What White Parents Should Know about Transracial Adoption PDF Download

Author: Melissa Guida-Richards
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 1623175828
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 0

View

Book Description
The White Fragility for transracial adoption--practical tools for nurturing identity, unlearning white saviorism, and fixing the mistakes you don't even know you're making. If you're the white parent of a transracially or internationally adopted child, you may have been told that if you try your best and work your hardest, good intentions and a whole lot of love will be enough to give your child the security, attachment, and nurturing family life they need to thrive. The only problem? It's not true. What White Parents Should Know About Transracial Adoption breaks down the dynamics that frequently fly under the radar of the whitewashed, happily-ever-after adoption stories we hear so often. Written by Melissa Guida-Richards--a transracial, transnational, and late-discovery adoptee--this book unpacks the mistakes you don't even know you're making and gives you the real-life tools to be the best parent you can be, to the child you love more than anything. From original research, personal stories, and interviews with parents and adoptees, you'll learn: What parents wish they'd known before they adopted--and what kids wish their adoptive parents had done differently What white privilege, white saviorism, and toxic positivity are...and how they show up, even when you don't mean it How your child might feel and experience the world differently than you All about microaggressions, labeling, and implicit bias How to help your child connect with their cultural heritage through language, food, music, and clothing The 5 stages of grief for adoptive parents How to start tough conversations, work with defensiveness, and process guilt

Author: Darron T. Smith
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN: 1442207647
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 177

View

Book Description
White Parents, Black Children looks at the difficult issue of race in transracial adoptions—particularly the adoption by white parents of children from different racial and ethnic groups. Despite the long history of troubled and fragile race relations in the United States, some people believe the United States may be entering a post-racial state where race no longer matters, citing evidence like the increasing number of transracial adoptions to make this point. However, White Parents, Black Children argues that racism remains a factor for many children of transracial adoptions. Black children raised in white homes are not exempt from racism, and white parents are often naive about the experiences their children encounter. This book aims to bring to light racial issues that are often difficult for families to talk about, focusing on the racial socialization white parents provide for their transracially adopted children about what it means to be black in contemporary American society. Blending the stories of adoptees and their parents with extensive research, the authors discuss trends in transracial adoptions, challenge the concept of 'colorblind' America, and offer suggestions to help adoptees develop a healthy sense of self.

Author: Rebecca Carroll
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
ISBN: 1982174552
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 320

View

Book Description
A stirring and powerful memoir from black cultural critic Rebecca Carroll recounting her painful struggle to overcome a completely white childhood in order to forge her identity as a black woman in America. Rebecca Carroll grew up the only black person in her rural New Hampshire town. Adopted at birth by artistic parents who believed in peace, love, and zero population growth, her early childhood was loving and idyllic—and yet she couldn’t articulate the deep sense of isolation she increasingly felt as she grew older. Everything changed when she met her birth mother, a young white woman, who consistently undermined Carroll’s sense of her blackness and self-esteem. Carroll’s childhood became harrowing, and her memoir explores the tension between the aching desire for her birth mother’s acceptance, the loyalty she feels toward her adoptive parents, and the search for her racial identity. As an adult, Carroll forged a path from city to city, struggling along the way with difficult boyfriends, depression, eating disorders, and excessive drinking. Ultimately, through the support of her chosen black family, she was able to heal. Intimate and illuminating, Surviving the White Gaze is a timely examination of racism and racial identity in America today, and an extraordinarily moving portrait of resilience.

Author: Gail Steinberg
Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
ISBN: 0857006517
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 306

View

Book Description
Is transracial adoption a positive choice for kids? How can children gain their new families without losing their birth heritage? How can parents best support their children after placement? Inside Transracial Adoption is an authoritative guide to navigating the challenges and issues that parents face in the USA when they adopt a child of a different race and/or from a different culture. Filled with real-life examples and strategies for success, this book explores in depth the realities of raising a child transracially, whether in a multicultural or a predominantly white community. Readers will learn how to help children adopted transracially or transnationally build a strong sense of identity, so that they will feel at home both in their new family and in their racial group or culture of origin. This second edition incorporates the latest research on positive racial identity and multicultural families, and reflects recent developments and trends in adoption. Drawing on research, decades of experience as adoption professionals, and their own personal experience of adopting transracially, Beth Hall and Gail Steinberg offer insights for all transracial adoptive parents - from prospective first-time adopters to experienced veterans - and those who support them.

