Transracial Adoption as Continued Oppression: Modern Practice in Context

The Experience and Understanding of Racial Difference in Families Among Adults of Color Adopted by White Parents Rebecca M. Redington The notion of normality in families is socially constructed. In fact, so-called traditional families represent only 3% of households in the United States. The presence of dissimilarity in families has given rise to a deficit model, where families constructed outside of the norm are recognized as vulnerable to problems and likely candidates for intervention. At the same time, mental health practitioners indicate feeling unequipped to address the concerns of these families. Rather than assume nontraditional families are destined for maladaptive outcomes, research must investigate how family members address differences to produce strong, high functioning families. As such, the purpose of this qualitative investigation was to a) identify what transracially adopted individuals think and feel about their own race and the race of their parents/other adoptive family members, b) understand how racial differences are addressed in families formed through transracial adoption, and c) elucidate how transracially adopted individuals are affected (in childhood and adulthood) by ways in which their parents address or do not address issues of race with them. Data was collected through 13 semi-structured interviews with adults of color who were transracially adopted by White parents. Participant narratives were transcribed and then analyzed using Consensual Qualitative Research (CQR). Results illustrate the complexity of identity formation and parent/child relationships in the lives of transracial adoptees. Racial messages received from family members and communities are identified, including themes of colorblindness, racial discrimination, and having no sense of belonging. Participants described various ways in which they dealt with race-related messages on their own, through methods of isolation and avoidance. They also discussed negative emotional responses to race-related encounters, such as confusion, anger, and anxiety. Participants’ experiences of their own racial identity, as well as their relationship to their birth race and culture, are described. Suggestions for prospective White transracial adoptive parents are made, including the importance of incorporating adoptees’ birth race and culture within family life. Finally, implications for mental health practitioners working with transracial adoptive families, limitations, and suggestions for future research are provided.

Transracial Adoption in the United States: The Reflection and Reinforcement of Racial Hierarchy

This article takes at its point of the departure the practice of transracial adoption of children and adults. During the colonial period, it was not only non-white native children or adults who were adopted by white colonisers and settlers; the opposite also occurred. The existence of these ‘inverted’ transracial adoptions is well-documented in literary and autobiographical texts and historical documents, as well as in art and visual culture. At that time, the white transracial adoptee who had been transformed into the Other was stigmatised and even demonised as something of an ethno-racial monster transgressing the boundaries between Europeans and non-Europeans. This article aims to re-conceptualise transracial adoption within the framework of the fundamental inability of Europeans to attach to the lands and peoples outside Europe by making use of the concepts of indigenisation and autochtonisation.

Social workers in the United States were queried on their attitudes toward transracial adoption (TRA), defined here as African American children being adopted by White parents. An analysis of 363 questionnaires found that optimism about the future of race relations was the most powerful predictor of TRA attitudes. For both African American and White social workers, more optimism about race relations was associated with positive attitudes toward transracial adoption. Among White respondents, optimism about race relations was also related to lower levels of conservatism and higher levels of altruism; among African American respondents, racial optimism was associated with less emphasis on Black awareness. For African American social workers, a stronger commitment to promulgating Black awareness was also associated with less support for TRA. Implications of the findings for social work practice were discussed.

