts about herself that I believe she has a right to.

So, I feel that I will be able to share some of my experiences as an adoptee with my daughter, and look for some of the signs of some of the issues that I went through. I am not going to be able to be the person in her life who helps her learn how to deal with racial prejudice and stereotypes from first hand experience—I fully admit that I cannot raise my daughter on my own and provide for all of her needs–I have to rely on family and friends to help round out our family and her world. Even if she and I were of the same race I could not fill all her needs.

I was very hesitant to adopted transracially becuase I felt my limitations, and I questioned whether I could provide for my child’s needs in areas that were not my life experience. But I also felt a big commitment to my child to do whatever I could to help her to be strong in herself. I am confused about whether the town I live is in is where I will stay once my daughter is school-age as it’s pretty white. I get a variety of opinion from my AA friends–some move back to west coast cities, others say this is a great place to raise kids. But I don’t want my daughter to be a novelty in the classroom.

I don’t know that I addressed anything relevant to this thread. But just wanted to toss in my 2 cents too.

Brenda

Posted 05 Feb 2007 at 2:56 am ¶
kim wrote:

MichelleL: “I strongly believe that even though my husband and I have never experienced racism personally…”

Brenda: “I am not going to be able to be the person in her life who helps her learn how to deal with racial prejudice and stereotypes from first hand experience…”

Kim: racism and racial prejudice do not happen in a vacuum, they do not merely happen “to” a group, but are systems and actions that are placed “upon,” or “done to” the group.

You know more than you can identify about the chain link fence we are all a part of.

Dawn (a guest writer to this site) speaks often about possessing this consciousness, and being vigilant about divesting from the assumptions, biases and unspoken bigotry that each of us, even in a socially privileged way absent ideas of race, is privy to, albeit quite often unconsciously, unconsciously.

In addition,racial prejudice can be as simple as being assumed to be the one in the group who has never experienced a hard time, who has always had her way paved (because one is White), and so being considered a “provisional” member until one “proves” one’s self. It can simply be people’s opinions of who you are, and how they respond to you, based on the eyeball test.

Alright. I am truly out. Will listen for days and days.

Posted 05 Feb 2007 at 10:30 am ¶
SF Mom wrote:

Dear Brenda,
Thanks for letting us “meet” you. I would do whatever you have to do, to make sure your little daughter is not the only African American in her class. My daughter, if she could post comments, would tell you chapter and verse why being the “only” is just too isolating, lonely and hard. I am sure you have access to books on transracial parenting that discuss this topic – but take it from me, it’s worth taking whatever steps you can now to identify the community and school that will help your child be strong in herself.

Posted 05 Feb 2007 at 7:49 pm ¶
K wrote:

I do sympathize with Erika in that I do think that often adoptive parents support “charities” (through the huge costs of adoption) that support and profit from racism. I became pregnant as a teenager. I come from an affluent, white family. My parents strongly pressured me towards adoption, particularly through a “liberal” adoption agency that promised open adoptions: essentially it was a lot of empty promises – the literature focused on open adoption, but they neglected to mention that I had no way of insuring that the adoption would remain open (though giving my child up for adoption, of course, would be final), the adoption facilitator focused on how easy it would be to find someone who wanted a nice, white baby, while trying to convince me that it was impossible to afford a child by not providing information about aid programs (despite that they are legally obligated to do so) and by vastly inflating the cost of a child (by saying things like it would help me make my decision about whether I could keep this child by looking at the baby registry lists provided by babies r us and deciding if I could realistically afford that – which of course, I couldn’t). I didn’t end up giving my child up for adoption – and perhaps it is because of my privileged status of white and coming from an affluent family (even if nowadays I’m struggling on public aid)…but what I learned from this experience is that the literature assumes that birthmothers generally don’t give up their babies, because they don’t feel ready to become parents, but rather because the people around them try and convince them that they cannot be parents, that it is selfish and wrong of them to keep their children, etc…And I have a problem with any adoptive parent who isn’t looking at the literature given to birth mothers and trying to use agencies that aren’t coercive, who don’t support creating better social welfare programs, etc…

Posted 06 Feb 2007 at 8:14 pm ¶
kim wrote:

K.-

Alright, I hear you. I am familiar with women whose parents did the same thing, same path, same reasoning, same convictions.

