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Mumsnet Discussions:
Adoptions
: Should we be allowed to adopt a child who is mixed race, when we are white?
(51 messages)
I think so. I think the travesty of thousands (is this right?) maybe hundreds, anyway loads, of mixed race and black and asian children languishing in care without a permanent family whilst there are so many people who would love them and be their parents, well i think it is just awful.
also if a hld iz mixed race, surely they are MIXED race, not just black or white, so it should be black or white or mixed race adopters who should be considered?
Porpsective adopters and little children in need of parents are losing out and why? any views?
THANK YOU. i'm just really dispirited after finally deciding to go for it< ringing round agencies and local authorities today and being basically told that although they have loads of kidS< INcludING under 3s who are in need of adoption, they are black or mixed race and ew are white so we can@t have them> its just madness. i accept it'd be better for them to be placed with parents WHO LOOK THE SAME AS THEM, AND ARE OF A SIMILAR OR THE SAME RACIAL BACKGROUND, THE FACT THAT THIS IS JUST NOT GOING TO HAPPE AND THESE KIDS ARE GOING TO STAY IN LOCAL AUTHORITY CARE FOR YEARS UNTIL THEY ARE TOO OLD TO BE ADOPTED AND NO ONE WANTS THEM. WELL IT IS JUST BONKERS. SORRY FOR CAPITALS COMPUTER IS GONE MAD. PERHAPS IN SYMPATHY
I am an Adoptive Mum of a little girl who is 19 months old, we adopted her when she was 8 months old.I can understand your frustations however it's the way the system works & they like to keep the cultural/hertiage of the child & place them with the same ethnic background. To adopt from overseas you have to be approved in this country & also approved in the country of the child you wish to adopt from. A friend of mine adopted from China & the process was a lot longer than Adopting in the UK. There are many white children/toddlers/babies awaiting loving homes & this week is Adoption week in the UK & it highlights even more how desperate they are for Adoptive parents. My advice is don't give up, Adoption is the best thing that has ever happened to us. Good Luck Bev x
News today reports of a baby being tortured to death by his natural 'mother' yet children are kept in care because prospective parents of other races/heritages are deemed not good enough, purely (in many cases) due to their race/heritage.
This is not the 1970s (when inter-racial adoptions were last easily allowed)Britain in the 21st century is a multi-racial place, surely adoption policies should reflect that?
How anyone can say that it is better to be within the care system than to be wanted in a family is beyond me.
In an ideal world maybe it would be better but in the current one no.
It sickens me.
I have two friends who were adopted, they consider themselves to be black and their parents are white. They said they do have some issues with feeling 'black' as they lived in a very white area as children and feel as if people expect them to be more 'black'. But another friend of ours who is black and grew up with his parents says he feels the same was as some people have expectaions of black people behaving in a certain way that he doesn't. So the problem lies with others not themselves. Anyhow the friends who were adopted say they feel lucky to have been adopted before the law came in about race.
I think it's preferable that a mixed race child who is going to otherwise grow up in foster care or a children's home be placed with a white family. However, a family that reflect it's racial (or even better, cultural) heritage would be the best option all around, in my opinion. Unfortunately, that isn't always an option, though, and with the disproportionate amount of mixed race children in care in this country, I don't see how social services can afford to be so picky. Good, loving parents are better than no parents. It's a no brainer.
agree its a no brainer, mrs m.. of course reflecting race or culture would be preferable but if it is not happening then it is truly shocking that anyone else who doesnt match these criteria cannot/will not be considered, it is just madness these kids are denied loving parents and secure home and instead are kept in state institutions for their one and only childhood....
infact in a society that pertains to be multi mixed et al surely this actually racist in itself?
i feel for you op i would be banging my head off the orphanage wall
no parent knows better than a white adoptive parent of a child of a different race that it would have been their preferable for their child to have been placed with parents who reflect their heritage better. They know it far more deeply and practically than any social worker ever will.
However I know everytime I read a bedtime story to DS or stick a plaster on his knee for a pretend hurt, everytime I fight for something he needs that having him here with me is still a far far better option for him than not having a permanent family of any colour.