Author: Rhonda M. Roorda
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231540485
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 349

View

Book Description
While many proponents of transracial adoption claim that American society is increasingly becoming "color-blind," a growing body of research reveals that for transracial adoptees of all backgrounds, racial identity does matter. Rhonda M. Roorda elaborates significantly on that finding, specifically studying the effects of the adoption of black and biracial children by white parents. She incorporates diverse perspectives on transracial adoption by concerned black Americans of various ages, including those who lived through Jim Crow and the Civil Rights era. All her interviewees have been involved either personally or professionally in the lives of transracial adoptees, and they offer strategies for navigating systemic racial inequalities while affirming the importance of black communities in the lives of transracial adoptive families. In Their Voices is for parents, child-welfare providers, social workers, psychologists, educators, therapists, and adoptees from all backgrounds who seek clarity about this phenomenon. The author examines how social attitudes and federal policies concerning transracial adoption have changed over the last several decades. She also includes suggestions on how to revise transracial adoption policy to better reflect the needs of transracial adoptive families. Perhaps most important, In Their Voices is packed with advice for parents who are invested in nurturing a positive self-image in their adopted children of color and the crucial perspectives those parents should consider when raising their children. It offers adoptees of color encouragement in overcoming discrimination and explains why a "race-neutral" environment, maintained by so many white parents, is not ideal for adoptees or their families.

Author: Susan Devan Harness
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1496210867
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 385

View

Book Description
2019 High Plains Book Award (Creative Nonfiction and Indigenous Writer categories) 2021 Barbara Sudler Award from History Colorado In Bitterroot Susan Devan Harness traces her journey to understand the complexities and struggles of being an American Indian child adopted by a white couple and living in the rural American West. When Harness was fifteen years old, she questioned her adoptive father about her "real" parents. He replied that they had died in a car accident not long after she was born--except they hadn't, as Harness would learn in a conversation with a social worker a few years later. Harness's search for answers revolved around her need to ascertain why she was the target of racist remarks and why she seemed always to be on the outside looking in. New questions followed her through college and into her twenties when she started her own family. Meeting her biological family in her early thirties generated even more questions. In her forties Harness decided to get serious about finding answers when, conducting oral histories, she talked with other transracial adoptees. In her fifties she realized that the concept of "home" she had attributed to the reservation existed only in her imagination. Making sense of her family, the American Indian history of assimilation, and the very real--but culturally constructed--concept of race helped Harness answer the often puzzling questions of stereotypes, a sense of nonbelonging, the meaning of family, and the importance of forgiveness and self-acceptance. In the process Bitterroot also provides a deep and rich context in which to experience life.

Author: Nicole Chung
Publisher: Catapult
ISBN: 1936787989
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 253

View

Book Description
A NATIONAL BESTSELLER This beloved memoir "is an extraordinary, honest, nuanced and compassionate look at adoption, race in America and families in general" (Jasmine Guillory, Code Switch, NPR) What does it means to lose your roots—within your culture, within your family—and what happens when you find them? Nicole Chung was born severely premature, placed for adoption by her Korean parents, and raised by a white family in a sheltered Oregon town. From childhood, she heard the story of her adoption as a comforting, prepackaged myth. She believed that her biological parents had made the ultimate sacrifice in the hope of giving her a better life, that forever feeling slightly out of place was her fate as a transracial adoptee. But as Nicole grew up—facing prejudice her adoptive family couldn’t see, finding her identity as an Asian American and as a writer, becoming ever more curious about where she came from—she wondered if the story she’d been told was the whole truth. With warmth, candor, and startling insight, Nicole Chung tells of her search for the people who gave her up, which coincided with the birth of her own child. All You Can Ever Know is a profound, moving chronicle of surprising connections and the repercussions of unearthing painful family secrets—vital reading for anyone who has ever struggled to figure out where they belong.

