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April Fools: Three Things You Thought You Knew About Adoption

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There are some things that “everybody knows” about adoption. This “knowledge” is so well-known, of course, that facts and first-person testimonies, even the evidence of one’s own eyes, apparently aren’t effective. One couple was showing off their new baby, whom they had adopted at birth here in the U.S., at at a large family-and-friends picnic last summer. When the new parents told the story of their recent adoption, another guest asserted “Well-Known Fact Number One” confidently: “That’s impossible. There are no babies to adopt in the United States.” April Fools! The truth: In the U.S., in-country adoptions outnumbered international adoptions … Continue reading →

Past Olympians Continue to be Role Models with Adoption Stories

As Olympic fever dies down, we can continue to help our children to realize the normalcy and frequency of adoption by looking at past Olympians. Learning about their lives before and since their Olympic moment reinforces to our children that these are real people. Earlier this month, I blogged about Lopez Lomong and Reese Hoffa, Olympic athletes who represented the U.S.A. in Beijing this year. They both have interesting adoption stories. More than a dozen past Olympic athletes were also adopted. You may remember the) story of Toby Dawson, a U.S. skier who was adopted from Korea at the age … Continue reading →

Choosing Whether and How to Adopt Transracially–Our Decision

Adoption workers usually advise people considering transracial adoption to consider how their families and communities will accept and support a child of a different race, realizing that the child will not be a baby forever–transracial adoption means having a teen-ager and grandchildren of other races. The next question is whether the parents have resources to help the child feel pride in his/her culture, and whether the child will see role models who look like him/herself. We felt that the first issue was not a problem. (In fact my parents had nearly adopted an African-American boy themselves—that adoption never took place … Continue reading →

American Children Are Being Adopted in Foreign Lands

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There is a problem in this country. The majority of the families that consider adopting children are Caucasian. The majority of the children that need to be adopted are African American. The number of foreign children that are being adopted by Americans is increasing. African American babies are being sent to foreign countries. The United States is sending African American newborns to Canada and Western Europe. The families that receive these children say that their primary motive for taking them is that they wanted a newborn baby, without regard to that baby’s race. They say that there is no bias … Continue reading →