ROWENA FONG, RUTH G. MCROY, AND ANN E. SCHWARTZTHE AMERICAN FAMILY IS BECOMING more diverse as parents are choosing more frequently to adopt children not of their same race through intercountry adoption and domestic transracial adoption. The term “transracial adoption” (TRA) refers to the legal placement of a child of one racial or ethnic group with adoptive parents of another ethnic group. Often in the United States, these adoptions typically refer to the “placement of children of color either from the U.S. or from another country with Caucasian families” (Child Welfare Information Gateway, 2013). According to the findings from the 2007 National Survey of Adoptive Parents, “four out of ten adopted children were in TRAs—that is, their parents reported that both adoptive parents are (or the single adoptive parent is) of a different race, culture, or ethnicity than their child. The majority of adopted children have non-Hispanic white parents, but are not themselves non-Hispanic white” (Vandivere, Malm, & Radel, 2009, pp. 5–6).
Although TRAs can apply to both domestic and international adoptions, in this book, TRA refers to domestic adoptions that occur in the United States. Adoptions that occur in international countries are referred to as “intercountry adoptions” (ICAs).
Since the Adoption and Safe Families Act was passed in 1997, the number of domestic adoptions reportedly has increased nationally because of the mandated expedited permanency for foster children (Coakley, 2005). An increased pool of adoptable children, including children who are older and with special needs, are available for parents willing to adopt from child protective services in public child welfare systems.
Since 2006, however, the availability of children to be adopted internationally has decreased steadily (Selman, 2012). Reasons for this decrease range from economic stability and an increase in domestic adoptions within the international country (Groza & Bunkers, 2014) to unethical fraudulent practices of child laundering and the illegal abduction of children (Gibbons & Rotabi, 2012; Roby & Maskew, 2012).
Concerns about rehoming, the illegal practice of finding and placing a child in a new adoptive home, raise the question of the inadequacy of postadoption services that might prevent these tense disruptions from happening (Pinderhughes, Matthews, Deoudes, & Pertman, 2013). Also, fraud and coercive practices have been associated with rehoming, child trafficking, and global surrogacy in some international countries (Gibbons & Rotabi, 2012; Punaks & Feit, 2014). Although these complex problems may not apply to all families who have children through ICAs or TRAs and successful adoption experiences are occurring, more information still is needed about TRAs and ICAs as the complexities and challenges increase, and recommendations for strengthening postadoption services and for solutions for addressing these problems are often sought.
OVERVIEW OF THIS BOOK
This book is designed as a useful day-to-day reference for professionals who work with families who have adopted transracially or internationally, such as child welfare workers, therapists, physicians, teachers, and others who provide services to these adoptive families. Limited information is currently available to professionals to help prepare and assist families postadoption so that they can address issues specific to TRA and ICA, such as identity formation, understanding adoption, and dealing with the experience of loss and trauma. Many adoptive families seek services from educators, therapists, and medical staff, and often find that these professionals have only limited knowledge about adoption in general, and even less about the unique issues associated with TRAs and ICAs. Information about the history of policies related to TRAs and ICAs, trauma, fraud and coercion, ethnic identity formation, gay and lesbian adoptions, adoption issues in school settings, working with doctors and medical practitioners, and adoption-competent mental health professionals is provided.
In this book, TRAs typically refer to situations in which African American children are adopted by white families, which account for the majority of TRAs in the United States. It is acknowledged, however, that TRAs also occur in and with Asian American, Native American, and Latino and Mexican American children and families.
ICAs refer to the placement of children from one country (sending country) with a family from another country (receiving country). Six international countries were chosen (South Korea, China, India, Russia, Guatemala, and Ethiopia) to exemplify the range of complexities faced by triad members in ICAs. These situations range from growing domestic adoptions occurring within international countries to dramatic decreases in the numbers of placements from sending countries, which historically were responsible for the largest numbers of ICAs in the United States. Strained relations between international countries because of child abuse and neglect of adopted children by U.S. parents, rehoming of children, child laundering, and trafficking—as well as fraud and coercion practices, including ethical dilemmas in global surrogacy—are all challenges that are discussed in the chapters specifically about ICAs.
