Interracial adoption (also referred to as transracial adoption ) refers to the act of placing a child from a racial or ethnic group with an adoptive parent from another racial or ethnic group.
Interracial adoption is not the same as transcultural or international adoption although in some circumstances adoption may be inter-racial, international, and transcultural.
Video Interracial adoption
Statistics
Based on the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS) in the US, fiscal year 1998 shows that approximately 64% of children waiting in orphanages are non-Caucasian backgrounds; 32% were white. Of all foster children awaiting adoption, 51% are black, 11% are Hispanic, 1% are American Indian, 1% are Asian/Pacific Islanders, and 5% are unknown/unspecified. Data from the 1995 National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) in the United States shows that the adoption of unrelated children is the most common amongst white women without children and those with higher levels of income and education. The latest estimate of interfaith adoption was conducted in 1987 by the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) and found that 1% of white women adopted black children, 5% of white women adopted children of other races, and 2% others adopted white children (estimates including foreign births).
The US 2000 census found that "White (and no other races), not Hispanic children constitute the majority of all categories of householders under 18: about 58 percent of adopted children, 64 percent of biological children" and "From 1 , 7 million households with adopted children, about 308,000 (18 percent) contain members of various races. "
Between 2008 and 2009, some 2,700 white children were adopted compared to only 410 mixed race children and only 90 black children in the UK. About 1 in 10 children in care are black and 1 in 9 treated children come from different racial backgrounds. Black children, mixed races and Asians usually wait to be adopted an average of three years longer than white children. Children of mixed ethnicity are more likely than other children to be placed for adoption. The Children Act 1989 and Adoption and Children Act 2002 state that in England and Wales, adoption agencies should give deep consideration to the religious persuasion of children, racial origin and cultural and linguistic backgrounds; this requirement is revoked for the UK in the Child and Families Act 2014. The placement of adoption of mixed ethnic children is difficult because it is influenced by the values, ideologies and anti-oppressive practices that need to be considered in practice. Mixed ethnic children are subject to racism and complete inclusion of both parts of their heritage. Mixed children will struggle with discrimination from both parts of their ethnicity, wanting solidarity from both parts of their ethnic background.
Maps Interracial adoption
Statistics
Race adoption grew significantly from 1999 to 2005 where it reached its peak year at 585 adoptions to the United States. After 2005, interracial adoption to the US declined with 288 adoptions in 2011. From 1999 to 2011, there were 233,934 adoptions to the United States from other countries around the world. Of total adoption, 39.4% (92,202 children) are under 12 months. Also, 63% (146,516 children) are women. Overall, children from China are the most common to adopt. 66,630 are from China and Russia is the second largest country with 45,112 children. In the United States, California has the highest number.
History
Before World War II, it was very rare for white couples to adopt children of different races and every effort was made to match a child with the color of skin and religion of a host family. Then in 1944, the Relief Society for Children and Women pays attention to the growing number of expectant minority children waiting for adoption focused on children of Asian Americans, Native Americans, and African Americans. Asian heritage children and Native Americans are most easily placed outside of their racial group while African-American heritage proves more difficult. The campaign was called "Brown Baby Operation" and the goal was to find the adopted houses even if from different races, the first candidate in this operation, Noah Turner, was a Chinese baby who was adopted into a Caucasian family in 1947. Then during the Movement human rights, racial adoption in the United States has increased dramatically and the number has more than tripled from 733 cases in 1968 to 2,574 cases in 1971. (At present there are about 6,500 cases per year.) At that time the National Association Black Social Workers condemn inter-racial adoption stating that adopted people are at risk of developing a bad racial identity because of lack of contact with role models of the same race. In the 1990s, the placement of black children into non-black homes almost completely stopped.
