As adoptive parents, I think one of the best things that we can do (and one of our obligations to our children) is to educate ourselves the best we can on the issues involved in transracial adoption, and the things that our children may experience and feel as they are growing up.

One of the best ways to do this is to listen to the voices of adult adoptees…hearing what was positive in their lives growing up and what was negative, and hearing about their challenges and blessings offers us priceless insight. Things have changed a lot since the first transracial adoptions in the U.S. over 20 years ago, and they have changed for the better, but there is still plenty of progress to be made and lessons to be learned.

Colors NW Magazine has a cover story for the month of February titled, “Shades of Transracial Adoption -Challenges and joys color experience for adult adoptees”.


The article shares experiences of adult adoptees, both good and bad, but does so in the spirit of better preparing parents who are considering transracial adoption, and advocates for educated and well-prepared adoptive parents.

Here is a quote from the article…

For Jeffrey and other transracial adoptees, conversations around culturally competent, respectful parenting are desperately needed to begin the process of creating healthy homes for the disproportionately high number of foster kids of color who are languishing in the system. These important issues and questions must get raised so that more children will be able to be adopted into stable, culturally aware homes – with parents of all backgrounds.

There is a lot of good stuff in this article…give it a read! I love that is gives a very balanced look at transracial adoption… it is not against it, and yet it is not blindly supportive of it either. It acknowledges and supports transracial adoption as a legitimate way to build a family, and yet calls attention to a variety of the issues that parents in a transracial family should be prepared for. It also gives a lot of advice. Again…good stuff.

There is also a wonderful video that goes along with article that you can see on YouTube here. It has interviews with adoptees, adoptive parents and adoption professionals talking about transracial adoption.

Enjoy.