Mixed race adoption-article in the Guardian today

[PineCones]

FWIW, I utterly disagree, and was interested in knowing what everyone else thought.
article here

Thanks for the article Italian. It does highlight the fact that transracial adoptees nearly always do better if their adoptive parents are clued up on racial issues, don't ignore the fact that their child is a different race, and actively help the child make links with people who look like them. Unfortunately, despite the fact that research deos back that up, it is being ignored by the government in their drive to increase adoptions.

I wonder how many domestic adoptions there in Sweden? Countries with few domestic adoptions will have higher numbers of international adoptions, and those are the ones which are more often transracial.

I also think that there is a difference between a child having issues with their race, and an adoption disrupting. Low disrupion rates are great, but I'm not sure that's an indicator of how many children are having mild/moderate problems with being in a transracial family, since such problems are unlikely to lead to disruption. I am going to look for research into outcomes of transracial adoptions. The only British research I can find was about how likely BME children were to be adopted in the first place

Thanks Linla.

This is a really helpful discussion for me because I expect we will be asked about race and ethnicity in the future. I'm not sure how many BME children there are in our area but we live in quite a rural setting.

A long time ago my hubby and I considered overseas adoption and I wanted to look into China. Sadly, we were not ready for it and at the time it seemed very expensive, and we did not go ahead. I felt confident I could be of use to a Chinese child because I had lived in Asia (Singapore) studied Mandarin, travelled in south east Asia, informally studied another Asian language and have a great love of the culture of China and south east Asia. I've also been told I look Asian by a couple of south East Asian people, which I love .

Although we live in a village there are BME people around. Something to read up and think about so I can give positive answers to questions etc.

Would love to hear from people who have children of different ethnicity or race and how they are actively helping their child have a positive idea of that. I kind of imagine adopting a BME child and trying to accost people in the street and asking them to be my friend! I wonder if there are support groups. I am pretty sure there are groups of adopters who have adopted from China etc.

I do feel happy that we are going for domestic adoption and this discussion is helping me to think through all the areas of domestic adoption as well, so thank you all.

Sorry Lilka!

Italian - thats an extract from the canadian research I mentioned here www.cps.ca/english/statements/CP/CP06-01.pdf

Its long but if you go down to page 446 the recommendations are both obvious and helpful.

Yes there are support groups and if there aren't because your child is an "unusual" race then you set one up yourself - the internet can be a great thing! We meet up about 2/3 times a year with people from across the country.

Italian, my experience of Swedish racism is that it certainly does exist, like it does here, but it is more tied to language and culture than to physical appearance. At least when I was a child, somebody who looked like a Swede but spoken broken Swedish or with a foreign accent would be far more likely to experience racism than somebody who looked totally different but spoke with a native accent and appeared au fait with Swedish cultural norms. Swedish racism in those days at least was more about xenophobia (will they know how to behave like us?). So a Finnish or Greek immigrant might expect to have a harder time than a Korean or Indian adoptee. I don't think my brother has experienced much racism, but I know my best friend who was the child of Finnish immigrants did occasionally. And as far as I am aware, the greatest sufferers from racism in Sweden today are Somalian immigrants, and to some extent Middle Easter immigrants. It's not something I would expect to touch the lives of my nephews.

Another factor that might have made a difference in those days (though possibly not now) would have been that there were hardly any adult immigrants from the countries which furnished the adopted children: so anyone with xenophobic tendencies who saw a Korean or Indian teenager around in the 70s would assume that s/he was adopted and therefore "one of us".

Lilka, as far as I am aware there are very few domestic adoptions in Sweden. Partly, I think, because there are fewer unwanted pregnancies: more take-up of contraception, plus an unwanted pregnancy would be more likely to end in abortion.

The first big wave of inter-racial adoptions in Sweden was in the 60s- so those children are now grown up and have families of their own.

Thanks Kew I like the recommendations, very clear, yes quite obvious in a way but then it does help to spell it all out. The version I found was just from googling around and your version was clearer. I'd not followed up your link, got caught up in all the comments.

Just watched a very moving film at church, about children abandoned in Kenya, some adopted from Kenyan orphanage. Now a large number of those children are adopted and of that number a large number (80%) are adopted within Kenya. Very moving.