White Adoptive Parents Research Articles

Are Same-Sex and Single Adoptive Parents More Likely to Adopt Transracially? A National Analysis of Race, Family Structure, and the Adoption Marketplace

This study contributes to the literature on child adoption by providing an analysis of how conceptions of kinship and constructions of race shape how families are sorted and matched in an adoption marketplace. Drawn from a national sample of adoptive households (n = 63,681), the author analyzes whether there is significant variation in the likelihood of white married, single, divorced, and same-sex couples choosing transracial adoption. Results indicate that “nontraditional” same-sex and single adoptive parents are the most likely to adopt non-white children, even when controlling for additional market variables. Although white adoptive parents, in general, are more likely to transracially adopt Hispanic and Asian children, white single and same-sex adoptive parents are significantly more likely to adopt black children. The author's findings underscore the importance of considering how market forces shape even the most intimate aspects of family building decisions.

The Culture of Poverty and Adoption: Adoptive Parent Views of Birth Families

This study used data from 15 in-depth interviews to better understand how perceptions of birth families by White adoptive parents rely on and challenge cultural perspectives of poverty. Findings show the complexity of their views: even when adoptive parents recognize structural causes of poverty, they tend to rely on the idea that birth parent poverty results from inadequate choices made by individuals. Findings have implications for agency practice, relationships with birth families and adoptee identity.

Predictors of White Adoptive Parents’ Cultural and Racial Socialization Behaviors With Their Asian Adopted Children

This study investigated the role of White racial identity statuses, cultural and racial socialization beliefs, cultural socialization self-efficacy, and racial socialization self-efficacy in predicting White adoptive parents’ (N = 200) cultural and racial socialization behaviors with their Asian adopted children. Only cultural and racial socialization beliefs contributed to the prediction of socialization practices. In addition, we examined whether cultural and racial socialization self-efficacy would moderate the relationship between parents’ cultural socialization and racial socialization beliefs and behaviors; there was no support for cultural or racial socialization self-efficacy as moderators in the beliefs–behaviors relationships. Finally, findings revealed that parents were more involved in cultural socialization than racial socialization behaviors, although they did not engage frequently in either type of socialization behavior, particularly racial socialization.

Transracial Adoption in the United States: The Reflection and Reinforcement of Racial Hierarchy

This article explores the racial dimensions of transracial adoption as a socio-legal phenomenon. The three parts of the article trace the history and summarize the law of whites adopting (1) Asians, (2) Native Americans, and (3) African Americans. The most obvious feature of these three types of transracial adoption is that whites serve overwhelmingly as the “adopting race” and also exercise the most control in the adoption process. In addition to this basic pattern of racial dominance, the three types more subtly reveal a racial hierarchy among racial minority groups. When these groups stand above or below one another, the hierarchy impedes the development of solidarity among racial minority groups and thereby enhances white dominance in transracial adoption. This article does not deny that some white adoptive parents transcend racism, and the article also does not oppose transracial adoption. However, transracial adoption as a socio-legal phenomenon nevertheless reflects and reinforces racial hierarchy. Transracial adoption is an illustration that in the contemporary, supposedly “post-racial” United States, race remains associated with power or the lack thereof.

White on Black

In this article, the authors examine White parents’ endeavors toward the racial enculturation and inculcation of their transracially adopted Black children. Drawing on in-depth interviews, the authors identify and analyze themes across the specific race socialization strategies and practices White adoptive parents used to help their adopted Black children to develop a positive racial identity and learn how to effectively cope with issues of race and racism. The central aim of this article is to examine how these lessons about race help to connect family members to U.S. society’s existing racial hierarchy and how these associations position individuals to help perpetuate or challenge the deeply embedded and historical structures of White supremacy. The authors use the notion of White racial framing to move outside of the traditional arguments for or against transracial adoption to instead explore how a close analysis of the adoptive parents’ racial instructions may serve as a learning tool to foster more democratic and inclusive forms of family and community.

‘‘They don’t know what it’s like to be in my shoes’’: Topic avoidance about race in transracially adoptive families

Families formed through transracial adoption face communicative challenges not faced by single-race families. Drawing upon communication privacy management theory and research on topic avoidance, this paper explores Korean adult adoptees’ reports of racial derogation in their youth and the extent to which they avoided discussing these interactions with their White adoptive parents. Results from qualitative interviews and surveys suggest that adoptee participants reported having received a range of racially derogatory messages, including appearance attacks, ethnicity attacks, and physical attacks. Most participants reported avoiding discussing these occurrences with their adoptive parents due to parent unresponsiveness and/or self-protection. This study extends the work on topic avoidance by offering sub-themes for parent unresponsiveness and sheds light on privacy management in transracially adoptive families.

