Transracial Adoption

Historical Background

Transracial adoption is defined as a form of adoption in which parents and children who are racially different from one another are legally conjoined as a family. Domestic transracial adoption typically occurs through private adoption, foster care, and interracial marriage with stepchildren, whereas international transracial adoption occurs when children are adopted from other countries and are considered racial and ethnic minorities in the adoptive country. In the United States, transracial adoptive parents are almost always racially White and of European descent, and adoptees are racial and ethnic minorities. As a result, adoptees and adoptive parents are inevitably confronted with an inherent racial discrepancy. Namely, transracial adoptees have access to certain privileges growing up in European American households, but these experiences are contradicted by their physical classification and treatment as racial minorities in society—a phenomenon referred to as the transracial adoption paradox.

Although the first documented incidences of domestic and international transracial adoptions occurred in approximately the same time period (the 1950s), they were propelled by different historical events. Domestic transracial adoption first occurred in an effort to assimilate Native Americans into mainstream European American society by removing children from reservations and placing them into European American families and institutions in the 1950s and 1960s. This effort was followed by the placement and adoption of African American children into European American homes in the 1960s and early 1970s. However, domestic transracial adoption was and still is a racially charged and controversial issue. In 1972, the National Association of Black Social Workers passed a resolution that called for the end of transracial adoption of African Americans. Similarly, 1978 brought passage of the Indian Child Welfare Act, which revised the placement procedures of Native American children.

International adoption began shortly after World War II with the adoption of war-orphaned Japanese and Greek children but became formalized after the Korean War in the 1950s. Until the 1990s, international adoption usually meant the adoption of children from South Korea. It is estimated that more than 150,000 Korean children have been adopted by American citizens since 1955 (equivalent to 10% of the present-day Korean American population). Today, annual international adoption rates in America have increased threefold from 7,093 in 1990 to 22,884 in 2004. These adoptions are predominantly made by European Americans who adopt from more than 40 countries worldwide, with China, Russia, Guatemala, and South Korea as the top sending countries. It is worth noting that international adoption increased in popularity as the availability of domestic adoption decreased, in part because of the preceding controversy over domestic transracial adoption.

The aforementioned paradox in which transracially adopted children experience many of the privileges associated with being raised in a European American adoptive family yet nevertheless are perceived and treated by society as racial and ethnic minorities has served as a conceptual springboard for most psychological studies on transracial adoption. In general, three types of research studies are associated with transracial adoption. Each of these study designs will be reviewed, followed by a brief summary of future research trends.

Psychological Outcome Studies

The most common type of adoption research is the psychological outcome study. Psychological outcome studies typically have compared adoptees and nonadoptees on measures of psychological adjustment. An underlying assumption of this line of research when applied to transracial adoptees is that racial and ethnic differences are not salient issues if transracial adoptees and same-race adoptees or nonadoptees do not differ in psychological adjustment. Early outcome studies found that adoptees, including transracial adoptees, exhibited more psychological problems and mental-health needs than nonadoptees, but these studies often were based on small clinical samples and biased by self-selection. Subsequent research on [Page 459]non-clinical and more representative samples suggests that the adjustment of adoptees, including domestic and international transracial adoptees, is comparable to that of nonadoptees, and adoptees are at only a slightly higher risk for emotional and behavioral problems. Moreover, the group differences between adoptees and nonadoptees tend to be small and often are mitigated by a variety of factors, such as age at adoption and adverse preadoption experiences (e.g., institutional deprivation). Other studies find no remarkable group differences between transracial adoptees and same-race adoptees or nonadoptees in levels of self-esteem and social adjustment. Thus, outcome studies seem to converge on the finding that transracial adoptees are not necessarily at greater risk for psychological problems. However, a persistent problem with outcome research is the failure to directly study or measure the racial and ethnic experiences of adoptees and how they relate to psychological adjustment.

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