10 Do’s and Don’ts for transracially adoptive parents

I found this article from another group and I thought it was pretty interesting. (I took the following from here.)

1) DO love your children.
This may seem like a given, but it isn’t. Your child is a gift and they should FEEL that you believe them to be so. This unconditional and unquestionable love will be the fortification for all the challenges you will face together with your children in the future.

2) DO NOT tell them or make them feel that you “saved” them.
This is a huge mistake some adoptive parents make, one I’ve heard from adoptees time-and-time again. For example, a Korean adoptee once told me that she hated her white parents for telling her that they had saved her from a backward country and from living the rest of her life as a prostitute. Even if these children come from a country that is experiencing a great deal of social and political turmoil, even if they were living in abject poverty before you adopted them, you should never make them feel as if you were on some missionary kick. You are not living out Kiplings’ “White Man’s Burden.”

3) DO accept that racism–both racist love and racist hate–are everywhere
Especially in the United States where race is so tied up in our national history, identity, and consciousness, and you will not be able to understand it much of the time. For example, do not be so naive to think that because the school you are sending your transracially adopted child to is “diverse” that he or she will be accepted. I went to a racially diverse high school and was still referred to as having “chinky eyes” and was given the nickname “Hung Chow.” Also, do not be so condescending to your child that when he or she tells you about a situation of name-calling or teasing or bullying that you respond by saying not to take it to heart or to ignore it or that it’ll pass or those people are ignorant–and that’s it. This ultimately will be retranslated by your child as you don’t understand or are not taking him or her seriously, and it does not arm your child on how to feel whole again.

4) DO recognize when your love is not enough.
Your love will probably not be enough when your child is bullied at school or if he or she is called, for example, a “nigger” or even if other black children call him or her “white.” Your love will be the foundation, yes, but recognize that this is going to set off a whole series of questions centered around identity that you might not be equipped to answer—or that your child won’t even ask you because his or her assumption is that you won’t know. In other words, you have to prepare for a time when race comes between you and your child. It may be that you will have to accept that someone else may be better suited to help your child than you are.

To give you a better idea about what I mean, I offer this short excerpt from Jane Lazarre’s essay “Raising Black Sons: A White Mother’s Meditation.” Although she is the biological mother of her sons, the idea and actuality that they live their lives as members of a different race is applicable to the present discussion. I hope it is illuminating:

“I am black,” Khary explains to me repeatedly during the first year away from home when he has to find and take his place in his own world. . . .
When I say, “I understand,” he tells me carefully, gently, “I don’t think you do, Mom. You can’t understand this completely because you’re white.”
At first, I am stunned, by his vehemence and by his idea. Perhaps even more than most mothers, I have identified with my children. A motherless daughter since early childhood, I have experienced difficulty but also real reparation in mothering myself. Now, standing in the darkened hallway facing my son, I feel exiled from my not-yet-grown child.
What is this whiteness that threatens to separate me from my own son? Why haven’t I seen it lurking, encircling me in some impenetrable fog? I want to say the thing that will be most helpful to him, offer some carefully designed permission for him to discover his own road, even if that means leaving me behind. On the other hand, I want to cry out, “Don’t leave me,” as he cried to me when I walked out of daycare centers, away from babysitters, out of his first classroom in public school.

5) DO arm your children by giving them a strong identity.
This includes exposing them to their native culture, language, and food early on their lives. This means enabling them to have some time and space to be with people from their original culture. In order to do this, you will have to fight off the “You’re in America now” mentality that so many people have—only speak English, Don’t mess with the U.S., etc. This will help—not completely—when they wonder where they come from, who their parents are/were, what would their lives have been like if they had stayed there. These questions will always arise, even to the point where they may want to visit the country or search for their birth family. You have to be prepared for this and be supportive.

6) DO respect your children’s native culture and try to know as much about it as you can.
Why shouldn’t you learn the language? Why shouldn’t you learn to make the dishes? Why shouldn’t you visit the country? Why shouldn’t you learn how to do those hairstyles? You can and you should—your children will find something hypocritical in you saying you love them but then you don’t respect or try to know more about their native culture. But you shouldn’t become fetishistic or seem like an appropriator. It should come from a genuine place of wanting to know your children and where they come from. And this should be done for your children, not to show off to others.

7) DO make yourself and family as much a part of their life as you can.
If you have biological children as well, your adopted children may feel like you favor your “real” children and that they aren’t really considered a part of the family. Every effort should be made for them to feel like your home and your history and your hopes are theirs as well—how you grew up, where your family came from, that their future is your future. Hopefully, you have an extended network of family members and friends who will help them to feel this way too. But this also means that you should be willing and able to step up and protect your children when addressed or treated inappropriately by anyone, including friends and family who may think, for example, that their ethnic jokes are “all in fun.”

