International Adoptions - Research Paper Example

Interracial adoptions have helped to adopt minority children, but have raised issues for adopted children to cope with being different and for adoptive parents to help them form healthy identities. The likelihood of being in foster care is more in the Black children as compared to the white children. Black children usually stay longer in the foster care and frequently experience multiple placements. Since long-term stay in the foster care brings along with it numerous developmental risks, certain strategies have been practiced in the past to reduce children’s stay in the foster care.

Transracial adoption is one of these strategies but has acquired a lot of controversy because of its perceived effects on children’s healthy adjustment and psychological development in the long run. This is the main reason why transracial adoptions constituted only 1 per cent of all cases of adoptions in the year 1987 (McManus). Percentage of transracial adoption cases in the subsequent years is also comparable. One of the earliest studies carried out on the subject of African-American children’s transracial adoption was by (Grow and Shapiro).

In this research, a total of 125 cases of transracial adoptions were investigated. In these cases, the children had been, at least for three years, in their adopted homes. The research led to the conclusion that 77 per cent of the adoption cases were successful while the rest were unsuccessful. Cases in which the family and the child were found to be having problems were classified as unsuccessful. In 16 cases, racial identity was found to contribute to the problems of adjustment of the child in the family.

In nine cases, the child was found to be experiencing conflicts regarding the racial identity and the parents were also found to be experiencing difficulty coping with the differences of racial identity. In five cases, the researchers found a strong tendency in the parents to deny the racial background of the child either through passive ignorance toward it or through minimization of its importance (Grow and Shapiro 102). This is even more dangerous for the children because the African-American child “must be prepared for being perceived often as a minority member first, an individual second and for being judged on the basis of prejudice and stereotype” (Crumbley).

In the research by (Grow and Shapiro), most of the data was retrieved from the parents and teachers through interviews and questionnaires. Had significant part of the data been retrieved from the children, the researchers would probably have found even more unsuccessful cases and attributed them to conflicts of racial differences between children and parents. The dramatic decrease in the transracial adoption of the African-American children was observed over the last four decades because of its strong opposition by the National Association of Black Social Workers (NABSW) since the year 1972.

Their concern was that interracial adoptions makes the adopted children ill-equipped to deal with the racist society’s realities wherein they grow up. In 1985, the then NABSW president talked about the severe problems of identity in the African-American children that have been raised by white families. He said that these children have neither been completely accepted by their parents, nor have they been allowed to maintain the required contact with the people of their race because of which,