Interracial adoption (historically referred to as transracial adoption) refers to the act of placing a child of one racial or ethnic group with adoptive parents of another racial or ethnic group.
Interracial adoption is not inherently the same as transcultural or international adoption. However, in some circumstances an adoption may be interracial, international, and transcultural at the same time (or some combination of two of those).
Statistics Based on the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS) in the U.S., the fiscal year of 1998 showed that approximately 57% of children currently in foster care were of non-Caucasian background. Out of all foster children waiting for adoption 21% are Black, 23% are Hispanic, 2% are American Indian/Alaska Native, 0% are Asian/Pacific Islander/Native Hawaiian, and 1% are unknown/unable to determine. According to data from 2019, 50.7% of adoptees that year were White, 20.1% Hispanic, 16.5% Black or African American, 9.2% of two or more races, 1.6% Native American/Alaskan native, 1.2% unidentifiable, 0.35% Asian, and 0.27% Hawaiian or Pacific Islander. The most recent estimate of interracial adoption was performed in 1987 by the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) and it found that 1% of white women adopt black children, 5% of white women adopt children of other races, and 2% of women of other races adopt white children (estimates include foreign-born).
The US Census 2000 found that "White (and no other race), not Hispanic children made up the majority of all categories of children of householders under 18: about 58% of adopted children, 64% of biological children" and "Of the 1.7 million households with adopted children, about 308,000 (18%) contained members of different races."
In the UK between 2008 and 2009, approximately 2,700 white children were adopted compared to only 410 mixed-race children and only 90 black children Approximately 1 in 10 children in care are black and 1 in 9 children in care come from a racially mixed background. Black, mixed-race, and Asian children typically wait to be adopted on average three years longer than white children. Children of mixed ethnicities are more likely than other children to be placed for adoption. Adoption placement of children of mixed ethnicities is difficult because it is influenced by values, ideology, and anti-oppressive practices that need to be considered within the practice.
Interracial adoption grew significantly from 1999 to 2005 where it reached its peak year at 585 adoptions to the United States. Following 2005, interracial adoption into the US declined with 288 adoptions in the year 2011. From 1999 to 2011, there has been 233,934 adoptions into the United States from other countries across the globe. Of the total adoptions, 39.4% (92,202 children) were under the age of 12 months. Also, 63% (146,516 children) were female. Overall, children from China were the most common to be adopted. 66,630 were from China and Russia was the second largest country with 45,112 children.
History
Before World War II it was very rare for white couples to adopt a child of a different race, and every effort was made in order to match a child with the skin color and religion of the adoptive family. Then in 1944 the Boys and Girls Aid Society took an interest in the increasing number of minority children waiting to be adopted which focused on children from Asian American, Native American, and African American heritage. Children of Asian and Native American heritage were most easily placed outside of their racial group while those of African American heritage proved more difficult. The campaign was called "Operation Brown Baby", and its objective was to find adoptive homes even if from a different race. The first candidate in this operation, Noah Turner, was a Chinese baby adopted into a Caucasian family in 1947.
During the civil rights movement, a few regional adoption agencies began challenging race-matching in adoptions by placing some African American children in non-minority households. Organizations, including the Open Door Society and the Council on Adoptable Children, likewise began to publicize the needs of these orphans of color.University of Oregon, Department of History, Adoption History: African American Adoptions, available at https://pages.uoregon.edu/adoption/topics/AfricanAmerican.htm However, only small amounts of African American children were ever adopted by white parents, reaching their high around 1970. This also spurred rapid growth in international adoptions, the numbers more than tripled from 733 cases in 1968 to 2,574 cases in 1971, where large numbers of Asian children were adopted by Caucasian American families. (China has now halted its foreign adoption program.) However, in 1972, the National Association of Black Social Workers formally condemned interracial adoption, citing that adoptees were at risk of developing a poor racial identity due to a lack of contact with role models of the same race.National Association of Black Social Works, Formal Statement on Trans-Racial Adoptions, September 1972, available at https://cdn.ymaws.com/www.nabsw.org/resource/collection/E1582D77-E4CD-4104-996A-D42D08F9CA7D/NABSW_Trans-Racial_Adoption_1972_Position_(b).pdf In the 1990s, the placement of black children into non-black homes virtually came to a complete stop.
However, international transracial adoptions have continued. In the early 1970s, early transracial adoption proponents like Bernice Gottlieb likewise spurred the adoption of Asian children, not orphaned but who were living in stigmatized conditions, but whose parents wished to offer their children a better life outside their countries.