8 ) DO NOT think that transracially adopting children will give you a “pass” among any POC communities.
Do not expect POCs to congratulate you or praise you for adopting one of “their children.” And if you do get the praise, humbly deny it. If you want your “generosity” acknowledged, then you adopted for all the wrong reasons—we are talking about children here, not badges of honor. Adoption, like parenting in general, is a selfless responsibility. You should treat it as such. Furthermore, adopting a child from China or Russia or anywhere else does not give you the right to get on your political soapbox and tell folks what needs to be done in their communities, culture, or countries. To do so will just affirm you as part of the continuing problem, and may cause your children to be conflicted, confused, or insecure. You should try to be objective when talking politics or religion in a country and among a culture to which you are an outsider.

9) DO NOT allow your children to feel that you love them and support them out of guilt.
Do not try to make up for the loss of their birth parents or the feeling of rejection that they may feel. Children are children and they will emotionally manipulate you if they can. They may even try to punish you because they cannot punish their birth parents. Therefore, you should try to set boundaries and gain their respect in a way so that you both can maintain your dignity. If they can’t be reached, then you have to know when it’s time to bring in a counselor—when the situation and your relationship are beyond anything you yourself can positively change.

Let me share with you one of the worst stories of transracial adoption I’ve ever heard about. I know of a Korean adoptee who was adopted by a white family when he was 4 or 5 years old. Much of his life, he was angry, bitter, and sad that his birth mother gave him up, and as he recalled what he could remember of his former life, he became very dissatisfied with his new life in an unfamiliar culture. The adoptive white mother, feeling guilty and trying to placate the boy as he grew up, was very permissive with him, and he just took more and more and more—emotionally and financially. Eventually, he engaged in self-destructive behavior, including taking drugs and developing a compulsive gambling habit. He is now in his early 20’s, is in tens-of-thousands of dollars of debt, is dying of full-blown AIDS, and verbally abuses his adoptive mother constantly, laying blame on her for his misery. And all she does now is listen to his screaming, take his anger and blame, and watch as he dies.

10) DO acknowledge all of your own shortcomings, prepare for all the potential and unforeseeable challenges ahead, and offer yourself wholeheartedly to your adopted children.
For parents, too, are a gift—we are not perfect, but we are a gift nevertheless. Do everything in your power for your children—not your neighbor, not the PTA, not the mothers’ group, not the POCs in the park—to accept you as such. Give them the opportunity to love you back.

I leave you with one final story—it’s a happy one. Well, as happy as I can get, but most of all it’s a lesson about receiving and accepting gifts.

My friend, Dan (with whom I perform as part of Asians Misbehavin’), and his wife adopted a little girl from China almost 3 years ago. Because his wife is Chinese American (Dan is Korean American), their application was expedited due to the Chinese government’s priority of placing Chinese children with parents of Chinese descent.

Dan recently wrote and performed a new dramatic monologue in which he describes his and his wife’s journey to China to get their daughter, Melody. He honestly expresses his misgivings at all the white people from America and Europe who are there to adopt Chinese children, and he wonders if international adoption hasn’t become a new form of imperialism with Chinese girls becoming a kind of commodity to be exchanged and objectified. These are his thoughts during the first few days as they and the other families wait to meet their children for the first time.

When the families are given their new child, Dan begins to wonder about the Chinese parents and why they gave up these children–”throw-aways” they seem to be. He observes a little boy and begins to get angry that his birth parents would give him up because he is blind, a “throw-away.” He also notices that many of the girls have cleft palates. He explains that it’s the first time he’s ever seen a cleft palate in real life, and no amount of pictures could have prepared him for the actual sight of a child whose jaw appears missing–of being able to see directly into her mouth when it’s supposed to be closed.

Dan ends his monologue emotionally, his words following one particular white woman as she circles the room carrying a Chinese girl with a cleft palate. With unmistakable joy in her voice, this woman approaches each person in the room and declares,

“Meet my new daughter. She’s perfect.”

Michelle Myers holds a Ph.D. in English from Temple University, specializing in Asian American Literature. She is a founding member of the spoken word poetry group Yellow Rage, which was featured on HBO’s RUSSELL SIMMONS PRESENTS DEF POETRY, and which recently released its second CD: HANDLE WITH CARE, VOL. 2. She is also a founding member of the performance collective Asians Misbehavin’. She is currently an Assistant Professor at Community College of Philadelphia and Grants Coordinator at SEAMAAC (Southeast Asian Mutual Assistance Associations Coalition). Michelle lives in NJ with her husband, Tyrone, and their three children: Myong, Victor, and Vanessa.

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