<p>[para. 1]: “In her essay "Race/Identity/Culture/Kin: Constructions of African American Identity in Transracial Adoption," Sandra Patton reminds us that "from a cultural studies perspective, all human identities are socially constructed ... [but] ... Adoption is the literal social construction of families and, thus, of identities. Those of us who were adopted into our families-whether across or within racial categories-often move through our everyday lives with an acute understanding that our identities have been constituted by outside forces, that who we are is not 'natural'" (274). The dialogue around transracial adoption and the racial identity formation practices of black and interracial adoptees has recently been reinvigorated by a spate of scholarly and popular explorations in the field. Much of the literature on these issues focuses primarily on the ways in which black and/or interracial adoptees ad-just to their adoptive contexts; however, as Patton wisely points out, adoption is not only the "literal social construction" of adoptees' identities; rather, the entire family unit constructs and reconstructs its identity through the trope of adoption. In cases where there is no racial or cultural match between the adoptee and the adoptive family, the impression adoptees have of possessing identities that are not "natural" - both in the sense of having originated somewhere outside the adoptive family and of being racially marked in a society where the "(unmarked) racial identit[ies]" of white adoptive parents and siblings are assumed to be the "norm" - is compounded and thus presents an additional challenge to both individual and collective identity formation (277). Additionally, Patton argues, "black children of white parents will be ex-posed to a different range of racial meanings and narratives of self than will black children raised by African American parents. Demographic and cultural factors such as the racial composition of the neighbor-hood and community and the racial assumptions of parents and other family members fundamentally shape the range of cultural systems of racial meaning that are made available to these children" (275-76).”</p>

The relationship between kinship and foster placement on mental health indicators in children and youth seeking treatment

This study finds that the National Urban League, in the middle decades of the 20th century, led widespread efforts by child welfare agencies to recruit adoptive African American homes for children in black communities. Such findings are contrary to the predominant adoption historiography, which portrays a "pervasive neglect of black dependent children by the adoption community" until the appearance of interracial adoption for black children in the mid-1960s. However, despite these early activities of the National Urban League, leaders hoped for a fully integrated society characterized by assimilation. This led top leaders in the National Urban League adoption work to shift emphasis to interracial adoption just as a large number of minority adoptive-home recruitment projects were being met with overly strict standards for appropriate adoptive parents-which reflected the characteristics of the white middle-class couple. Minority-home recruitment efforts and liberalization of social work adoption standards were, thus, abandoned by the National Urban League. It used its influence on the Child Welfare League of America during the 1960s solely for the purpose of promoting color-blind adoption policy. It created targeted messages to social workers that encouraged them to approve transracial adoptions of black children by white parents instead of same-race adoptions into black American families. Minority adoptive-home recruitment campaigns were allowed to fade away

This study examined racial and ethnic disparities in child maltreatment reporting, Child Protective Services (CPS) decision-making, re-involvement, and foster care experiences in Illinois. Using tract-level regressions for all 2021 census tracts and individual-level logistic regressions for 153,850 reported children and 6,736 foster care entrants, we assessed key decision points. The Black-White disparity in report rates-nearly twofold unadjusted-was fully explained by neighborhood poverty and single-parent family rates, providing no empirical support for racially biased reporting. Latino children had consistently lower report rates than White children despite higher socioeconomic disadvantage, replicating the "Latino paradox." Among reported children, Black and other-race children generally had equal or lower odds than White children of substantiation, Intact Family Services (IFS), foster care placement, or re-involvement; Latino children showed slightly higher odds for substantiation and IFS. In foster care, non-White children were more likely to experience frequent placement disruptions and, for Black children, non-kin placements, but had no worse outcomes for distant placement, termination of parental rights, or permanency. Findings indicate disparities are front-loaded at the reporting stage, largely reflecting structural socioeconomic inequities rather than differential CPS treatment, underscoring the need for upstream poverty reduction and family support to advance child welfare equity.

Opposition to transracial adoption on both sides of the Atlantic, has been based, in part, on the assumption that white parents cannot understand race or racism and thus cannot properly prepare children of multiracial heritage to cope with racism. In this article I draw on a seven-year ethnographic study to offer an intensive case study of white transracial birth parents that counters this racial logic. I draw on a subset of data collected from field research and in-depth interviews with 102 members of black-white interracial families in England. I provide an analysis of three practices that I discovered among white transracial birth parents who were attempting to cultivate ‘black’ identities in their children of multiracial heritage. I offer the concept of ‘racial literacy’ to theorize their parental labour as a type of anti-racist project that remains under the radar of conventional sociological analyses of racism and anti-racist social movements.

