Get Free Info. Transracial adoption or interracial adoption refers to the adoption of a child that is of a different race than that of the adoptive parents. While some adoptive families may wish to adopt a child of the same racial background as themselves, others choose to diversify their family makeup by adopting a child of a different race or ethnicity. As couples continue to open their arms to children of all kinds of backgrounds, transracial adoption is becoming increasingly common and socially accepted in America. While it is ultimately up to the expectant mother to choose a family for her child, American Adoptions works with hundreds of expectant mothers each year who choose to place their babies with waiting families of a different race. There is a strong need for families to adopt African-American children or biracial children who are part African American.
Seeing Color: Why It Matters for Transracial Adoptive Families
Adoption Advocate No. 38 | publications - National Council for Adoption
We see evidence of this in news stories of violence against people of color and in statistics showing that young men of color make up the majority of our prison populations. In combating this issue, the goal is not to achieve a colorblind society but rather one that celebrates, instead of victimizes, differences in color. For families of adoption, particularly those who combine racial and cultural differences, it is essential that they engage in transformational dialogue and behavior surrounding these issues. Yet, too often, families are not provided with the right education or challenged in the right way to think meaningfully about differences in race, culture and class, and how these issues will impact their children and family. As a transracially adopted person and the chief executive at The Donaldson Adoption Institute DAI , an organization dedicated to adoption reform, I have experienced firsthand the challenges of ignoring these differences. Back in the s, my parents were not encouraged by professionals to acknowledge racial difference. Rather, they were glossed over.
This article focuses on transracial adoption but does not explicitly focus on the mixed race experience. There has been an on-going and controversial debate in the UK about transracial adoption — the practice of white families adopting children from ethnic minorities. The debate has a complex history, and British governments have historically flip-flopped on policies, on the one hand attempting to place ethnic minority children with loving parents as quickly as possible, and on the other hand trying to ensure racial, ethnic and religious matching between adoptive parents and adopted children, with varying degrees of success.
Intercountry adoption peaked in , when more than 22, foreign-born children — the majority of them nonwhite — were adopted by American families. Despite a recent and continued decline in the number of intercountry adoptions, this trend, together with transracial domestic infant and foster care adoptions, accounts for the large and growing number of American families that are multiracial by adoption. Transracial and transcultural adoption, now commonplace in America, raises a set of complex and sometimes controversial issues in adoption practice and policy.