Transracial Identity Needs of Children Placed
Cross-Racially/Culturally
Watch a short transracial
adoption video clip
This is to be used as a self-assessment for a transracial parent's or applicant's capacity and ability to meet the following unique identity needs of children who live with a family of a race or culture other than his/her own. In addition to the qualities necessary to enhance the normal development of any child in placement, these needs are:
To live in an
environment that provides the child an opportunity to participate in positive
experiences with their culture, religion, and language.
For association
with same race adult and peer role models and relationships on an ongoing basis.
For environmental experiences that teach survival, problem solving, and
coping skills which give the child a sense of racial and ethnic pride.
A parent
who can understand and relate to the child's life and daily relationship to
racial and cultural differences and who can respond to those experiences with
acceptance, understanding, and empathy.
For a
parent who accepts and can help the child accept the child's racial and cultural
ancestry and can comfortably share knowledge and information about the child's
racial and cultural ancestry with the child.
For the child to have adults
around them who understand what it feels like for the child to look different
from their parent.
To have a
parent that has knowledge of special dietary, skin, hair, and health care needs.
Capabilities of Persons Who
Parent Cross-Racially/Culturally
To meet the identity needs of
children who live with a family of a race or culture other than their own, it is
desirable that persons who parent these children possess the following
capabilities:
An
understanding of their own sense of personal history and how that helped form
their values and attitudes about racial. cultural, and religious similarities
and differences
An understanding of racism and
whose life experiences have given you an understanding of how racism works and
how to minimize its effects.
Life experiences and personal
history which have given you the capacity or ability to parent
cross-racially/culturally. Commitment to and capability of demonstrating empathy
with the child's family of origin regardless of the socioeconomic and lifestyle
differences between you and the child's family.
Capacity and commitment to
provide the child with positive racial and cultural experiences and information
and knowledge of their race and culture.
Capability of preparing the
child for active participation in or return to the child's racial and cultural
community.
Adequate support of those
significant to you in your decision to parent cross racially/culturally.
Residence in a community that
provides the child with same race adult and peer role models and relationships
on an ongoing basis.
Tolerance and ability to deal
appropriately with the questions, ambiguity, or disapproval which arise when
people assume that the child is the applicant's birth child.
Willingness to incorporate
participation in cross-racial/ cultural activities into their lifestyle and
participate in race/cultural awareness training.
Acknowledgement that
interracial/intercultural parenting makes their family an
interracial/intercultural family, which will have an impact on all family
members, and that a decision to adopt interracially will make the family
interracial forever.
Acknowledgement and
preparedness to deal positively and effectively with the reality that as an
interracial family you will experience discrimination similar to other minority
families.
The skills, the capacity,
interest, and commitment to learn parenting skills necessary to parent children
to understand and accept their race and racial identity and to work to change
the feelings of children who deny their racial identity.
Skills, the capacity, and
interest to learn the skills to meet the child's special dietary skin, hair, and
health care needs.
Appreciation of the child's
uniqueness, and at the same time, helps the child have a sense of belonging and
full family membership.
DHHS, Grant Number
90-CO-0319 and the MN DHS. Reprinted with permission.