This thread has turned dramatically from the topic originally posted, and I regret the loss of those voices, while being incredibly curious and sympathetic to, the (apparently) large number of voices that could tell the same story as yours.

Is there support for … other young women who are in the situation you were once in? Are there serious advocacy groups working for change in the way the decision making process and choice for keeping/raising versus adopting-out a young girl makes, and the recourse available to her?

What do you see as similar, or dissimilar, between the domestic issues that both you and Erika spoke to, and those that present in international adoption ?

Posted 08 Feb 2007 at 12:52 pm ¶
Erika wrote:

The issues that affect adoption run parallel, domestically and internationally. I’ve heard alot of adoptive parents say they adopt overseas because they dont want to deal with birth parents. That they want to be the “only mother”. They also have an attitude that they’ve “saved” a child, because some of these countries are rife with poverty,violence etc.

Now begin to translate this domestically.North America does have similar issues,we deal with poverty, abuse, violence.We also deal with pregnancies that occur before a woman may be ready to parent.Adoption is offered as a “choice”,but increasingly it has become coercive.Because it is becoming more acceptable to single parent,the tactics have changed.But the mothers who cant afford lawyers,cant afford to ensure their own rights,are the ones that lose their children to adoption.
Adoption works on the premise that the mother is disadvantaged and without resources.Instead of providing resources we harvest the baby and discard the mother.
The same attitude of saving the child is used.
I believe that adoptive parents need to examine their motives for adopting and understand that adoption is an industry that profits from the hardships women endure.It’s universal.
As far as the original question posed here, I stand by my remarks, adopting from other cultures is a signal that the adoption pool domestically is becoming emptier,increasingly international adoption is booming.It’s wrong on so many levels.I wish adopters would consider adopting mother AND child since they care so much about children and have so much love to give.

Posted 08 Feb 2007 at 9:12 pm ¶
Erika wrote:

As far as serious advocacy for the vulnerable groups of pregnant women, there are none.
A woman domestically, would usually get the 3 options. But adoption agencies have the corner market by far.The capitalize as the last commenter said, with videos and brochures,internet ads, that do not warn them about what adoption loss entails.And if they dont choose adoption, much of the supports and resources are taken away.
when we talk about black adoptions, that is a whole nother thread as is international adoption. These issues speak to the communities in which the babies are coming from.The Madonna adoption story is a good example of this controversy. Advocates were quick to tell the world, that investing in communities was a much better answer then adopting out children to foreign countries.Madonna stood behind her position saying the child would’ve had a terrible life of poverty had she not taken him, and made a 3 million dollar donation to help the village.I wonder how she plans to educate this child on his heritage and identity.
So both domestically and internationally,we need to address the issues plaguing the poor people of this world. We need to differentiate between real orphans, and created orphans. Children will always need good homes, and there will always be good parents willing to take them in.
The industry that earns the money, advocates in washington for more adoption, and goverments that dont support the weaker members is where I take serious issue.

Posted 09 Feb 2007 at 12:17 am ¶
Shocked wrote:

As an adoptive parent, I am often being made to feel that I am a “second class” mother because I did not give birth to my children. It is frustrating to read the articles by “well meaning, well-informed” individuals who believe they know the reasons why I adopted…to save my child, to avoid the “chore” of having to deal with birthparents, to follow a trend and adopt internationally. Well meaning friends have even commented that the bonds I share with my children are not as strong or as meaningful as those that they share with their birthchildren. How painful do any of you think that that is to hear and to have to defend? How painful do you think it is for my childent to have to listen to ignorant and inconsiderate questions or comments from complete strangers every time we are out of the house? “Are they real sisters? How much did you pay for them?”
My daughters are beautiful human beings and are loved beyond words by my husband and I and our families. They are our daughters whether by birth or by adoption. We didn’t adopt them to save them, we adopted them because we wanted a family and because they were our daughters. We didn’t adopt them from China because we wanted to avoid birthparents but because we did not want to have to wait endless months or years to make our family complete. We didn’t care if our daughters were black, white, purple or green…they are our daughters period. I see them, not the colour of their skin or the shape of their eyes. We would have loved for our children to be able to grow up and know their birthparents but unfortunately that will never be and none of us had that choice to make.
We faced many obstacles in adoption in the United States and many doors did not open to us simply because we were white. I did not adopt internationally to be fashionable but because I wanted a family. Do I worry that I am not able to properly give my child a full sense of her cultural identity? Of course I do. Any good parent worries that they are not doing enough for their child.
Adoptive parents continue to face challenges and discrimination in the workforce and in society just as our children do, but thankfully because we are a family we and our children have support and love to help us through.
Any person who is capable of providing a loving, stable and secure home for a child should be able to do so. There would be a lot less unplanned and unfortunately unwanted children in the world if all parents had to “prove their worthiness” as we do.
Shouldn’t the question really be “Who is fit to be a parent?” rather than whether race or ethnicity should be an issue?
And lastly…next time you are in a store and you see a biracial or interracial family, please keep your questions or comments to yourself because it’s really none of your business. A smile is appreciated much more. Afterall, you’d be offended if I asked you how and when you conceived your children, wouldn’t you?

Posted 19 Mar 2007 at 2:12 am ¶
Jae Ran wrote:

Shocked,
Shouldn’t the question be, “who is ‘fit’ to parent a child of color?”

I’m not saying that you can’t love your child as much as any child birthed to you, or that you can’t be sensitive to your child’s needs – maybe even sensitive to their racial and cultural needs, but as long as we’re talking about certain people being more “fit” than others to parent, I’m interested in knowing what special skills you have that makes you qualified to raise a Chinese American kid?

Just wondering.

And saying, “We didn’t care if our daughters were black, white, purple or green…they are our daughters period. I see them, not the colour of their skin or the shape of their eyes” is extremely offensive to me. Like there are purple and green children. Or maybe you could stretch it and love a polka dotted kid too, I know there are so many of those lingering and languishing in orphanages somewhere.

Posted 19 Mar 2007 at 8:59 pm ¶
Kim wrote:

Jae Ran,

(this is my silence…)

(( )) (( )) those my clapped hands

[[(( ))]] this, my silent embrace of you

Posted 19 Mar 2007 at 10:41 pm ¶
Ji In wrote:

Thanks to Jae Ran for responding to “Shocked.”

Speaking as an adult transracial adoptee, I would also add that even if white adoptive parents “don’t care” what race their adopted children are, the transracially adopted child of color living in a highly racialized society does not have the privilege of being able to overlook his or her race. I think it’s incredibly unfair for the parent to place the onus on the child to reconcile his or her own racial identity, without offering the validation and support that is the parent’s job to facilitate in the first place. Insisting that race isn’t an issue serves to alienate transracially adopted kids and teaches them that their ethnic heritage is insignificant, or wrong to talk about, or somehow all in their own head.

I would find it refreshing to see more adoptive parents citing as one of the main motivations behind their transracial adoptions, “because I am equipped to support and nurture a child of X ethnic heritage for these reasons …” and focus on the child’s needs rather than the parent’s own pain and the parent’s own desire to have a child.

Finally, I find it interesting, Shocked, that you have compared the discrimination that you, as a white adoptive parent, face to the discrimination that your Chinese-American daughters face. I am curious as to how this discimination that you face as a white adoptive parent enables you to relate to your daughters’ experiences as people of Chinese descent. All discrminiation is not equal.

Sorry, but like Jae Ran said, purple and green people do not exist. And we aren’t talking about what “any good parent” would do. This is a discussion and a site for those interested in strategies for anti-racist parenting — not for arguing whether or not race is a valid issue.