In chapter 1, the authors present the rationale and need for a book on TRAs and ICAs using a systems and intersectionality framework to explore challenges triad members face in mental health, health, and school systems. Issues such as disproportionality and kinship care, which affect the need as well as options for permanency for African American children in foster care are discussed. A brief introduction is also provided about fraudulent and coercive practices in ICAs. Chapter 1 includes an overview of ICAs, with a focus on history and demographics, as well as adoption challenges within the following countries: China, South Korea, India, Russia, Guatemala, and Ethiopia. The legal and policy issues related to ICAs are the main focus of chapter 2, with a critical analysis of the Hague Convention Intercountry Adoption (HCIA) and its impact on fraudulent and coercive practices, such as abduction and child laundering. Chapter 3 provides an overview of TRAs and explains the legal and policy issues related to the Multiethnic Placement Act (MEPA) and the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA). Issues associated with TRAs and ICAs by lesbians and gays are discussed in chapter 4, and chapter 5 provides a neurodevelopmental perspective on the role and impact of trauma and early life adversities on child development. Ethnic identity formation in TRAs and ICAs is addressed in chapter 6. Chapters 7, 8, and 9 discuss from a single systems perspective, the challenges ICA and TRA triad members can face when seeking services from mental health, medical, and school professionals. Chapter 10 makes a strong plea that adoption-competent professionals be trained especially in specific mental health services that triad members seek. Case examples are provided. The concluding chapter suggests updates and expansions needed in the seven core issues of adoption teaching curriculum, as well as additional frameworks that need to be added to attachment theory, to make these theoretical approaches more relevant to TRAs and ICAs. The authors conclude with a call for cultural humility and culturally competent practice approaches to work with the complexities faced by individuals and families in TRAs and ICAs.
DISPROPORTIONALITY AND KINSHIP CARE
One factor that has led to TRAs is the disproportionate representation of African American children in the U.S. public child welfare system (Fong, Dettlaff, James, & Rodriguez, 2015). To address this challenge to promote permanency, safety, and well-being of the child, kinship care has become a growing option in which kin keep children and youth close to their biological family members through kinship foster care and in adoptive placements.
Disproportionality
Disproportionality is the over- or underrepresentation of a group of people within the public systems (child welfare, schools, courts, hospitals) compared with the size of the same group of people in the general population (Wells, 2011). The public child welfare system has a disproportionate number of African American children in foster care and in need of adoption. For example, although in 2013, African American children represented only 13.7 percent of children under 18 years old in the United States, they represented 24.9 percent of children in care, and 25.7 percent of children waiting to be adopted (Wells & Girling 2014). This disproportionately high number of African American children needing permanency leads agencies to consider varying types of adopters of various racial backgrounds, as well as considering adoptions by relatives or kin.
Kinship adopters represent a growing population of adoptive families. Kinship care may be understood broadly as “any living arrangement in which a relative or someone else emotionally close to a child (e.g., friends, neighbors, godparents) takes primary responsibility for rearing that child” (Leos-Urbel, Bess, & Geen 1999, p. 1). The increasing use of kinship foster care in the United States over the past three decades has led to a long-term growth in kinship placements (Geen 2003). The last available federal statistics from 2013 reported that 28 percent of children in care reside in a relative placement, up from 23 percent in 2007 (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services [HHS], 2014). Adoptions from foster care by relatives have also increased. In 1998, only 15 percent of these adoptions were by relatives, but in 2013, this number reached 31 percent (Maza, 2006; HHS 2014). Kinship foster care also has become a more prevalent child welfare practice in other countries like England, Scotland, Ireland, Norway, and Ghana (Hong, Algood, Chiu, & Lee, 2011).
