Transracial Adoption in Hong Kong (1994)

Adoption has proven to be a successful method of rearing children. Triseliotis and Hill [1990], in their comparison study of children reared by adoption, by fostering, and by residential care, conclude that whereas the vast majority of adopted children achieve a settled life in the community, only some who were brought up in institutions reach this position. Using data from the National Child Development survey conducted by the National Children's Bureau in London, Bagley [1992] compared the psychosocial outcomes of 100 adopted children with 100 children who were separated from their mothers in the first seven years but not adopted, and with 10,000 children from the main cohort. On most indicators the adopted children did not differ from the main cohort and had significantly better outcomes than the children separated from their mothers but not adopted.TRANSRACIAL ADOPTIONMost people adopt because they cannot conceive and they want a child to raise their own. They want the child to fit in with the family in the same way that a biological child would. In the Western industrialized world, a limited supply of healthy Caucasian babies has led prospective Caucasian adopters to consider the adoption of a child who does not fit the profile outlined above. Prospective adopters have considered adopting a child for whom it has been hard to find an adoptive family: perhaps a child from an ethnic minority group, an older child living in an institution, or a child with special physical or developmental needs. Their search for such a child has extended into the poorer countries of Asia and South America and more recently, into the war-torn or economically ravaged countries of Eastern Europe.Transracial adoption, however, is a subject of much debate and controversy. This is particularly so for the placement of African American and Afro-Caribbean children with Caucasian adopters [Ladner 1977; Small 1984]. The issue is an emotive one in which polarized positions are often taken. Researchers, mostly Caucasian, point to their outcome studies, which claim that transracial placements work, and by all indicators, children so adopted fare just well other adoptees. Minority community professionals [Chimezi 1976] have branded the practice racist and neocolonial and one that leads to children losing their ethnic and cultural identity.Empirical evidence indicates that transracial adoption has had largely positive outcomes for the children placed with Caucasian families. [Gill and Jackson 1983; McRoy and Zurcher 1983; Feigelman and Silverman 1983; Simon and Altstein 1987; Bagley 1992, 1993]. These researchers point to the many positive indicators of transracial adoptees-including educational achievement, good relationships with families and peers, and general feelings of positive self-worth and confidence in themselves people --as evidence that transracial adoption works. Their research also consistently shows that these children live in a predominantly Caucasian world with very little social contact with the communities from which they originated.Yet these writers, while acknowledging the children's tenuous connection with their ethnicity, offer little else by way of discussion or opinion about the implicit message they give, which is that minority children will best succeed in the majority world if they live close to that world possible. Hayes [1993] challenges the entire notion that psychological damage can be caused to a child because he or she lacks a racial identity.Not surprisingly, professionals from the minority communities have reacted strongly to this concept. They see transracial adoption yet another example of the inbuilt structural racism in societies that deny the importance or validity of African American and Afro-Caribbean life. In the U.S., the adoption of African American children by Caucasian families has been described by the president of the National Association of Black Social Workers as a blatant form of race and cultural genocide [Simon and Altstein 1987]. …