“Pandas, Lions, and Dragons, oh my!”: How White Adoptive Parents Construct Chineseness

“Pandas, Lions, and Dragons, oh my!”How White Adoptive Parents Construct Chineseness Andrea Louie (bio) Whites choose which aspects of the abducted child’s culture to assimilate into family life and which to discard. The children are forced to participate in the racial fantasies of the white parents. White parents dress the children of color up in their “native costumes.” They treat their abducted children like little ethnic dolls. The white parents become perversely expert on the food, language, and customs of the abducted child’s birth culture. They proudly claim to be “learning with my abducted child.” —Kim So Yung The above quote is excerpted from Kim So Yung’s “Living Dolls: Transracial Adoption and Cultural Appropriation,” posted on the “Transracial Abductees” Web site. Kim So Yung’s bio lists her as “a faux Korean who was adopted/abducted by white Americans when she was four months old” and as the cofounder of the group, which refers to itself as “angry pissed ungratefully little transracially abducted motherfuckers from hell.”1 Hers may be viewed as a cynical and extreme perspective on parents’ efforts to honor their children’s birth country’s culture, insinuating that parents engage in these practices more for their own comfort and pleasure than for their children’s benefit.2 Ironically, the efforts to teach children about their “cultures of origin” she criticizes are often viewed by adoptive parents as a progressive and corrective approach to the practices of previous generations of adoptive parents. This approach, however, has [End Page 285] also been the focus of a set of new critiques leveled by many academics and adoption activists who have expressed concern about the efforts of adoptive parents to educate their children about their “birth cultures” at the expense of attention to race and other issues of social inequality that permeate adoption. Jane Brown, a social worker and white adoptive parent of children from Korea and China, expresses her concerns about adoptive parents’ practices in a more moderate way: “Sometimes parents want to celebrate, even exoticize, their child’s culture, without really dealing with race. . . . It is one thing to dress children up in cute Chinese dresses, but the children need real contact with Asian-Americans, not just waiters in restaurants on Chinese New Year. And they need real validation about the racial issues they experience.”3 As reflected in the quote by Brown, in constructing Chinese cultural identities for their minority children, white parents may merely be reproducing the myth of contemporary multiculturalism, which focuses on the celebration of diversity while skirting issues of white privilege, racial politics, and power. Academic critics have gone further to assert that in constructing Chinese culture for their children, adoptive parents produce decontextualized and aestheticized versions of culture, and engage in consumptive practices at the expense of attention to race. Other studies on adoption are less critical of these practices and more optimistic about the potential that they represent, focusing on the new, hybrid forms of identity that these families create and the work that these cultural productions may do in resolving important adoption-related issues such as the longing for the “birth mother.”4 While my own work can be situated within the above concerns and critiques, I also strive to find a middle ground that explores possibilities for movement beyond the difficult and often untenable position within which white adoptive parents find themselves in relation to their efforts to expose their children to “Chinese” culture. The adoption of Chinese children into white families represents the potential for the creation of new identities, not just for adoptees, but, as noted in Kim So Yung’s quote, also potentially for their parents who begin to understand their own identities in new ways. Sara Dorow’s research points to a middle ground in which identities can be transformed, but her work also articulates the limits [End Page 286] within which these processes of reproduction and transformation occur. In her comprehensive study of Chinese adoption, she analyzes how parents’ approaches to cultural diversity are constrained by “the deep structuring power of race and racism.” At the same time, she observes that “parents’ organizational activities, social practices, and family stories re-narrate...

White Parents' Attitudes Towards Their Adopted Chinese Daughters' Ethnic Identity

ABSTRACTThis qualitative study of 11 white families with adopted Chinese daughters found that 8 of the 11 white adoptive parents used “Chinese American” to describe their daughters' ethnic identity. Jewish adoptive parents additionally attached “Jewish” to their children's ethnic identity descriptions. Overall, parents reported that their perceptions of their adopted Chinese daughters were influenced by the dominant culture, the adoptive parents' own ethnicity, and their awareness of the difference between Chinese and American culture. In order to help themselves learn the Chinese culture and their daughters learn about their Chinese heritage, parents utilized a series of strategies, including communicating about adoption within the family, seeking surrogate agencies to fill the cultural gap, using support networks, learning about China on their own, and advocating for culturally sensitive schools. Being an outsider to the Chinese culture and feeling a lack of control regarding issues surrounding their children's ethnic identity and adoption background were two common dilemmas all parents in the study faced.