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Great article.

I think it's very important for children to grow up seeing faces that look like theirs and interacting with people of the same race or cultural background. Children need that sense of familiarity when they are confronted with the different = bad or ugly.

The article's author touched on a couple things that really spoke to me. It boils down to transracial adoptive parents truly understanding the magnitude of what they are doing and honoring that responsibility. While the parents offer a loving home, they do not replace their child's actual history and cannot compensate for the sense of loss identity.

I imagine it takes a lot of work to expose your child to a culture that is unfamiliar to you if you weren't authentically involved in that community before the adoption.

The author talked about having to feel and express gratitude for being adopted and had the burden of always talking about her experience. That just sucks! Parenting is a thankless job as it should be because no matter how a child is added to a family they didn't ask for the situation. Going through your life with a job- poster kid for adoption- instead of just living life is a constant reminder the world looks at you and your prents & siblings as "family."

@edelweiss: I agree that having parents willing to engage openly and honestly about race is necessary because kids will face crisis whether they are adopted or not.

I wonder if the author's parents had been more open about race or if she saw more Koreans and Asians if she would have told them about the playground taunts.

I am curious what the outcome would have been if you said no, that your child wouldn't be exposed to Koreans. Would they have not allowed you to be a family?

I feel like exposure to people of every color and type is important for every person on this earth. It is a big part of the reason why we relocated to the US after the birth of my son. I also feel like everyone has a different take on it, you're going to get the side eye no matter what you as a parent. Someone is always going to disagree.

There are racial issues specific to transracial adoption, and then there's just plain old racism (especially in lower diversity communities). The latter is tough on kids, but I don't know how specific it is to adoption... my sister is Korean (I'm half-Japanese), and we both heard those racial slurs plenty as kids growing up in Virginia.

Nurtureshock has an interesting chapter on this (I think it is an article in a magazine somewhere too if you want to find it online.) Basically, exposure to diversity isn't enough. Parents often feel that if their kids just grow up in a diverse environment their kids will realize everyone is the same. But what happens is kids realize there are people that look like them and people that don't and begin to otherize. The author argues what is more important is talking to kids about race. Which is something that a lot of parents feel uncomfortable doing.

I don't have any adoption experience, but my daughter is mixed race and I sometimes wonder if she'll ever have the same type of issues--not knowing where she "fits in" racially. I mean, she can't look at either of her parents and see someone that looks "exactly like her" and even though we live in a super diverse area, she isn't going to see many (or any more likely) people of her exact same mix.

I think the takeaway from the article is--glossing over (or ignore entirely) racial differences is never the answer. I can totally see how this would alienate a child.

I also wonder, from a child's perspective, whether seeing another __________ person (like, at a supermarket. Not someone in the family) that looks like them IS helpful or if it just causes more issues.

Full disclosure: one of my friends IRL is Asian, adopted by white parents--and I TOTALLY made the mistake of making assumption the first few times we met. I mean, I assumed that she was Asian with Asian parents. I knew she was American--because I know she grew up around here and obviously has no accent. But I guess I naturally assumed her parents or grandparents would be from somewhere else.

Anyway, in my particular mommy group of friends, *most* of the moms are Jewish. So at this one meetup when our babies were tiny, when everyone was talking about naming ceremonies or planning a bris....she and I were just listening as the only non-Jewish moms there (or so I assumed, based on how she looked). So finally I asked her if HER family had any newborn ceremonies and shared that in my husband's culture, they have few but we weren't really doing any of them since his parents were far away and my husband isn't really involved in the local hindu community---and then she was like...um. My parents are American. I'm adopted.

And then I felt so dumb! I mean, of course you look at a person of a certain ethnicity and you assume their parents are the same. It would be equally awkward if people approached every conversation with the assumption that the other person had parents who were a different culture/ethnicity.

I'm sure my daughter will be asked all the time "What are you?" when she's growing up. I think people ask those questions out of desire to be friendly and make connections. "Oh, your dad is hindu? My coworker is hindu!" type of thing, to make a friendly overture. Hopefully, we find a way to teach her how to handle those situations with grace and maybe even proudly.

It'll be interesting to see how my ideas on this change as my LO get older.

My husband and I were just discussing this recently. We have been interested in adoption and possibly foster to adopt. We are white and we feel like we may not be equipped to raise a child that's a different ethnicity. While we work relatively diverse environments, the town we live in and the school our kids will attend is pretty white. Plus we already have a biological son. I feel like it's a lot to ask of a kid to grow up with a whole family and town that doesn't look like you and has no idea what kind of issues you might be facing. At the same time I'd feel like a real a$$hole signing up to adopt only white kids.

This reminded me of this:
http://blog.angryasianman.com/2014/11/they-assumed-their-adopted-son-was_5.html

@stiletto_mom: Whoa

@hotchildinthecity: we live in Indiana, in an area far from anything like Queens. Our son is black and we are white. When we were preparing to adopt, our primary focus was that of any new parent. We had no idea how to care for a newborn and on top of that we had all of the adoption process. In our area, transracial adoption isn't common, and we've been on the receiving end of not so pleasant commentary on our lives. It has been an eye opening experience to say the least. Exposure to our son's culture and race is important to us, but exposure to all cultures is as well. We're not going to purposely approach other black people to be friends for the purpose of exposing our son. That makes me uncomfortable thinking about forcing a connection like that. What I'm trying to say here is that we're not colorblind, but this is our normal. We have friends who look like our son and we have friends who don't. I would hate to think that some potential adoptive families are discouraged from a potential match because they don't live in a diverse neighborhood.

I think it's important for all children to be exposed to many different people. That said, let's say you don't have that option, I think you can still raise a perfectly lovely human.

In my family, we have a cousin who was adopted from Guatemala, and two nieces from China. I'm not certain that they get a lot of interaction with other cultures (they live in the midwest), but they've always been curious about their origins, and our family is always happy to share as much as they can with them.

@looch: I don't think you're being insensitive. I agree with you, to randomly single out another person of the same race/ethnicity as your child would be weird. It has to be more organic, if you were friends prior, etc. I know someone who adopted transracially and is part of a group of parents who have all adopted from the same country--so the kids all get together.

But I think it's hard to provide this exposure in certain areas of the country. And a lot of transracial adoptees have written about how they have felt like outsiders in their non-diverse communities (and even in diverse communities, when their parents didn't actually discuss their differences).

It's hard to walk around feeling like an outsider, so I hope that all parents who adopt outside of their race/ethnicity keep that in mind and do what they can to help their child feel comfortable.

My SIL is adopted from Korean, raised by white parents with a white brother, in a variety of white/Mexican and white/black areas.

DH believes the colorblind thing but I've always wondered her feelings about it. I asked MIL once and she said they don't discuss it because it isn't an issue for SIL. I've known her since she was a kid and the only time she has mentioned race or being Korean to me was when she went to college in a very Asian-American city for a semester. Everyone treated her like she was culturally Korean which made her feel more out of place. She only stayed in that city a semester and moved back to white-ville so don't think diversity was what she wanted at that point in her life.

My Asian American friends have actually been extremely inquisitive (and what looks to me like pretty rude) when they've gotten together with her. They described her as a 'white rhino' and probe her with questions to understand what it's like to be raised by white people. What is it like to get to tan? Is she "more Asian" than my bi-racial friends? I think SIL liked the chance to discuss it with them because they all became facebook friends and still message each other. Since she doesn't talk to me about it I don't really know.