February 11, 2013
Is Love Enough?
The British Association for Adoption and Fostering recently released a study three years in the making, where they interviewed 72 adoptees from Hong Kong who were adopted into a family of another ethnicity. Their intent was to analyze transracial adoption over the last 50 years. The Guardian’s report on this study, “How a generation of orphans fared when they were matched to mixed-race couples” has overwhelmed traditional dogma about the notion children benefiting most from a loving family, more so than being raised in their own culture.
For Sue Jardine, the experience was confusing.
“She remembers the isolation, the confusion, the racism, the passers-by who gawped at her because she looked different from her parents. Sue Jardine, 50, said she felt neither Chinese nor British, “a bloody foreigner” in a country that didn’t understand her.
“My obvious difference to my family attracted unwanted attention and racist comments that I felt my parents did not understand or want to acknowledge,” she said.
Others, like Claire Martin, had a more positive experience. But even she advises against underemphasizing the importance of culture in adoption.
Her adoptive parents’ experiences, said Martin, meant they were deeply empathetic and grasped the potential problems of self-identity and dealing with the assumptions of others. Yet playing down the importance of ethnicity in adoption was, she said, misguided.
“I would not like the government to say that love is the most important thing. I just don’t believe that’s the case. There are enough of the women who have had really bad experiences even where people have genuinely loved them,” she said.
It’s easy, if you’re an adoptive parent, to feel like this might be an attack. Like you’re being accused of not having the skills or resources to parent your child if you’re not of their same ethnicity. We’re a transracial family as well, so we understand how that can feel. But as more details of the study are released and the dialogue within the adoption community grows, we urge you to keep an open mind and to really think as a family – perhaps even with your birth mother, if you have an open adoption plan – about the best way to maintain the sanctity of your child’s cultural ethnicity.
1. Do some research on your child’s culture. What are important holidays and traditions? How can you integrate those into your family traditions?
2. Keep your child educated. Depending on where you live and what resources are available to you, your child may not be learning as much about their culture and where they come from as they are the dominant culture of your location. By educating yourself and your child, you are helping to integrate that into your child’s personal identity, as well as giving them the tools and knowledge to be able to communicate with others about their ethnicity and where they come from.
3. When formulating your adoption plan, if you’re planning on adopting transracially, talk with your birth mother about important cultural icons, holidays, tenets, ideologies they feel it is important to instill within the child. Not only is this a beautiful way to support your birth mother, but who better to help you educate your child and share where they come from than their birth mother?
4. Be supportive. The saddest part of Sue Jardine’s experience is that she didn’t feel supported by her family. You have the most powerful tools to bolster your child, show pride and allow them to blossom within their own culture. Be attentive, caring, and do everything in your power to nurture their past, present and future.