The irony is that very many foster parents are white and so by not giving these children a permanent white home they are trading it off for a (at best) semi-permanent white alternative
I think its important to recognise the damage that can be done to coloured childrne growing up with white parents in predominantly white areas with no role model to inspire them. However much of the research that has been done on this, that social workers rely on are based on adoptions done in the 60's and 70's where little emphasis would have been placed on the importance of maintaining your child heritage and very little in the way of training would have been given to the adoptive parents.
Although it may raise valid issues about how to deal with children of transracial adoption, it rarely compared the results of how those children felt with the ones who were never adopted and spent a lifetime in care.
I went overseas to adopt a mixed racechild (not deliberately - I didn't express a racial preference in a country that has many races), makes me cross that I couldn't have done the same here in the UK.
Overseas adoption is not for billionaires, but it isn't the easy option and is probably in many cases the last resort for poeple who have been turned down by the UK authorites or told they were unsuitable.
to clarify inter-racial adoption are allowed in the UK. IN fact Govt policy says better for achild to be adopted into any permanent family than none.
The problem is that councils and/or individual social workers are ignoering that and ultimately the matching is suggested/approved by the child socialworker - "not in teh best interest of the child" gos a long way unfortunately and of course they're right it may not be be in the best interest of the child but whilst they are waiting for best to come along the chldren get older and less adoptable and endup permanently in care.
I read a quote this week about 'the best sacrificing the good' or summat, this week wrt inter racial adoptions.
Of course it would be best if children were brought up by adoptive parents who reflected their own racial/cultural heritage - but it just seems spiteful to me that children are being denied a loving home because their prospective parents aren't the best choice.
Oddly enough, I was reading our local council's adoption policy and they are happy to place children in mixed heritage environments.
BUT - a huge BUT, the area in which we live has a HUGE ethnic mix, and many different cultures and a family would be hard pushed not to have a connection of some sort with various different cultures. DD's school has 30% of applications taken up by children with English as a second language. I suppose it really does depend on where you live.
Kewcumber - at my adoption prep course we were assured that it is illegal to place a mixed race child in a white family. I was sure that was wrong, but having seen how the woman who raised the question was told off, I felt too vulnerable to question it.
We were also told they are not allowed to place children outside their religion.
I'm sure they could have reassured us that there is a common sense balance to be struck between trying to get as close a match as possible between the child's ethnicity and that of the adoptive family (which is sensible) and getting a child settled into a forever family as quickly as they can, and that they always try to get that balance. But they didn't. They preferred to act all aggrieved that somebody had raised the issue.
"I suppose it really does depend on where you live" - you would think so wouldn't you it would certianly make sense but in fact London social workers have the reputation for being the most dogmatic about this subject.
A nurse does not need to have had cancer to be a good cancer nurse. Fact, IMO.
A woman does not need to have given birth to a child to be good MW. I'm sure male MWs would agree.
But...Doesn't a social worker deciding whether prospective parents are good enough to adopt a child need to be a parent?
I know that, most of the time, my parenting is 'good enough' and certainly not the 'best'
When I was a (very earnest)childless 20 year old student nurse doing a three month placement on a paediatric ward I was horrified that the ward sister came into work complaining that her daughter had kept her up half the night.
How can a perhaps twenty something childless social worker judge the potential parenting abilities of others?
You may be right Kew - you have infinitely more knowledge on this subject than I do. I do live in an area next door to where social workers are very much in the press for all the wrong reasons at the moment
This was discussed on the radio the other day and when my 10 year old foster daughter heard that a head of social services had said it was better to be in a childrens home than a white family she teared up and said she could not think of anything worse than being in a childrens home and was glad she was white so she could be with us.
it's definitely not illegal to place black or mixed race children with white families.
It's a sensitive subject and not very politically correct but the facts are that most of the people applying for adoption are white. Culturally and socially black people don't tend to adopt - there are huge drives to change this and encourage them to do so but there is still a massive shortage of prospective black parents.
The most recent government directive was that social workers should try and place a child in an environment that reflects his or her heritage but if it's not possible to find the ideal match then a suitable match should be found(ie to consider placing a child of one race with parents of another)but this just isn't happening.