Additional information
Families formed across racial, national, and biological boundaries represent a growing demographic, adding to the historical diversity that propagates from family forms in the United States (Coontz, 2008). Since 1990, the number of US adoptions for overseas orphans has risen in unprecedented numbers, rising from 7,093 children to 12,753 in 2009 - an 80% increase: China is ranked as the top sending country, and Vietnam occupied ranked seventh highest (US State Department, 2009). While diversification in the form of family is not a new phenomenon, it often appears so, given that the family communication scholarship on non-traditional families is a relatively new development.
Legal
In 1994, the Howard M. Metzenbaum Multiethnic Placement Act (MEPA) was passed. It prohibits agents who receive Federal assistance and engage in foster care and adoptive placements from delaying or refusing to placement of a child on the basis of national race, color, or national origin of the child or adoptive parent. Then, in 1996 it was amended by Interethnic Adoption Requirements , also known as the Interethnic Placement Act. These provisions prohibit the agency to suspend or deny the placement of a child solely on the basis of race and national origin. The purpose of this revision is to strengthen compliance and enforcement procedures, remove misleading language, and demand that discrimination be not tolerated.
Another important law on racial adoption is the Adoption and Family Safe Act adopted in 1997. The purpose of this law is to reduce the time a child spends in foster by imposing a two-year limit and therefore may move a child closer. for permanent adoption. The purpose of this action is to reduce instability and abuse of problems in the foster system. Critics argue that it also takes emphasis from trying to keep children with their biological parents.
Academic research
Adolescent adjustment
One study found that participants who were adopted alternately were sometimes better, sometimes worse, but overall almost identical to the same race that colleagues adopted in 12 adjustment steps investigated. These measures investigate the index of academic, family, psychological, and health outcomes for four adolescent racial and racial groups. In particular, the respondents who were awarded religion had significantly higher scores and much higher academic expectations but a slightly further father relationship and a higher level of psychosomatic symptoms than the same race that peers adopted. Also, Asian adolescents who are adopted by white parents have the highest scores and the highest psychosomatic symptoms rate, whereas black teens who are adopted by black parents report the highest depression rates. On the other hand, blacks adopted have a higher level of self-esteem than non-blacks.
Discomfort of appearance
Other reports indicate that the problem of adjustment among their children is about the same level as reported by parents of whites who are adopted intraracely. However, the evidence also shows that extra-family strength, such as social racism, has a negative impact on the outcome of adjustment. In particular, the experience of discrimination results in feelings of discomfort. Research shows that black and Asian children, who look very different from whites, are most likely to experience such social discrimination. Apparently, many Latino children with European physical characteristics can safely escape the expression of such racism. One of the most intriguing findings of this study indicates that decisions of adoptive adoptive parents in residence have a major impact on the adjustment of their children. Foster parents living in predominantly white neighborhoods tend to have adopted people who experience discomfort about their appearance than those who live in an integrated environment.
Identity development
Transgender followers are replaced with the challenge of understanding the difference between their view of identity and identity that their parents reflect and model. Identity requires, not only race, but also heritage, culture, ethnicity and many other descriptions. Studies have sought to explore how children of interracial adoption are affected in various categories in an attempt to counter argument that transracial adoption can have a confusing and contradictory effect on children's view of identity. Research shows that the age of adoption and acculturation style of parenting can influence the way in which transcript children build and build their own identity.
Many groups continue to argue that children who are prepared for adoption should be matched with the same parent of the race in an attempt to better help children assimilate culturally and racially. This idea is commonly known as race matching, when the adopted and adoptive parents are paired on the basis of race. In 2008, the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute revived the racial adoption debate with its recommendation that the race should be considered in choosing foster parents for children awaiting placement. These reports examine the adoption of black children by white parents. They found that inter-racial adoption faces additional and complex challenges that face "different", especially if they are raised in a homogeneous white community that struggles to adapt to their host families and black communities, feeling awkward and out of place in both settings , developing a positive racial/ethnic identity, recognizing racial differences but without revealing racial pride, and managing racial prejudice and discrimination. Findings from Donaldson's report link challenges facing racial adoptions with adoptive parenting practices that minimize racial differences, especially when parents do not facilitate the understanding and comfort of their children with their own ethnicity.
