Here is something that I think all transracial families need to embrace. Transracial families are not second best. I believe that with all my heart. I don’t think I could be the best mom that I possibly could for my kids if I was always thinking deep down that I was the “second best” choice for my kids,

Don’t get me wrong. I am not naïve, and I completely understand that in a perfect world, transracial adoption (or any type of adoption) would not exist. I know that in a perfect world, all children would be born to parents that wanted them, loved them and could provide for them. Abuse, neglect, poverty, unplanned pregnancies, drug abuse, illnesses, etc. would not exist and would not destroy families. Every child born would be loved and cherished and cared for by their biological parents.

But, we don’t live in a perfect world. Illness, poverty and a hundred other tragic realities create orphans in this world that we live in. Millions upon millions of children on this earth are in need of loving parents, a forever home and a family. And another reality is that the majority of these children are not white. There are children from Asian, African, South American and many other cultural backgrounds. And while the bulk of these orphans are not white, another reality is that an overwhelming percentage of adoptive parents are white.

Of course there are some non-white parents that are adopting. We are friends with an African-American couple that just adopted the most gorgeous little twin girls from Africa that you have ever seen. And I know of quite a few adult adoptees from Korea that have returned to Korea to adopt a child of their own. And where we lived in New York, there was a Hispanic family that had adopted several children from foster care. There are agencies devoted to same-race adoptions for African-American children finding some success. I think it is wonderful when these adoptions are possible. And yet when you look at the big picture, for whatever reasons, the majority of adoptive parents are white.

With the majority of the children needing homes being non-white and the majority of perspective adoptive parents being white, it’s not hard to do the math and conclude that transracial adoption is a necessity.

My children did not have the option to stay with their birth families. Some were separated from them by death, some by circumstance, but their reality was that their birth families could not parent them. And there were no same-race adoptive couples wanting to adopt them. For several of them, there weren’t even many (any) other white couples wanting to adopt them. So their options were transracial adoption, or growing up as orphans in the foster care system or in an orphanage.

It’s really easy, when reading all of the books and articles, to conclude that transracial adoption is a second best choice for a child. But to me, that would only be true if we lived in that perfect world. In the world that we live in, with millions of orphans and not enough adoptive parents, for many children, the “choice” is between being adopted transracially or remaining an orphan.

So I parent my children with the knowledge in my heart that I am their Mom, and that in this world that we live in, Josh and I were their best option. I will continue to educate myself and always work hard to help all of my children build good self-esteems, pride in who they are and pride in where they are from. Culture and heritage will always be important in our home. They will be loved, cherished, cared for, educated and somewhat spoiled rotten. And for those reasons I know that we are not second best. At this time and place, we were the very best choice for these children.