Between 1854 and 1930, over 200,000 children left New York City, as well as other major east coast cities, bound for families in rural areas. They traveled to towns in New England, the Midwest, the South, and even as far west as Texas, California, Oregon, and Washington. These orphans were the children of immigrant families who were pouring into the United States in search of a better life. Many of these children were abandoned, or their parents had died and they were left to fend for themselves. To address this growing social problem, the process of placing out, or Orphan Trains, was developed by Charles Loring Brace, the director of the Children's Aid Society in New York City. This article summarizes the implementation of the placing-out process, including the social conditions, the underlying philosophy, the basic components, and the public perceptions. A lesson plan, teaching strategies, and materials are provided for teachers who want to explore this social practice when studying the rise of industrialization, immigration, and social change during the beginning of the twentieth century in American History.

This systematic review aimed to explore teachers’ perspectives on trauma-informed care (TIC) within educational settings, focusing on Vietnam as a representative case of developing countries. While TIC has received growing global attention, its implementation in resource-constrained, exam-oriented, and culturally collectivist contexts remains underexplored. A total of 34 peer-reviewed studies published between 2012 and 2024 were analyzed using PRISMA guidelines and thematic synthesis. The findings reveal that although Vietnamese teachers generally expressed a strong moral obligation and confidence in supporting trauma-affected students, there exists a significant discrepancy between their perceived awareness and actual classroom practices. Three core themes emerged: (1) teachers’ recognition of trauma-related student needs; (2) their perceived roles and readiness to engage in emotional support; and (3) contextual barriers, including limited trauma-specific training, lack of systemic support, Confucian hierarchical norms, and pervasive stigma toward mental health, that constrain the adoption of TIC. This review contributes novel insights into the intersection of trauma-informed practice and cultural context, emphasizing that TIC implementation in Vietnam must be both pedagogically sound and culturally resonant. Recommendations include integrating TIC into national teacher training curricula, ensuring sustained professional development opportunities, and fostering reflective, collaborative school cultures. By equipping educators with both conceptual frameworks and context-specific tools, TIC holds the potential to promote emotional safety, enhance student engagement, and reduce psychological inequities in Vietnam’s educational system, particularly among vulnerable youth. The review also calls for further empirical studies to address existing methodological gaps and to inform culturally grounded models of trauma-responsive education in developing countries.

Oregon Governor Vetoes Psychologist Prescribing Bill

The Littlest Immigrants:Cross-Border Adoption in the Americas, Policy, and Women's History Anne Collinson (bio) By the mid-1990s, as intercountry adoptions from Eastern Europe, former Soviet countries, and Central and South America began to peak, several adoption issues surfaced simultaneously in the United States. Three types of adoption cases were widely covered in national and international media: the circulation of vivid stories of U.S.–born children addicted to crack, the rights of biological mothers and fathers to reclaim their already adopted child, and the accusations aimed at Americans of stealing Central and South American children as part of international adoption rings. As hysteria around allegedly illegal international adoptions mounted, the United States introduced legislation that promoted the color-blind placement of children in domestic adoption situations in order to reduce the waiting times of children of color. Under the new guidelines, the waiting period could not be prolonged for a child of color if white parents were available to adopt. Similarly, parents were ostensibly no longer permitted to specify racial, ethnic, or physiognomic characteristics if they wanted to be considered seriously as adoptive parents. In this article, I demonstrate the relationships between these high-profile adoption cases that shaped the cultural imagination about domestic and international adoption. These media depictions at once promoted transnational rather than domestic adoption and urged the public to consider the need for increased regulation of intercountry adoption. The depictions marked poor women of color as unfit mothers and depicted their children as infants in need of rescue. The reports of corrupt child placement practices prompted policymakers and the public to call for more stringent regulations of domestic and intercountry adoptions. "Cries of Addiction": The Media Hype Surrounding "Crack Babies" of the 1980s1 U.S. birth parents fell under the media spotlight during the late twentieth century. The legitimacy of birth mothers as "good" mothers was called into question during the 1980s when the media heralded the beginning of what reporters believed to be an epidemic. Circulation of lurid images of underweight babies shaking and crying, ostensibly because of withdrawal from addiction to crack cocaine, saturated the media in the 1980s and early 1990s.2 As the public outrage grew, these children were increasingly placed [End Page 132] in foster care, increasing the number of children awaiting placement. At the same time, prospective foster and adoptive parents were influenced by these images either to step in as "suitable" parents or to turn to other countries to adopt children who were not victims of this epidemic. These children, known as "crack babies," were held up a symbols of the failing war on drugs and fight against poverty. Born to mostly poor African American women in inner cities nationwide, these children—it was believed—were living proof that crack was having a devastating effect on inner-city neighborhoods and now seemed to be affecting the next generation of city dwellers. Among growing popular tensions about the emergence of an underclass of poor, urban, African Americans, the media latched on to crack babies as the physical reproductions of urban poverty.3 Pregnant women who tested positive for illicit drugs would have their children removed from their care and placed in either medical or foster care until such time as the woman's maternal fitness could be determined by the courts. Additionally, many women relinquished their parental rights voluntarily. These children then entered the fostering and adoption system, increasing the number of children of color waiting for adoptive placements or return to their biological families. Sensationalistic reporting of this so-called epidemic promised children with a lifetime of medical needs. Social workers and doctors warned that these pathetic infants would never be able to read, bond with caregivers, finish school, or behave normally in spite of early intervention.4 Others warned that the affliction would render so many African American youth incapable of knowing right from wrong that they would form a "bio-underclass."5 Such melodramatic condemnations affected the cultural imagination surrounding adoption and coincided with the shift to foreign-born children who appeared less likely to have been touched by such ailments as drug addiction.6 The twin developments of an increase in...