However, there is also academic research on transgender adoption that has shown that black children can establish a strong race identity when adopted by white parents. Given this debate, many studies have been specifically designed to analyze how transracial adoption affects the construction of the child's personal identities, and whether transracial adoption states present a recognized negative effect such as on development. One study compared black children who had been placed with black foster relatives and black children who had been sexually adopted. They measure self-esteem and perception of race identity. Although there is no difference in perceptions of racial identity, there is a difference in how they perceive their own racial identity. Transgender children "are more likely to identify themselves as adopted and to use racial self-referrals than in racially adopted children" (McRoy, 1982). The study relates again to the importance of how influential transracial adopt parental acculturation, socialization, and racial awareness play a role in fostering a positive racial identity for children.
A study involving Koreans adopted was designed to obtain information on how family engagement in culturally related activities is incorporated into the ethnic identity of children. The results show that children exposed to higher levels of involvement in Korean cultural activities are associated with a higher measure of Korean identity. In addition, these children are more easily communicate openly about their adoption. The implications of this study indicate that the involvement of cultural activities of the child's native culture can help the child's development of an integrated ethnic identity. Another study, conceptually similar, looks at both parents and children to gauge how racial-colored racial attitudes will affect involvement in indigenous cultural activities that are adopted. Color blindness is a sociological concept that race, or racial characteristic, does not exist among people. The study found that parents scored lower on racial blindness positively correlated positively with high scores on acculturation and socialization rates, which means parents who are aware of their cultural differences take part in more cultural activities of those adopted. It is important to note that this study sees international adoption, which subsequently includes transracial adopted, but not specifically focused on a particular part of the individual.
Another study, again focusing on recipients of Korean transracial adoption, attempted to explore self-concept and acculturation through measurement of Religion, Honesty, Relationship with Opposite Sex, Physical Appearance, general self-concept, mathematics, emotional stability, and relationships with parents in relation to the age of placement of people adopted by Korea. The significant findings in this study highlight that in later ages where Korean adopted people are placed, the higher self-concept score of Honesty is. The implications of this study assume that the older ones in which a child is adopted, the more secure they are in their ethnic identity. Because of the longer time, exposed to their native culture, the longer they have to develop a sense of cultural identity before their adoptive parents culture.
ethnocentric bias
Finally, several studies have examined empirical studies of racial adoption itself. These studies discuss whether previous research that claims that racial adoption positively benefits colored children, especially black children, may have methodological difficulties. In particular, the study analyzes the existence of ethnocentric bias in legal and scientific judgments about child well-being and adjustment.
Assimilation into family
Multicultural families have similarities and differences from biological families. Families who have participated with inter-racial adoption have similar roles, life stages, and transition points as other families. However, the challenge comes with pursuing a common family identity through communication. Linda D. Manning conducts research on a topic entitled "Presenting Opportunities: Building Communally the Identity of Family Together". The research question he asked in the beginning was, How can multikacative adoptive family members communicate together with shared family identities that emphasize equality and allow for differences? The results of the study found that having "cultural artifacts" in the home made it possible to embrace different cultures represented in the family. It "creates a world-view that includes diversity - not just race and ethnicity directly related to that embodied by family members. The choice to embrace various races and ethnicities... affirms multiethnic experiences" (Manning, 2006). This study also shows that parents, in any family, show the identity of the family and the child responds. This is where the racial family will share the same role as in the biological family. Parents act as educators and spokespeople. Children act as obedient, challenging, and expert participants. This study also shows that in religious families, there is a tension between uniqueness and conformity. It is difficult but it is important to balance these two qualities in the family identity. Manning concludes research research by illustrating how "joint family identity construction is a process and a product". The process includes roles and themes in the family while products are developed through communication. "The identity of a common family is a group identity that encompasses the individual identity characteristics possessed by each family member, enabling striking differences between and among family members, and contributes to the dialectical tension that exists in family interaction, as well as between family and society.
