A recent broadcast on National Public Radio titled "Study: Adoption Not Harmful to Child's Self-Esteem" has been very reassuring to adoptive parents.

With there being so much information, advice and opinions out there that can lead adoptive parents, and especially transracial adoptive parents, to feel like their children are doomed to face significant emotional struggles because they were adopted transracially, this story and study bring some very good and hopeful news.

The broadcast is just under five minutes so please make sure you listen to it, but in a nutshell, a study was just released in the Psychological Bulletin by a Dutch researcher that challenges the common perception that adoption negatively impacts a child's self-esteem. The study shows that adopted children tend to overcome developmental and emotional problems, and achieve normal levels of self-esteem.

It has long been commonly thought that being adopted affected a child's sense of self worth because they tend to blame themselves and think that they were "not good enough" for their first parents to keep them. While the Dutch researcher assumed that her research would back that line of thought up, instead, it showed the complete opposite.

In researching over 80 studies that looked at self esteem in adopted children, the research showed that adopted children had the same levels of self esteem as non-adopted children.

Best of all, the research showed that there was also no difference in self esteem between transracially adopted children and non-adopted children. This study challenges the traditionally held beliefs that a black child is "better off" in a black family, and showed that black children adopted by white parents did not suffer from low self-esteem and identity issues any more than non-adopted children did.

The study showed that race does not matter as much as people have thought, and that cultural and racial issues have not had the huge impact on transracially adopted children's self esteems that many expected, assumed and predicted.

Children placed by domestic transracial adoption and by international transracial adoption showed the same positive results.

The study also found results to challenges the commonly held belief that children adopted at older ages were more likely to have emotional problems than children adopted as infants. Evidence also showed that even children adopted from challenging backgrounds could overcome emotional and developmental delays.

While other professionals who have looked over the study have found it to be well done, they do point out that the study only looked at children who were adopted and stayed in their adoptive homes. It did not look at children who lived through multiple placements and/or disruptions.

The entire study was very encouraging, positive and supportive of transracial adoption. My very favorite quote is at the very end of the broadcast. They say that the researcher believes that adopted children can thrive and that children are not "prisoners of unfortunate beginnings".

When I look at my children, and think of what some of them have been through, and look at the happy, well-adjusted and confident kids that they are today, I know in my heart that this research is true. It sure is good to hear it from "professionals". :)