In the United States, the majority of children in kinship care are racial–ethnic minorities (Children in Kinship Care, 2002). Although kinship foster care as a social service practice is a recent phenomenon, among many minority groups, there is a long history of informal or private kinship care—that is, care with no involvement by child welfare authorities. This developed as a result of both cultural heritage and structural conditions. For example, in West African societies, different members of kinship networks commonly have cared for children whose parents were unable to provide care (Hegar, 1999). In the United States, slave children, separated from their parents, learned to depend on both blood relatives and symbolic or fictive kin, individuals not related but with close, emotional ties (Gutman, 1976). Continued economic difficulties faced by many African Americans since have placed continued importance on kin networks and shared parenting (Stack, 1985). In the past, informal kinship care was also necessitated by the exclusion of African American children from the child welfare system (Billingsley & Giovannoni, 1972). Likewise, traditional child-rearing practices among Native American children have emphasized the roles and responsibilities of extended family, clan, and tribal members; even today, American Indian families often include several generations (Red Horse et al., 2000). Despite this emphasis, Native American children were separated from their parents, extended family, and tribal communities through placement of children in church and state-run boarding schools and later through the Indian Adoption Project, which led to the placement of Native American children in white families. These practices were based on ethnocentric perceptions that favored Anglo assimilation and deemed Native American parents unable to properly care for their children (Palmiste, 2011).
In response, the Indian Children Welfare Act of 1978 sought to prevent such separations from happening and explicitly to establish “minimum Federal standards for the removal of Indian children from their families and the placement of such children in foster or adoptive homes which will reflect the unique values of Indian culture.” These standards mandate that for both foster and adoptive placements of Native American children, preference should be given first to extended family, then to tribal members, and finally, other Indian families. Similarly, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Child Placement Principle, which influences child welfare policy throughout Australian states and territories, promotes the placement of indigenous children first with kin, then indigenous community members, and finally other indigenous caregivers to preserve the children’s culture and identity (Boetto, 2010).
These placement preferences and policies highlight a perceived beneficial outcome of kinship care—cultural socialization. Because the current understanding of kinship care includes all caregivers who are emotionally close to a child, a kinship placement does not guarantee that a child will have a similar racial–ethnic background as his or her caregiver, but it certainly increases that likelihood. In contrast to those in nonkinship placements, those in kinship care may have a greater awareness of their genetic and ethnic heritage because of their connections to their birth family. Researchers have shown that children in kinship placements maintain more connections with family and community than those in nonkinship placements (Berrick, Barth, & Needell, 1994; Chapman, Wall, & Barth, 2004; Messing, 2006; Testa & Slack, 2002).
Do these connections actually translate into different outcomes when it comes to a child’s understanding and embracing of his or her cultural background? In a study of youth living in relative placements in a London borough, many expressed that they had been able to preserve their ethnic heritage while in care (Broad, Hayes, & Rushforth, 2001). Specifically, many kinship caregivers are grandparents, and a central function of the grandparenting role is the sharing of culture. Findings from the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being (NSCAW, 2010) show that the majority of the kinship caregivers (60.9 percent) in the sample were grandmothers. Recent research finds that 1 child in 10 in the United States lives with a grandparent and that it is more common for grandparents to serve as primary caregivers among African Americans and Hispanics than among whites, although the greatest increase in caregiving by grandparents, since the start of the Great Recession, has been among whites (Livingston, 2010).
Using a convenience sample of diverse college students, Wiscott and Kopera-Frye (2000) found that ethnic minority students engage in more culturally related activities with their grandparents than do white students, highlighting the role of custodial grandparents in the transmission of a sense of ethnic identity from adults to children. A qualitative study by Cross, Day, and Byers (2010) revealed that in asking grandparents reasons why they became the sole caregivers for their grandchildren, they feared the “loss of traditional values and cultural norms for the children” were they to end up in a nonkinship placement (p. 377). In a study of grandmothers raising grandchildren in Manitoba, Eni, Harvey, and Phillips-Beck (2009) found that the grandmother participants saw the transmission of culture to their grandchildren as a critical function.
Both theorists and researchers have focused much attention on identity development among children, including ethnic identity, but in most cases, they have studied children residing with biological parents, often middle class and white. Not only have identity issues facing foster children been minimally studied, but the effects of kinship foster care on identity have been largely ignored as well (Gibbs & Muller, 2000).
