A recent Chicago Tribune article, titled “Interracial twins bring a new dimension to the American Family” talks about families who through adoption, end up with “virtual twins”, or children of the same age, who happen to be of different races.

The article focuses on the Goering family, whose first two children are Jenna and Sam. From the article: “Seven years ago, they entered their parents' lives on the same day.
And yet, Jenna and Sam aren't twins. He was born in the U.S., the biological son of computer consultants Jody and Addison Goering. She was abandoned six months earlier in rural China, and first introduced to the Goerings through a string of urgent phone calls that started coming from their adoption agency just an hour after Sam's birth.
Together, Jenna, who is Asian, and Sam, who is white, are part of a phenomenon that would have been almost inconceivable a generation ago: the emergence of interracial adoptive "twins."

Our family has two sets of virtual twins. Maggie and Amanda are three months apart in age, look extremely similar and are attached at the hip, and yet one was born in Vietnam and joined our family at three months of age, and the other is Korean and didn’t become a part of our family until just before her second birthday.
And then we have Ryan and Des. Ryan is our biological son who has white blonde hair and hazel eyes, and Des is our African American daughter, who joined our family at age 6 ½. They are two months apart in age. While they aren’t as close as Maggie and Amanda, and have never been mistaken for biological twins, they are very close as brother and sister. For two years they were in the same class, and never once did they come up upset with one another or bickering. In fact, they often came home bragging about the other…Ryan loves to tell me “good things” that Des does at school, and Des loves to tell how Ryan gets the whole class laughing. Once, a substitute teacher noticed that they had the same last name but very different skin color, and then noticed how much time they spent together. It bothered her all day until she finally pulled Ryan aside and asked if he and Des were “related.” Ryan’s response was, "Well Duh! Can’t you see she is my sister?” He knows he is white and that Des is black, but to him, there are more obvious things that show they are brother and sister.

I enjoyed this article because it didn’t talk about “virtual twins” as weird or bad (although I admit it isn't right for every family situation or every child) and it didn’t pass judgement on families that are made up this way. In fact, I think the article does a great job of showing what a happy family the Goerings are. I know quite a few families who have virtual twins, many of which are also interracial twins. I love the message that family is family, and that brothers and sisters don’t seem to put a whole lot of stock into how similar or different they may look.