I think it's shameful and think social workers have a hell of a lot to answer for. In the 15 months i went through the adoption process (with Lambeth council in London) i can honestly say I never once met a social worker that struck me as having any:
1) intelligence 2) common sense 3) understanding of the needs of a child.
I used to know someone (white) who had adopted a child from abroad. They were subsequently approached by SS to see if they would be interested in adopting another child (within the UK) whose parent(s) were from the same continent as their first child but not the same country. The second child was about two at the time and had been fostered since birth by an Asian family who were also keen to adopt him. I think the end result was the white couple were given the child, purely I believe because they already had a child from the same neck of the woods, so to speak. I thought it was very sad that a small child was taken from the only family he had known purely because they did not "fit" SS criteria for race.
This is such a hard issue. So many social workers hold on in the hope "the best" will come along. One good thing that Tony Blair did sometime abround 2001 was to spot that there were too many children in care and demanded that social workers stop trying to find perfect adoptive parents and instead try to find "good enough" adoptive parents. His point covered all races but is particularly important for harder to place children.
Like Kewcumber, I am the very lucky adoptive mother of black children. I am very glad we did it and I hope we offer our children a better option than anything else that was on the table but I think before the children arrived I underestimated the hard issues involved. When DS2 arrived, DS1 announced how happy he was that DS2 had the same skin colour as his so he would no longer be the odd one out. I also feel very keenly that my children have lost some privacy - children who are adopted by parents who look like them can choose who knows that they are adopted - my children have no such choice.
We adopted from overseas but I had already had some experience within the UK of their resistance to transracial adoptions. The sws doing our home study were fine but it was always the sw to the child who held back. They always hope that the perfect family is going to come along at any moment. Sadly they often don't
pete - luckily (kind of) DS is mixed race (though not everyone realsies) and I'm single so mostly people do assume I had/had an Asian partner so DS does get a degree of privacy which i agree can be a big issue.
" they like to keep the cultural/hertiage of the child & place them with the same ethnic background "
if it's a mixed race child. If a child is half black background, half white background, why on earth can't the child be placed with either a black OR a white background? Being mixed race should double the child's chances of being placed, not halve it.
I'm mixed race - and from my POV the country you're brought up in has a far greater influence on your ethnicity than anyone gives credit for. I didn't realise just how British I was until I went to live in my father's country of bith for a while to 'find my roots'. I did find them - they were in the UK all along where I'd grown up!
and bizarrely Paris I was told even a mixed race child who had previously been living with their single white mother would be unlikely to be placed with a single white mother because of the race issue.
I'm white but I have two black people in my immediate family (through marriage) I live in one of the most ethnically diverse areas of London and was still told i couldn't adopt a mixed race child.
Nancy and Kew - I find that eyepoppingly awful. I just don't understand who these people are who can 'force' ethnicity on someone, and their version of ethnicity to boot. I'm shocked and deeply saddened. What kind of mixed - up, inverse racism is this?
I don't want to go into details, but I have a friend who had to fight tooth and nail to adopt her second DC because of this. She and her husband are one ethnicity, the child they wanted was the same on it's mothers side, but had a different background from the father. SS were quite happy to tell them they wanted the child to go to a family from the same background as the father. The impression given was that his race/culture was more important to maintain than the mothers Surely they should both be of equal importance? It was all fairly disgusting imo, but luckily she won in the end, and they're all very happy.
dp's friend and his dw (white) who live near the borders of two multiracial north London boroughs were allowed to adopt a mixed raced girl about one year old a few years ago. They've also since adopted her younger half sister. I don't know it was via the council or a private adoption agency but would think the former more likely.
I do actually know a white couple who have adopted two mixed race children (different racial backgrounds). I have no idea how they managed this! But I also know not one but two couples where one is white and the other Turkish - and they have been told they can only apply to adopt a mixed white/Turkish child. Now, I do get why it is preferable that a black child is not raised by white parents in a white community (though that may sometimes be the best option on offer) but I can't for the life of me understand why a white child can't be raised by one white and one Turkish parent, living in a mainly white community. They're not exactly going to be cut off from their racial heritage, are they? You could argue they are getting a positive benefit from being able to participate in someone else's racial heritage while still being secure in their own.