Author: Rumaan Alam
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062667629
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 285

View

Book Description
NAMED A RECOMMENDED BOOK OF 2018 BY: Buzzfeed • The Boston Globe • The Millions • InStyle • Southern Living • Vogue • Popsugar • Kirkus • The Washington Post • Library Journal • Real Simple • NPR “With his unerring eye for nuance and unsparing sense of irony, Rumaan Alam’s second novel is both heartfelt and thought-provoking.” — Celeste Ng, author of Little Fires Everywhere From the bestselling author of Leave the World Behind, a novel about the families we fight to build and those we fight to keep Like many first-time mothers, Rebecca Stone finds herself both deeply in love with her newborn son and deeply overwhelmed. Struggling to juggle the demands of motherhood with her own aspirations and feeling utterly alone in the process, she reaches out to the only person at the hospital who offers her any real help—Priscilla Johnson—and begs her to come home with them as her son’s nanny. Priscilla’s presence quickly does as much to shake up Rebecca’s perception of the world as it does to stabilize her life. Rebecca is white, and Priscilla is black, and through their relationship, Rebecca finds herself confronting, for the first time, the blind spots of her own privilege. She feels profoundly connected to the woman who essentially taught her what it means to be a mother. When Priscilla dies unexpectedly in childbirth, Rebecca steps forward to adopt the baby. But she is unprepared for what it means to be a white mother with a black son. As she soon learns, navigating motherhood for her is a matter of learning how to raise two children whom she loves with equal ferocity, but whom the world is determined to treat differently. Written with the warmth and psychological acuity that defined his debut, Rumaan Alam has crafted a remarkable novel about the lives we choose, and the lives that are chosen for us.

Author: Hawley Fogg-Davis
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501724118
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 168

View

Book Description
Transracial adoption is one of the most contentious issues in adoption politics and in the politics of race more generally. Some who support transracial adoption use a theory of colorblindness, while many who oppose it draw a causal connection between race and culture and argue that a black child's racial and cultural interests are best served by black adoptive parents. Hawley Fogg-Davis carves out a middle ground between these positions. She believes that race should not be a barrier to adoption, but neither should it be absent from the minds of prospective adopters and adoption practitioners. Fogg-Davis's argument in favor of transracial adoption is based on the moral and legal principle of nondiscrimination and a theory of race-consciousness she terms "racial navigation." Challenging the notion that children "get" their racial identity from their parents, she argues that children, through the process of racial navigation, should cultivate their self-identification in dialogue with others. The Ethics of Transracial Adoption explores new ground in the transracial adoption debate by examining the relationship between personal and public conceptions of race and racism before, during, and after adoption.

Author: Kristi Brian
Publisher: Temple University Press
ISBN: 1439901856
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 231

View

Book Description
Until the late twentieth century, the majority of foreign-born children adopted in the United States came from Korea. In the absorbing book Reframing Transracial Adoption, Kristi Brian investigates the power dynamics at work between the white families, the Korean adoptees, and the unknown birth mothers. Brian conducts interviews with adult adopted Koreans, adoptive parents, and adoption agency facilitators in the United States to explore the conflicting interpretations of race, culture, multiculturalism, and family. Brian argues for broad changes as she critiques the so-called "colorblind" adoption policy in the United States. Analyzing the process of kinship formation, the racial aspects of these adoptions, and the experience of adoptees, she reveals the stifling impact of dominant nuclear-family ideologies and the crowded intersections of competing racial discourses. Brian finds a resolution in the efforts of adult adoptees to form coherent identities and launch powerful adoption reform movements.