Schwartz (2007), in one of the few studies to examine how the element of living with a relative might influence the development of a child’s ethnic identity, found that being with caregivers who share both an adolescent’s ethnic and family background enhanced the adolescent’s sense of ethnic identity. This qualitative study compared the experiences of 18 African American early adolescents, between the ages of 11 and 14 years old, in both kinship and nonkinship same-race placements. Overall, those adolescents in kinship placements interpreted their ethnic identity in a more positive light than did those in nonkinship settings, and for kinship youth, ethnic socialization was less intentional but more natural, relational, practical, and community-based than it was for nonkinship participants. Nonkinship foster parents either did little in the way of socializing or deliberately exposed the adolescents to African American history and culture; by contrast, for kinship participants, their ethnic identity was “caught, not taught”—simply picked up through interactions with their caregivers, birth family, and others in their community, as they learned what it means to be African American and, in particular, how to survive and be viewed in a positive way in a majority-dominated society.
The differences in ethnic socialization by placement type may stem from a number of different factors. The kinship participants were living in areas with a heavily African American population, whereas the nonkinship participants resided in more ethnically diverse communities. As McRoy and Zurcher (1983) concluded in their study of transracial and inracial adolescent African American adoptees, “the opportunity for establishing positive relationships with blacks on an everyday basis was a key factor in the child’s development of a positive black racial identity and a corresponding feeling about other blacks” (p. 134).
Additionally, in the Schwartz (2007) study, on average, the nonkinship caregivers had higher socioeconomic status and thus, likely greater education, giving them greater knowledge and access to resources about African American history and culture. With this sort of background, they would have more experience with intentional, topical discussions as a means to communicate information to those in their care. Furthermore, because all of the nonkinship caregivers were licensed foster parents but none of the kinship caregivers were, the nonrelative caregivers had completed child welfare training that specifically addresses ways to help children in foster care maintain their culture identity.
Not only because kinship caregivers have less knowledge about or familiarity with these forms of socialization, but also because of their often-disadvantaged economic situation, passing on survival skills would be viewed as critical. For example, although African American adolescents are at risk of being stopped by a police officer in any neighborhood, they would likely have a greater chance of being stopped in a low-income neighborhood than in another area, where police patrols are less common.
Another factor in the difference in socialization may simply be that, because of their familial connection, kinship caregivers view themselves as more responsible for the upbringing of adolescents in their care and accountable to do what the adolescents’ birth parents should be doing (Crumbley, 2015). Denby and Alford (1996) reported that compared with Caucasian parents, African American parents “expressed (an) added socialization factor by stating that they teach their children the following: ‘they (European Americans) don’t have to worry about some of the things that we have to worry about’” (p. 80). They felt it was important to teach their children how to function in a society as a member of a minority group.
These preliminary findings regarding the relationship between kinship care and ethnic identity suggest some implications for practice and future research. The finding that children in kinship placements experience positive outcomes by maintaining family connections—both within and outside the household—supports the importance of family group decision-making programs, which bring together members of a child’s kinship network (Scannapieco & Hegar, 2002). This approach involves convening members of a child’s kinship network, including extended family members, close friends, and godparents, to discuss the care and protection of the child as well as assess the needs of the kinship caregiver. Efforts to involve family members require child welfare workers to be familiar with the cultural background and conceptions of family held by those involved in the placement or adoption and for workers to be equipped, in particular, to assist children with ethnic identity formation. Because not all children in care can be placed with kin, practice also should focus on enabling nonrelative foster and adoptive parents to engage in ethnic socialization that is more embedded in daily interactions and connected to children’s immediate challenges.
Ethnic identity outcomes for children in kinship settings remain an understudied area. Future research should continue to explore what mechanisms and approaches to ethnic socialization result in the most favorable outcomes for children in different placement settings, including investigation of what community figures and organizations play important roles in ethnic socialization for children in both kinship and nonkinship placements. Research into what contexts encourage involvement that translates into positive ethnic identity formation, also may result in new practices.
ETHNIC IDENTITY FORMATION IN TRANSRACIAL AND INTERCOUNTRY ADOPTIONS
A positive ethnic identity formation, whether it is promoted by kinship care and biological family members in TRAs or adoptive family members in ICAs, is an important goal to achieve for positive functioning in a child–youth–adult’s life. In a study conducted by the Evan B. Donaldson Institute, entitled Beyond Culture Camp: Promoting Health Identity Formation in Adoption (McGinnis, Smith, Ryan, & Howard, 2009), the authors did an extensive examination of the identity development in adopted adults and found the following:
1. Adoption is an increasingly significant aspect of identity for adopted people as they age, and it remains so even when they are adults.