Education before interracial adoption
The US Department of State offers many resources for parents wishing to adopt such as the "Adoption of A-Z" Adoption publications, Adoption guides, Adoption Family Committees, FAQs, and Visa information. All this and more are available on their website. The article, "Framing Parents Adoption of the 'Family' conception by Elizabeth A. Suter, Kristine L. Reyes, & Robert L. Ballard, discusses the importance of parents preparing outside comments from others.This study shows that families who have participated in inter-racial adoption experiences comments such as "their families violate the canonical views of families in terms of racial differences between members, family construction through adoption, and adoption of a child born from the United States. "This article uses the battlefield as a metaphor for adoptive families.The external view of the family is indeed a challenge for interracial families.The results show that prior to racial adoption, parents" must be made aware of social stigma... and given the opportunity to develop a critical awareness of such stigma. "The research also suggests and encourages the statewide courses needed for parent perspectives.
Support and conflict
Support
Dichotomy refers to the subject of inter-racial adoption. Critics of race matching said there was a dark side involving white skin with longstanding racist beliefs on racial mixing. They argue that children are most harmed by exercise. "One of the problems with the race-matching policy," says Donna Matias, a lawyer at the Institute of justice, "is that she leaves children in the system to wait.They are thrown into a vicious circle where opportunities decrease that they will never be adopted. "Never been adopted proven to have a negative impact on children. After aging outside of foster care, 27% of men and 10% of women were confined within 12 to 18 months. 50% unemployed, 37% have not finished high school, 33% received public assistance, and 19% women gave birth to children. Before leaving treatment, 47 percent received some kind of counseling or treatment for mental health problems; That number dropped to 21% after leaving the treatment.
Opposition
Opposition to racial adoption has been a reactionary abuse of extreme adoption practices; such as Australian aborigines taken from their parents, sterilized and then adopted for Christian upbringing. A similar case occurred with Native Americans. The Black National Social Workers Association of twelve members, opposing racial adoption which says it is a "Suicide Culture" but their opposition is opposed by groups like the NAACP.
References
Further reading
- Burrow, A. L. & amp; Finley, G. E. (2004). "Transracial, Same-Race Adoptions, and the Need for Multiple Adjustment Sizes," American Journal of Orthopsychiatry , 74 (4) , 577-583.
- Courtney, M. and Piliavin, I. (1998). "In Fighting in the Adult World," The Washington Post , July 21, 1998. The study was conducted by the School of Social Work, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
- Feigelman, W. (2000). "Adjustment of very young and adult young adults," Journal of Social Work for Children and Youth , 17 (3) , 165-183.
- Grob (2003). "International Adoption: Relationship between Child and Parent Characteristics and Parent Adjustment Reports," Dissertation Abstracts International. A, Humanities and social sciences , 64 (4) .
- Huh, N. S. & amp; Reid, W. J. (2000). "Inter-State, Transracial Adoption and Ethnic Identity," International Social Work , 43 (1) , 75-87.
- Suter, E. A., Reyes, K. L., & amp; Ballard, R. L. (2011). Framing Parents Adoption Against Decent Family Concepts. Qualitative Research Report in Communications, 12 (1), 43-50.
- Intervalry adoption. (2012, February 14). Retrieved from http://adoption.state.gov/
- Manning, L. D. (2006). Presenting Opportunities: Communically Building a Family Identity Together. International & amp; Intercultural Communication Annual, Vol. 29, pp. 43-67.
External links
- Interracial Worldwide Adoption Service/Bi-Racial Adoption]
- Adoption.com
- Adoption History
- AICAN - Australian Intercity Adoption Network
- Asian Nations Interfaith Adopting Asian Americans]
- Raising Katie What adopts a white girl teaches black families about race in the Obama era
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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