Posted 19 Mar 2007 at 10:54 pm ¶
Denise wrote:

This sentence had thrown me.

>many doors did not open to us simply because we were white.

As a white adoptive parent, I never experienced this. I have a Haitian son, and Believe me, I am fully aware that had he been adopted by a black family, many aspects of his life would be a lot easier. But ours was a different experience. We were asked by a friend to adopt him, as he has medical issues. He was 9 years old and very sick. At the time, there were no other options for him.

And I do see the color of my son’s skin… I am aware of it every minute, and if I weren’t I would have an awfully difficult time helping him grow up in a world where I know everyone else will be aware of the color of his skin.

Shocked, I do relate to the insensitive questions and stares you get. I think you worded your post poorly. But I also try to take every one of those stares and ignorant comments/questions and use it as a learning experience for myself. I imagine the comments and questions my son will be faced with his whole life, and know that he will be using me as his guide for how to react.

Posted 20 Mar 2007 at 6:59 am ¶
ash wrote:

i think if you love the child who cares what race they are from

Posted 29 Mar 2007 at 3:09 am ¶
Lyonside wrote:

Ash: Short answer: because love just ain’t always enough, not when noone around you shares your appearance and heritage, and you are constantly reminded of that by every person you encounter.

Read more here: http://www.loveisntenough.com/2007/03/28/beyond-cuisine-and-traditional-dress-creating-true-cultural-connections-for-transracial-adoptees/

Posted 29 Mar 2007 at 9:11 am ¶
Kim wrote:

First…if you read Denise’s comment above yours, then you obviously just felt like spewing as contribution. Listen to what her stated reasons FOR THE CHILD are.

Second…substitute gender assignments, or even age assignments and see how fitting you think it to slather love without the attendant discriminate adjustments for the respective categories assigned: I think if you love the ‘girl’ who cares what ‘gender’ ’she’ is …; I think if you love the ‘adult/baby/toddler/elderly’ who cares what ‘age’ the ‘adult/baby/toddler/elderly’ is….

While you certainly love who you love, how you love is determined by the relationship and its needs, and how well is the outcome determined by the quality of the relationship and its impact on both parties.

Posted 29 Mar 2007 at 10:43 am ¶
John Raible wrote:

So Margie Perscheid is asking to hear from adult adoptees, the so-called experts on the controversy. I offer the following as a response from someone who respects the author’s work.

I am a transracial adoptee and one of the writers included in the new anthology on transracial adoption, OUTDSIDERS WITHIN, published by South End Press. (South End Press is a non-profit, worker-owned collective, so you can be assured that this is not a self-promoting plug done with the intent of securing royalties– we authors get none).

For readers who want to hear “how we turned out,” Outsiders Within is a wonderful resource about transracial adoption AND international adoption. What you will read in this book will not simply warm your heart. It may also make you shout, squirm, hit the roof in anger, or collapse in a puddle of tears. I certainly cried after reading one or two of the chapters.

If you want to hear from a representative group of thoughtful, critical, and experienced transracial adoptees, get Outsiders Within. It’s a must-read for the adoption community.

Posted 05 Apr 2007 at 3:37 pm ¶
Kathy wrote:

THE John Raible? I am just so thrilled to hear
that you are a member of ARP. I have been
reading your John Raible Online for a long time
and you have made an impact on my family
for some time now. Count me in as one
of those who consider you “MY HERO”.

Posted 05 Apr 2007 at 6:42 pm ¶
TC wrote:

I don’t understand whats wrong with wanting to adopt children who look like you. i don’t get how some people think that means your racist.

Posted 03 Sep 2008 at 10:34 pm ¶
Lyonside wrote:

> don’t understand whats wrong with wanting to adopt children who look like you. i don’t get how some people think that means your racist.

TC, if that’s what you took away from the original article and the comments, then you have a lot more reading to do about TRA issues.

Posted 04 Sep 2008 at 8:31 am ¶