But I guess that's back to ForPetesSake's point about adopted children losing anonymity/control if they don't look like their parents. In my case, I can never provide that: I am in an interracial, same sex couple and our birth daughter only looks like one of us - every time she calls my dp mummy people wonder what is going on. Add another child of another racial heritage, and nobody will ever see us as 'family'. And that may be one of our obstacles to adoption - it has certainly been raised by sw already - and I can only say that we can't provide a 'normal' family; we can only provide a loving, stable family that is committed to supporting our children to hold their heads high and be proud of us. In this era of more open adoption, I'm hoping they will be receptive to that. And I hope I am right to think that we have a lot to offer, and that our 'differentness' doesn't compound the problems any child we adopt will have to face.
A loving family over remaining in care. It seems a no-brainer to me.
Where we live mixed race children are the norm. Nobody bats an eyelid at seeing parents of different ethnicity to their children, so you can hardly argue adopted children will stick out in a crowd.
And I do think the cultural heritage stuff is played up too much. I was born and educated in the UK to an Irish mother and a Chinese father, and the extent of my cultural inheritance is some unusual swear words, and the ability to use chopsticks and make soda bread.
We're in Singapore and adopted a mixed race (Asian/caucasian baby here). We're both white.
I'm 100% convinced this was the best thing for him and that no-one could love him more than us, but the lack of privacy thing is a real issue, especially as people here have no compunction (sp?) about gawping and then asking very intrusive questions.
He's not yet 2 but is already starting to notice people staring at him.
o thank you so much everyone! trhere is not one unsupportive post. I knew (hoped) I wasn't going mad in thinking that it would be nicer for children to be adopted to a loving family than to stay in care, and the point about them being not adopted only to stay with foster carers who are white! I mean FOR GODS SAKE!!!! exemplifying this: I read about a little boy on one adoption list who is white but in his 'likes' the social worker had written 'carribean food and music' - he has caribean foster carers. They also say he is doing realy well, has formed atachments to them etc etc. So the stupidy of their own policy must be staring them in the face with childrne like that!
and also, the law change was 2002, and it didn't say 'you must place black children with blakc parents' etc etc, it said local authorities have to have 'due regard' to a child's cultural and ethnic background. I realy don't think keeping them in care until they are too old to be adopted is due regard, its downright bloody awful!
I really hope we get to adopt someone soon. The process is long and I know it will take ages, but having a leage proportion of our potential children taken away at a stroke because of a really lazy and blinkered and wrong interpreation of the law, well it makes me sad.
I'm so glad PSCMUM started this discussion, as my DH and I are planning to adopt in the future. He's white, I'm black. I don't know whether this means we'd be allowed to adopt black, white and black/white multi-ethnic children - we'll find out in a few years time when we apply - but I think it's absolutely criminal that children are deprived of a loving home by overzealously PC social workers who clearly understand nothing of the children's situation, nothing about what a human needs to grow, and nothing (as it appears) of where the law stands on this issue.
We would gladly adopt a child from any ethnic background; my DH and I are so keen to provide a child with a fun, caring home full of unconditional love. Who cares what their ethnicity is?
We have arranged for friends of ours to act as (can't think of the correct term) replacement parents if both of us die while our biological DS is still young. These friends happen to be a multi-ethnic couple (one white, one of Asian origin) but their ethnicity never occurred to me until I started writing this post. If we were both to die and there was nobody among our friends and family available to take responsibility for our biological DS, I would be livid to know that a social worker was keeping DS from having a family life rather because of the colour of his skin.
In a bizarre way, isn't this a form of racism in itself?
I'm mixed race adopted into a white family. There were problems but in those days it was very poorly handled and the whole issue of ethnicity was just ignored.
I have worked on various panels to do with this issue and there are some VERY militant campaigners out there making sure mixed race or black children don't go into white families. I have had screaming matches with one or two over this issue and frankly can't bear to meet with the last panel again they annoy me so much.