Beyond childcare theories and early childhood gurus, here is how children have actually been raised in America over the last four centuries. From wet nurses and Southern mammys, settlement houses and orphan trains, to rigid British nannies, foster care, and the modern two-worker family, Geraldine Youcha's delightful book paints a wide-ranging picture of American childhood. In this updated paperback edition a lively new chapter brings the story through current childcare wars and present economic realities. All in all, it is a reassuring picture, for despite a bewildering array of different styles and fads, children have survived and often thrived. While there are some harsh lessons to be learned here, there is also plenty to lend optimism and help anxious parents relax.

Background: Foster carers provide care for children who have been removed from their primary caregivers due to serious adverse experiences. While considerable research focuses on trauma among foster children, little is known about the traumatic experiences and resulting (secondary) traumatic stress in foster carers themselves. Objective: To review existing literature on traumatic experiences and traumatic stress among foster carers. Methods: We conducted a scoping review following the methodological framework developed by the Joanna Briggs Institute [Peters, M. D. J., Marnie, C., Tricco, A. C., Pollock, D., Munn, Z., Alexander, L., McInerney, P., Godfrey, C. M., & Khalil, H. (2020). Updated methodological guidance for the conduct of scoping reviews. JBI Evidence Synthesis, 18(10), 2119–2126. https://doi.org/10.11124/JBIES-20-00167] and reported it in accordance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) guidelines and checklist. We searched for literature in MEDLINE, Embase and PsycINFO. Results: We included nine studies (2005–2024) involving over 2,200 foster carers. Results indicate that (1) many foster carers have personally experienced adverse childhood experiences; (2) carers report indirect trauma exposure through their children’s narratives and direct exposure, such as threats or violence; (3) a notable portion experience high levels of secondary traumatic stress; and (4) higher levels of trauma exposure are related to higher levels of secondary traumatic stress. Conclusions: The findings highlight the need for mental health screening, ongoing training, and systemic support for foster carers. Acknowledging carers as both caregivers and trauma-affected individuals is essential to trauma-informed care, as it contributes to the wellbeing of both foster children and foster carers, and helps ensure stable foster placements. Given the limited number of studies, future research should further explore the specific trauma foster carers encounter in their caregiving role, the nature and severity of their secondary traumatic stress symptoms, and how these factors influence their caregiving capacity and the stability of foster placements.