On one of my email lists, an adoptive parent who already has one Asian child, voiced concerns about now adopting an African-American child. Her concern was that her Asian daughter gets a great deal of attention when out in public for being “beautiful”, and she was worried that society in general does not see African-American children as attractive, and she did not want her black child to grow up feeling less beautiful than her Asian child. The woman was worried about one child feeling inferior to another because of racial issues.

I think what the real issue here is, is the sort of “hierarchy” that seems to exist in the adoption world. White kids are the top tier. Asian, Hispanic or... more

This article ran on the front page of the New York Times on April 12. The article discusses how modern technology has made it possible for the average person to purchase a DNA kit for approximately $100 that will tell them what their racial genetic make up is and where their ancestors are from.

My first thought, was that it was really interesting. I thought about how for someone that was adopted and did not have much or any information on their birth family, ancestors, etc. that it could be a very... more

If you spend any amount of time on any adoption forum or email group you are bound to run into the (insert ominous music here…) “name discussion”.

This is one of “those” topics, where there are several schools of thought, both of which feel very strongly that there way is the ONLY right way, which is what tends to lead into the heated discussion (and occasionally the frightening of the new member who asked what she thought was an innocent and practical question).

The name discussion revolves around whether the “right” thing to do when adopting a child is to keep the name that they were given at birth, or to rename the child when they are placed in their new family.

Some... more

I got the idea for this post off of the Transracial adoption message board on Adoption.com forums. A prospective adoptive parent who was open to a child of “any race” was wondering what “a transracial home should look like”.

I thought that was an interesting question. Often we hear that we need to incorporate our children’s birth cultures into our home, family and life, and certainly if we do that, it will, in at least small ways, be reflected in our home.

And yet there is no one right answer to this... more

In the post Moral Adoption Questions, I started tackling the issues of adoption, poverty, money and if adoptive parents’ money would be better served going to a birth family to help it stay together than towards having a child adopted internationally.

Without repeating everything from the last post, in a nutshell, I said that adoption is an answer for children needing a solution right now. It is not a perfect solution, but in my opinion, it is the best possible solution for many children. Randomly giving money to families in an attempt to keep them together in my opinion is unlikely to have long-lasting... more

One of my friends that I am on an email list with recently brought up an interesting topic. My friend has six children already, two of which were adopted, and her and her husband are waiting to bring home three more, hopefully in the fairly near future.

Her concerns were regarding the children she is bringing home soon, and the fact that their birthmother is still alive. She got to travel and meet the children a few months back and also got to meet the birth mother. While the birth mother clearly loved the children, she was unable to care and provide for them because of extreme poverty. She was pleased that the children had found adoptive parents and would have a home and a life in... more

Here is an awesome new resource for adoptive parents. It is the University of Washington Center for Adoption Medicine website. http://www.adoptmed.org

This site is full of information, including how to have them evaluate a referral, how to schedule an appointment once your child is home (if you live in that area), and perhaps best of all, an “Ask the Doc” blog, where adoptive parents can post questions and have them answered by a doctor who specializes in treating children adopted internationally.

I do realize that not all transracially-adopted... more

One of the things that I really like about these blogs is the way that a lot of us all chime in on the same or similar topics. I think that it gives readers a fuller picture when they are able to read about the same topic from several points of view. So I am going to talk about friends too.

One of the reasons that I think that email groups, blogs, chat rooms, etc. are so popular with adoptive parents (and many other communities as well) is that it brings together people going through similar experiences. There are some things that it just takes another adoptive parent to truly appreciate.

For example, I could explain to one of my friends how EXCITED I am because I finally got... more

Here’s a question that seems to come up a lot on adoption boards and email groups often. How important is it for a child that was adopted transracially to have a sibling of the same race as them?

Is it valuable for example, for an Asian girl, with white parents and white brothers, to have sibling who is also Asian?

This is a question that my husband and I gave a lot of thought with our first adoption, because at that point, we honestly believed that our family would be complete when our daughter came home from Vietnam. (Ha! If we only knew!!) I knew that I could do a good job raising our Vietnamese daughter. I knew I could teach her to be proud of who she was and where she... more

It seems that there are lots of posts on the sadness and more difficult aspects of adoption today on the other blogs, so I thought that I would add my spin.

I have talked before on how in a perfect world, adoption would not exist. Adoption exists because of sad realities. An unplanned pregnancy causes a birth mother to have to make an adoption plan for her child. The illness and death of parents leaves a child an orphan. Extreme poverty leaves a family literally unable to feed and care for another child. Social stigmas make it extremely difficult for an unwed mother to parent her child, or for a family to have another child. Children are removed from their family because of abuse... more