Adoption continues to be a choice for numerous persons in America who decide on increasing their household. Of late, there has been a continuing debate on whether it is right for persons to adopt transracially since there are issues concerning the adoptee’s development. When thinking through the adoptee’s development, it is vital to comprehend that numerous aspects impact the youngsters including, the evolution of their knowledge, interpretation of info as well as the effect this information would eventually have on their adaptation and ethnic identity development. Beside this information, adoptees also start to identify themselves throughout adolescence since identity development is a constant process and not primarily conscious. Throughout this period of trying to identify themselves, adoptees need to incorporate two families (adopted and birth) into their identity, a process that can be worsened within a transracially adopted household. The current paper seeks to explore the effects that transracial adoption has on a child’s identity development.
According to a study by Steinberg and Hall (2011), a majority of adoptees struggle to identify themselves in an ethnic group, which is possible because of the society’s perceptions to allocate a person’s identity on the basis of the race making it difficult to subjectively perceive a person’s identity. The authors highlight the survived uncertainty transracial adoptees go through regarding ethnic identity development (Steinberg & Hall, 2011). The adoptees go through a process of being and becoming what they are, they are neither their birth identity nor their adoptive ethnic identity. Also, numerous transracial adoptees feel more and more left out in their social relations with other persons of their birth ethnicity when they have to clarify that they are not accustomed to their culture or they do not speak the linguistic although their physical looks suggest otherwise.
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There is an alarm that the transracial adoptions will hinder the ethnic identity development of an adopted youngster. Briggs (2012) notes that there remaining five dimensions of racial identity which are included in facilitating a person in developing his/her identity. The five dimensions are imposed a racial identity, genetic racial identity, visual racial identity, cognitive racial identity, in addition to feeling racial identity. Briggs (2012) attempts to offer a standard of knowledge precisely for transracial adoptees to integrate those experiences and influences of the alleged adoptee. The baseline should incorporate the inner feelings of the transracial adoptee and the effect the background would have on a person’s identity and self-esteem as correlated to ethnicity.
The genetic racial identity denotes where the person adopts the bodily attributes of their birth parents to take in hair texture, skin color, size, in addition to other features. Because of the impression that much of a person’s adoption history is secret or unknown, this identity aspect is regarded as the building block since it links the past, present, as well as the future. On the other hand, the imposed racial identity refers to the identity given to the adopted person by the bigger society in their process via a structure of “relinquishment, placement, plus adoption”, and could be a mistaken opinion of a person’s genetic racial identity more befuddling a transracial adoptee. In cognitive racial identity, as explained by Briggs (2012), the adoptee normally intellectualizes their feelings and experiences to aid a person to suffuse a genetic racial identity with the imposed racial identity. Briggs, (2012) goes on to explain that visual racial identity is a facet of identity development where the person perceives his/her skin to be a particular color, and might not be as per the individual’s real race. In this aspect, the adoptee normally puts on parent influences along with social influences to take in the absence of racial echoing and racial domination in the society. Also, a feeling racial identity denotes a subjective experience of the language, beliefs, and values a person sees in the customs associated with the internalized personality and is greatly affected by the social community that surround the transracial. As a result, even though a person might genetically be Black-American, their feeling of racial identity might be White grounded in their social community in addition to the customs they have adopted.
The 5 ideas of racial identity in connection with a transracial adoptee pose numerous questions regarding the impacts the transracial adoption has on ethnic identity development. Padilla, Vargas and Chavez (2010) expounded that the transracial adoptees should learn to tour a realm wherein their ethnicity is stigmatized although the learning is originating from the parents whose ethnicity is not marked out. The writers suggest that in transracial households, the parents usually expound on race and racial dissimilarities in a race-impartial or color-blind manner which may be in direct conflict with the experiences encountered by the transracial adoptees.
Padilla, Vargas and Chavez (2010) note that it is between the ages of 4 and 5 that persons initially start to detect racial dissimilarities, and roughly sixty-seven percent of transracial adoptees not ever identify with their biological racial identity. Numerous transracial adoptees think that they identify with being or are White, thus leaving the person reflecting on the other concepts of racial identity development (Padilla, Vargas & Chavez, 2010). It is not till later in a lifetime that transracial adoptees are alleged to have the yearning to retrieve their biological cultures, a process known as re-culturation.
A study by Smith, Jacobson and Juárez (2011) suggest that transracial adoptees do not tussle to develop a positive ethnic identity; however, they are more sluggish in the development of racial awareness. According to the authors, it appears that in a certain stage of their lives, the transracial adoptees undergo specific phases or stages of the dissimilar identity models whereas simultaneously working through the 5 ideas of transracial adoptee identity development. The two identified major tussles that transracial adoptees experience include pursuing an identity without the knowledge of those genetic features which can confirm or refute their identity development, and struggling to accept the past spent with their adoptive household. Furthermore, there is a conflict of coexisting and conflicting identities in addition to the tussle of faithfulness to either the adoptive or biological family. Numerous transracial adoptees often search for their biological families with the intention of finding a person racially alike who may function as an exemplary and somebody from whom they may receive info to add to their individual racial identity development. Furthermore, Smith, Jacobson and Juárez (2011) underlined some of the causal motives for looking for the biological family to take in sociocultural customs in an attempt to feel involved in their racial groups, normative practices in an attempt to acquire knowledge concerning the person’s genetic culture and discover an approach through which to integrate the two identities into the process of development, as well as psychopathology to facilitate in tussles to get used to the adoption process because of “racial discrimination, isolation, in addition to identity conflicts”.
In a nutshell, about ninety percent of transracial adoptions happen before the identity development phase that plays a big role in racial identity development. Therefore, because of the young age in which majority transracial adoptions take place, it is recommended that an upsurge in racial socialization need to be fortified between adoptive parents so as to help the youngster to navigate their culture and lessen the feelings of marginality which could arise because of augmented cultural consciousness while they develop.
References
Barn, R. (2013). ‘Doing the right thing’: transracial adoption in the USA. Ethnic and Racial Studies , 36 (8), 1273-1291.
Briggs, L. (2012). Somebody’s children: The politics of transnational and transracial adoption . Duke University Press.
Padilla, J. B., Vargas, J. H., & Chavez, H. L. (2010). Influence of age on transracial foster adoptions and its relation to ethnic identity development. Adoption Quarterly , 13 (1), 50-73.
Smith, D. T., Jacobson, C. K., & Juárez, B. G. (2011). White parents, black children: Experiencing transracial adoption . Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
Steinberg, G., & Hall, B. (2011). Inside transracial adoption . Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
