Introduction
Adoption involves a person taking up of the responsibility of raising a child who is not his/her own. Interracial adoption on the other hand is a situation whereby the adoptive parents originate from different racial backgrounds. This type of adoption has existed since 1945 and is very common in the developed countries especially the United States of America whereby children from Asian countries and Africa are brought in by the adoptive parents. There are various reasons why children can be adopted across the racial divide but this has not been spared from controversies. This kind of adoption has pros and cons that come along with it. Our main focus in this study is going to be based on the negative impacts that the interracial adoption has on the subjects (children).
Most children who are adopted are often faced with several challenges in their lives. Some of the major challenges include identity crisis and self concept. (Social Science Article). Such categories of children who are involved in the interracial adoption often show some signs of dissatisfaction and confusion. In most cases these children tend to ignore their original identity and try to be assimilated in their newly found race. However, this is not long-lived as they tend to change their perspective as they grow older. Kim Eun Mi Young for instance did not want to be identified with South Korea during her tender teen ages. She did not want to date any Asian guy but as she grew older this perception changed and she later launched a hunt for her identity. ''I had no sense of any identity as a Korean woman. Dating an Asian man would have forced me to accept who I was.'' (Nixon, New York Times: November 9, 2009).
Adoptive parents also pose a major threat to the welfare of the adopted children. Some of the parents are not ready to accept the children from different races as their own. They tend to treat them differently. Some give them too much love as they are dissimilar with other children whereas some parents look down upon the children. The view and the ideas of the parents on self identity is one of the contributing factor or cause of these differences. In addition to this it was found that confusion and dissatisfaction can be furthered by the fact that majority of these children live in neighborhoods that are dominated by white people and the fact that they only attend schools dominated by white children. As the child is in most cases the only black person in the vicinity, feelings of confusion and dissatisfaction might begin to arise. To address this issue, McRoy urges adoptive agencies and other children placement institutions to make sure that these black and racially mixed children match their adoptive parents racially before giving them up. She also argues that such problems would not be present if the agencies made greater efforts to find black parents for black adoptive children and white parents for the white adoptive children when processing adoptions.
Parents need to involve the services of a counselor when they are to be involved in interracial adoption. In most cases children tend to be suspicious of their adoptive parents. They usually do not take the love given to them as genuine. Parents therefore need to involve counselors who can help the transition become successful as the children moves from one race to another. In trying to pass across the same point that adoptive children should be left in the care of parents who match their racial heritage Simon and Howard argue that ‘….black children should be placed only with black families whether in foster care or adoption….’ (Simon and Howard 14).
Interracial adoption is not a very good kind of undertaking as many children usually lose their morals. The children usually have a feeling that after all the parents they are staying are not their parents and therefore lack the respect that they need to accord to the parents hence shaping their morals. To ascertain the fact that black and racially mixed adoptive children should be raised by adoptive parents who match their race International Adoption Result in Discrimination recounts some stories of a Colombian man who was adopted by white parents. The article accounts for many reasons why children should not be adopted and raced by parents who do not match their racial attributes. Though Cruz had been adopted by a very good white mother, he still felt out of place in their home, mostly because of his very discriminative father. His adoptive father always made sure that Cruz new that a favor had been done by him getting adopted by white parents. His adoptive mother also had some difficulties living with Cruz. She feared that he might go back home to find his real parents, she also feared that disapproving people, including her husband might come and take her adopted son away from her.
One of the dominant effects of adopting racially different children is the racial discrimination that comes with it. Many children do treat their counterparts from other races with a lot of contempt. These children are usually called names which have a very bad impact in their social lives as well as their psychological health. They are therefore forced to keep on fighting or being involved in tussles all the time. This in turn makes the children grow up feeling despised and discriminated thus having a very poor social status in the society. These children are usually confused and after a long period of psychological torture, they may decide to go back to the streets thus the ever increasing number of street children and street families.
To keep these difficulties in check, the study recommended that the adoption practices be changed considerably. These changes were mainly needed because they are important in including better support for parents who adopt children from different races and recognition and acceptance that adoption changes and grows in essentiality for these children since young adulthood on wards. The study indicated that South Korean children make up the largest percentage of the adopted children in the United States. The study indicates that several changes have taken place in regards to the kind of assimilation that the adoptive parents assume with these children. Before, the parents were advised to assimilate and treat these children as though they were from the same culture or race from them and this is were the problem arose.
This is what brought about such challenges and therefore changes to bring these children up in regards to their ethnicity and race were made. The report however, indicates that even children who were exposed to their cultural and ethnic heritage still experienced some challenges while growing up. This still makes the arguments by McRoy about black and racially mixed children being brought up by parents who matched their ethnicity and culture very relevant. This is because exposure is just not enough to make a child become completely aware and comfortable with their ethnicity.
This is affirmed by Heidi Weitzman who indicates that discovering herself was not helped by the fact that her adoptive parents collaborated with her real South Korean parents to bring her up to be aware of her culture. It is the feeling of many adoptees that the policies regarding adoption of racially different children by white parents must be changed. This is because a lot of the adoptees grow up without really knowing who they are, dissatisfied and usually confused about their cultural, self, and racial identity. Sonya Wilson, one of the many South Korean adoptees argues that “….policy changes must address why children are put up for adoption, and should do more to help single women in South Korea to keep their children….” (Nixon).
Adoption of children who may have been left on the streets by their parents or those who might have lost their parents is a good act. However, the adoption should be limited to intra racial and not across the races. This will help the children to adapt faster to their new environments. However, if the children are adopted by parents from different races this can be a major problem since the children will be exposed to racial discrimination which will affect their performance in different areas of life. Interracial adoption of children should be discouraged as they make the children have low self esteem and also lose their identity. Some of the children who are adopted by parents from different races are usually exposed to morally indecent activities which can make them develop very poor moral relationship. In conclusion, interracial adoption should never be discouraged and governments through their ministries concerned with children affairs should take this into consideration so as to discourage interracial adoption as it does not have any positive thing that the children are likely to benefit from.
Work cited
Cruz, Mateo. "A Son's Bittersweet Love." Colorlines. July-August 2006: 34-5. Print.
Imber, Jonathan. “Social Science and the Citizen.” Humanities, Social Sciences and Law.
Society 22. 4, (1985): 2-3. Print.
Nixon, Ron. "Adopted from Korea and in Search of Identity." New York Times. New York
Times, 9 November. 2009. A9 (L). Gale Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 5 May
2011.
Simon, Rita J. and Howard Altstein. Adoption, Race, and Identity. From Infancy through
Adolescence. New York: Springer, 1992. Print.