2. Race–ethnicity is an increasingly significant aspect of identity for those adopted across color and culture.
3. Coping with discrimination is an important aspect of coming to terms with racial–ethnic identity for adoptees of color.
4. Discrimination based on adoption is a reality, but more so for white adoptees—who also report being somewhat less comfortable with their adoptive identity as adults than their Korean counterparts.
5. Most transracial adoptees consider themselves white or want to be white as children.
6. Positive racial–ethnic identity development is most effectively facilitated by “lived” experiences, such as travel to native country, attending racially diverse schools, and having role models of their own race–ethnicity.
7. Contact with birth relatives, according to white respondents, is the most helpful factor in achieving a positive adoptive identity.
8. Different factors predict comfort with adoptive and racial–ethnic identity for Korean and white adoptees (pp. 4–6).
Adoption, whether it is transracial or intercountry, is a lifelong journey, as reinforced by the findings of the Beyond Culture Camp study. TRAs and ICAs have a continuum of needs, and these adoptions involve all triad members: birth parents, adopted persons, and adoptive parents. This continuum of needs begins even before the preplacement procedures when adoption workers are making arrangements for meetings between agency workers and adoptive parents. Neurodevelopmental research focuses on the neonatal development of the infant before it is born and becomes a part of an adoptive family. Adoption-competent mental health training is needed for workers in child protective services and in mental health services to prepare adoptive family members, especially for issues related to racism or adoptism in TRAs and ICAs. Postadoption services are needed to help adoptive families, adopted persons, and birth parents in both open and closed adoptions to address issues related to race and ethnic identity formation. Culturally competent practice and theoretical frameworks that address the intersections of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion, and abilities are needed to guide adoption-competent practice with members of the triad.
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS
Adoptism, according to contributing authors JaeRan Kim and Beth Hall in chapter 9, refers to “the bias that exists in society to privilege families that are genetically connected over those made through adoption.” According to Kim and Hall, “racism, sexism, heterosexism, ableism, and adoptism are all enforced and maintained by a society’s institutions.” These sentiments of institutions contributing to the –isms that affect individuals and families are the foundation of writing this book from a social systems framework and an ecological perspective of understanding human behaviors in social environments from macro-, mezzo-, and microsystems lenses (Zastrow & Kirst-Ashman, 2012). Adopted individuals and adoptive families face problems with systems. In each single system of school or mental health or health or legal settings, recurrent themes seem to emerge of professionals not understanding or accepting the difficult situations that face adopted individuals and adoptive families. Lack of information is a repetitive problem for triad members that systems seem unable to accept. The inconvenience or annoyance of systems lacking information seems to cause services offered to be rude, strife ridden, and full of tension. Adoption-competent professionals are needed across systems to address this problem.
Yet the knowledge of understanding TRAs and ICAs has to be in the context of using an intersectionality theoretical framework because of the complexities in the development and the establishment of identity development. For individuals and families involved in TRAs and ICAs, it is the intersectionality process of determining the integration of facets of race and ethnicity, sexual orientation, age, social class, religion, and abilities that affirms identity. Adoptive identity is a biculturalization or even multiculturalization process that is based on a strengths and resiliency process. Ellen E. Pinderhughes, Jessica A. K. Matthews, and Xian Zhang in chapter 6 refer to “intersecting identities” and the “scaffolding of identity” in ethnic identity formation of the child or youth in TRAs and ICAs. Yet, in chapter 5, coauthors Bruce Perry, Erin Hambrick, and Robert Perry warn about heeding the impact of trauma on the physical development of the infant, child, or youth, which ultimately would affect the whole identity of the child or youth.
Identity formation is not limited to the child. When an adopted child from an ethnic culture enters the adoptive family of another ethnic culture, the transformation of that family’s multicultural ethnic identity has to occur. Becoming a transracial family is a process that reflects the acknowledgment and the acquiring of cultural competence in operating from a stance of competency, not mediocrity, of understanding and knowing culturally different values, beliefs, and norms.