Harry and Bertha Holt also played a large role in introducing the concept of interracial adoption in the United States. Harry and Bertha Holt were Evangelical farmers from Oregon. They saw it as their duty to help Korean children from the deplorable conditions many of them were in. As such, Congress was lobbied and in 1955, "Bill for Relief of Certain War Orphans", often referred to as the Holt Bill, was passed. This allowed for the Holts to adopt 8 Korean American children from South Korea. This adoption was highly public and, in many ways for many Americans, reshaped the concept of what a family could look like.
Additional information Families formed across racial, national, and biological boundaries represent a growing demographic, adding to the pervasive, historical diversity of family forms in the United States (Coontz, 2008). From 1990 to 2009, the number of U.S. adoptions of foreign-born orphans increased in unprecedented numbers, rising from 7,093 children to 12,753 in 2009—an 80% increase: China ranked as the top sending country, and Vietnam ranked as the seventh highest (U.S. Department of State, 2009). Whereas diversification in the family form is not a new phenomenon, it often appears so, given that family communication scholarship on nontraditional families is a relatively recent development.
Since 2009, there has been a distinct decline in foreign adoption in the US. In 2023, the number of adoptees was just 1,300.
Law
In 1994, the Howard M. Metzenbaum Multiethnic Placement Act (MEPA) was passed. It prohibits an agency that receives Federal assistance and is involved in foster care and adoptive placements from delaying or denying the placement of a child based on race, color, or national origin of the child or adoptive/foster parent. Then, in 1996 it was amended with the Interethnic Adoption Provisions, also known as the Interethnic Placement Act. These provisions forbid agencies from delaying or denying the placement of a child solely on the basis of race and national origin. The purpose of these revisions was to strengthen compliance and enforcement of the procedures, remove any misleading language, and demand that discrimination would not be tolerated.
Another important law regarding interracial adoptions was the Adoption and Safe Families Act that was implemented in 1997. The purpose of this law is to reduce the time that a child spends in foster care by terminating parental rights of children who had been in foster care for 15 of the last 22 months, requiring permanency hearings annually for all foster care children, and expanding subsidies for adoption. The act also sought to reduce the instability and abuse problems in the foster care system by putting stricter background checks on adoptive and foster families, provided funding for preventative and support services, and expanded foster children's healthcare coverage. Critics, however, argue that it also takes the emphasis off of trying to keep children with their biological parents and that the act increased racial inequality. In particular, critics target the termination of parental rights, saying that it disproportionately affects Black families, who were already more likely to be separated by child welfare services, by permanently separating Black children from their parents.
Academic research
When discussing the topic of parents adopting a child of a different race, the terms interracial adoption and transracial adoption are commonly used interchangeably. Historically, most notably in the 1960s, the word interracial has been used more frequently. However, upon looking at multiple websites for modern adoption agencies, these companies are using the word “transracial” more than ever before. The interesting part about this research is that searching up the keyword “interracial” would bring up suggestions for personal articles from adoptees about their experiences/stories. Whereas searching up the term “transracial” would bring up informational texts and support tools for parents seeking to adopt.
Clearly, each word is tied to a different connotative meaning. Transracial appears to be more professional, informational, and widely used for academic texts. Interracial suggests a personal aspect of adoption and shows up in more blogs, stories, and opinion pieces.
Adolescent adjustment Adolescent adjustment for interracial adoptees can be qualitatively studied based on the principals of Identity Based Socialization. Identity based socialization is defined as the ability of parents to impact their children's morals and values related to identities such as adoption, race, or ethnicity; these socialization techniques have been positively correlated with increased psychological well-being and self esteem. Ethnic-racial socialization consists of three components: cultural socialization, preparation for bias, and promotion of mistrust. For interracial adoptees socialization can be understood in the context of a multiplicity of identities including the transracial adoption (i.e., a parent adopts a child of a different race, most commonly white parents and children of color).
For interracial adoptees, many white parents have increased difficulty connecting with and helping their child embrace their racial identity. This is often linked to a lack of shared racial identity as well as understanding of the perspectives and lived experience of racial/ethnic minority individuals. For example, Black transracial adoptees report experiencing more racial discrimination than their White parents. A component of this may be that white parents do not know how to address race-based discrimination and instead engage in an avoidant approach to race-based conversation, leading transracial adoptees to feel misunderstood and less likely to report experiences of racial discrimination to their parents. Research has shown that transracial adoptees experience feelings of exclusion from peers of both their racial identity as well as the majority (i.e., White). This creates an internal struggle to find belonging in their community and among their family members.