Of course in an ideal world children would get the prefect ethnic fit - but in an ideal world there would be no adoption. It's madness, given that the aternative is being in care.
Hear, hear, Acinonyx. Out of interest, have the 'militant' people you mentioned been black, white, Asian, multi-ethnic, etc?
I rather suspect that it's a bit like the 'baa baa white sheep' controversy - not one black person was offended by the song but someone decided it was racist anyway.
The people I'm thinking of are African, south and east Asian transracial adoptees, not white. There are some very militant adoptees and while I understand the argument I do wonder though, just what they propose should happen instead. I also feel that those of us who are mixed race are very marginalised in this debate - we're not black enough.
It sounds like madness doesn't it? And racist and frankly ridiculous.
I am mixed race brought up in a totally white family.
There were difficult times though...and although yes, part of me is indeed white, that wasn't the part which had to deal with the racism...and my family weren't up to much with it tbh.
Different era though...i imagine it would be a completely different experience for a child like me in a white family now. However...when this issue came up in my family in the past, members of my own family thought it ok for a white family to adopt a mixed race or black child ...but not the other way around. So some had a problem or said 'of course not' when i said 'so it's also ok for a mixed race family to adopt a white child.
I don't know tbh...i go around in circles and bite my arse every few minutes.
Acinonyx, that whole 'black' enough thing is the most bogus piece of nonsense I've ever heard come out of anyone's lips. I am black, married to a white man, am not 'street' but speak more RP than anything else, I like jazz, classical, folk but not hip hop - to some people that would make me not 'black enough'.
'Black enough'. What the hell is that supposed to mean?!
I know a bunch of pan-African people who are rather militant (not sure about their views on adoption but I can guess) who were SO interested when I talked about my husband and son...until they met them! They were polite, but I saw that look in their eyes! That 'she's sold out' look!
Trouty, please don't bite your arse! So sorry that you had difficulty with racism and little family support. To my mind by adopting you it was a significant part of their responsibility to help you with every aspect of your life, including issues of racism. But don't you think that we all have one difficulty or another through our upbringing? If it's not being left alone to deal with racism as in your example, it would be something else.
As for your comments about black families adopting white children, NNNNNGGGGGHHHHHH! Sometimes people just need common sense slapped into them, don't they?
trout - I'd like to think it's different these days. Back then, you just didn't talk about it and hoped it would go away. My family felt I carried a terrible burden, like the mark of Cain.
A friend of mine in social services was minuting a meeting in London and it happened that they needed to place a white child and there were only non-white foster carers availbale. No-one suggested putting the white child with a non-white family.
My dh is white American - I get that 'sold out' look a lot too!
times have changed certianly on the prep course I went on, but then I was adopting intercountry so there was a high chance that DC was going to be a visibly different race to me. We did cover racism and how to promote positive role models etc. TBH I'm not sure how well you can prepare for something that you haven't experienced yourself. But in DS's case I have no doubt that being brought up by a single white mother is still infinitely preferable to life in an institution.
Perdita Harris is a well known transracial adoptee and campaigner but my understanding is that she campaigns for more support for such adoptees not a ban on interracial adoption as such.
Never heard of Perdita Harris, Kew, so thanks for that. I'll look her up some time.
To clarify what I meant about parents' responsibility, from what she's said, Acinonyx's parents clearly gave her absolutely no support at all when it came to the issue of racism. As far as I'm concerned it should be every parent's responsiblity to offer support for all aspects of their children's lives, including racism should that be an issue. Even if that parent can't feel the same things as the child it doesn't preclude them from offering support - which I'm sure you have done for your DS despite having different skin colours.
Btw I always shy away from talking about 'different races' as apparently race is a social, not a biological construction.
Hmmm, I can feel a new thread coming along!
Acinonyx - how do Yankees respond to you and your husband having different skin colours? We're always led to believe that Americans are less tolerant of black and white people mixing (yet I'm sure those same intolerant people just lurve the Cablinasian Tiger Woods! ). Is this true in your experience?
). Is this true in your experience? 