To understand ICAs and TRAs, it is important to focus from a multisystems orientation on national and international laws and policies that affect triad members. Federal legislation such as the MEPA and the ICWA and international legislation such as the Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption (HCIA) have a big impact on all triad members. Systems theory promotes the analysis and understanding of the dynamics of the interactions of individuals, families, communities, organizations, and agencies at micro-, mezzo-, and macrolevel systems as it affects practices and interactions among professionals and triad members.
Systems theory assumes that the interactions among triad members and systems are to be viewed simultaneously rather than sequentially. Thus, in adoptions, whether it is transracial or intercountry, the adopted person is dealt with in the context of simultaneously understanding people and families in their social environments at the individual, family, organizational, and societal levels.
Other theories relevant to TRAs and ICAs are discussed in several chapters. In chapter 4, intersectionality theory and extended family lifecycle theory are discussed in reference to gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender families. In chapter 5, trauma and developmental theory are used to explain the neurodevelopmental perspective about TRAs and ICAs. In chapter 6 on ethnic identity formation, racial identity developmental theory is discussed. In chapter 10, family systems theory and attachment theories are presented. All chapters have theoretical references to culturally competent practice and cultural humility.
CULTURALLY COMPETENT PRACTICE AND CULTURAL HUMILITY
Culturally competent practice is another theoretical framework that guides the practice in working with individuals and families in TRA and ICA situations. Culturally competent practice refers to the understanding of knowledge, values and skills (Fong, 2006; Fong & Furuto, 2001; Lum, 2011) in the context of doing social work practice with ethnic minority and international populations.
Culturally competent practice is the foundation of interpersonal relationships acknowledging cultural differences and working toward competent practice. The National Association of Social Workers (NASW, 2006) has established the following 10 Standards for Cultural Competence in Social Work Practice:
• Standard 1: Ethics and Values
• Standard 2: Self-Awareness
• Standard 3: Cross-Cultural Knowledge
• Standard 4: Cross-Cultural Skills
• Standard 5: Service Delivery
• Standard 6: Empowerment and Advocacy
• Standard 7: Diverse Workforce
• Standard 8: Professional Education
• Standard 9: Language Diversity
• Standard 10: Cross-Cultural Leadership
In applying the NASW Standards for Cultural Competence in working with TRAs and ICAs, it is important for professionals to be aware of and to use culturally competent practice in the arenas of service delivery, language diversity, and workforce and leadership development. But the most important point is for professionals to acknowledge that different ethnic cultures, other than just the white European culture, have cultural values, belief systems, and religious practices. This is a practice that considers the knowledge, values, and skills relevant to the race, ethnicity, and immigration status of the adopted child from international countries.
Also important to culturally competent practice is the concept of cultural humility (Gallardo, 2014; Ortega & Faller, 2011), which is a stylistic way for the practitioner to have an attitude, approach, and personal style of humility in working with clients from different backgrounds and who behave differently because of the contexts of their social environments (Tervalon & Murray-Garcia, 1998). Because the definition of TRA includes the placement of a child of one race into a family of another race, as is often the case in ICAs in which the adoptive parents are of a different race, culturally competent practice promotes the understanding of ICAs in the context of understanding the knowledge, values, and beliefs as well as policies of the sending country and honoring those cultural values and beliefs in the upbringing of the adopted child in the United States. Cultural socialization acknowledges the understanding of human behavior in the social environment and the culturally competency accompanying the knowledge, values, and skills.
This book is designed to help practitioners and educators to gain specific knowledge and skills as well as cultural competence and humility, as they work with TRA and ICA families. With this background and knowledge, these professionals will have an even greater positive impact on children and families experiencing these types of adoption.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. Define the terms “transracial adoption” and “intercountry adoption.”
2. Explain why the numbers in transracial adoptions have increased and the numbers in intercountry adoptions have decreased.
3. Why is it important to apply culturally competent practice and cultural humility in working with transracial and intercountry adoption children and families?
4. Why is it important to have a multisystem approach in working with children and families in transracial and international adoptions?
5. What does it mean that adoption is a lifelong journey?
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