Mish-Mash Post: ESL, age range and genetic testing

I had another fun ESL class tonight. The topic was marriage in America. As outside reading I brought in an article on the FLDS and Warren Jeffs' trial for accessory to statutory rape. Not the most heartwarming marriage-related story, but it started off some great discussion.

My husband and I have settled on an age range, sort of. We're now at 0-7. Now I'm wondering about changing it to 1-7. If that range would make the home study and certification easier, I'd probably go for it, since the chances of getting an infant placement are tiny, and it's not an age we particularly want. On the other hand, if there's a sibling group and the youngest is under the age of one, I wouldn't want to rule out that chance.

Tonight a conversation at SOA reminded me of my on again, off again interest in genetic testing to find out all my ancestry. On my mother's side, I know where we come from. Just using publicly available web databases, I can go back to 17th century Virginia, and then back to England from there, with a few branches leading into Germany instead. But my father was adopted in Japan in the waning years of WWII. He knows some of the history of his biological family, but mostly it's a blank spot. His mother's family had connections in Hokkaido but he grew up with his adoptive family in Nagano prefecture, which is a mountainous and very beautiful place about three hours west of Tokyo. Because of the Hokkaido connection, and also certain anomalies of our appearance (height, squareness of face), I've often wondered if the family is partly Ainu. I asked my dad once but he put me off and obviously isn't interested.

One of those expensive genetic tests like they did on the African-American Lives show could tell me for sure. This was an absolutely fascinating show, hosted by Henry Louis Gates, that used a combination of genetic analysis and historical research to explore African-American geneologies. It was especially interesting to me that many of the celebrities who signed on to the project, like Oprah Winfrey, had family legends that there was Native-American blood in the family, but when tested, the only one who actually did (Chris Tucker) was the one who least expected it.

Other than this question of ancestry I have, I honestly don't feel a very strong connection to Japanese people in Japan... besides my father, that is. I do feel a strong connection to the land, especially the mountains and volcanoes. I'm not even a spiritual person, much less religious. But I get the feeling of spirits under the surface there. I also think a lot of my negative perceptions of Japan were shaped by Tokyo, a city I hate more each time I visit. It would be wonderful to go back to Japan on my own and visit other places like Hokkaido, Okinawa and Osaka.

Our Prospects

I feel so much better now. We had a consultation and I put all our issues down on the table (see my earlier post for details). I heard pretty much what I expected to hear, but actually hearing it was really important.

The worker agreed that my race might be an unstated factor in matches, but also said she doubted it would be a very important factor. She didn't think we would be really at a disadvantage compared to a white couple, especially once we articulate ourselves as a couple prepared for all aspects of transracial adoption. She also said that our position was decent, overall. In short, I heard, "you're not paranoid, but you don't need to worry quite so much."

Apparently all the applicants at the agency get very realistic assessments of how other caseworkers in the system are going to view them as potential matches for a child. She told us that opposite sex couples are in the first tier, then singles, then same-sex couples. It's unfortunate that our privileged position as a heterosexual couple comes at the expense of same-sex couples.

We're still not sure about the age issue. We won't need to decide until a week from now. I'm thinking of possibly going up to age 8 from our original 0-5. My mental picture of a child has always been that of a toddler. I just love toddlers. I think I could adjust, though.

Unconscious Bias

Here's a fascinating article about unconscious bias and stereotype threat. It shows how much the primal emotions of pride, shame and fear influence intellectual achievement.

Positions of Power: How female ambition is shaped

"Meanwhile, studies of what psychologists call "stereotype threat" demonstrate that awareness of negative stereotypes about one's group diminishes performance. Toni Schmader, a psychologist at the University of Arizona, conducted a study in which undergraduates were asked to memorize words while doing math; one group was told this was a problem-solving exercise, the other, that this was a test comparing men and women. Women's performance suffered only when they believed they were being compared to men—this prompted the stereotype that men are better in math. Another study examined how stereotype threat affected Asian-American women's performance on math tasks. When subjects were asked questions related to Asian identity before taking the test (prompting the stereotype that Asians are good at math), their performance went up. When asked questions related to gender (prompting the stereotype that women are bad at math), their performance went down."

Thinking Ahead to School

I found a great resource today: an organization called LEAD (Learners & Educators of Atlanta & Decatur). I haven't made any decisions yet about school for our future children, but I like knowing what's out there. LEAD is an association of secular homeschooling parents that teach classes for each other's kids.

I would probably start them out in public school, but if they don't thrive there I would pull them out in a heartbeat. One argument I often hear is that if children have social problems in school, you need to support them so they work their way through it, because they'll gain valuable life experience in dealing with adversity. Whenever I hear that argument I usually keep my mouth shut, because I don't want to attack another person's parenting choice. But I violently disagree with it. I had a lot of social problems at school, especially in junior high, and I didn't learn any valuable coping skills. It just made me feel more angry, depressed, shy, fearful, bitter and resentful. It prepared me for absolutely nothing, since I never faced as many problems later on in life; the older I got, the more civilized other people behaved towards me. I'm just glad I went into that very trying time with enough self-confidence that I could build myself back up again afterwards. The only useful lesson I learned is that I don't want any other child to suffer through the same problems.

Wonderful Thanksgiving

Our Thanksgiving yesterday was fantastic. I cooked collard greens and sweet potato pone for dessert. My mother made an entire armada of dishes including brussels sprouts with chestnuts and oyster mushrooms, okra with tomatoes and cornbread stuffing. My stepfather deep-fried two turkeys. The guests were my husband and me, my mother and stepfather, my uncle, aunt and two cousins, my stepfather's mother, brother and brother's girlfriend/partner, my father-in-law and two family friends for a grand total of 14.

I definitely would have enjoyed it more without the adoption-related stress. Because of the concerns that popped up on Tuesday, I feel like I can't see the path forward because I'm surrounded by a thick fog. I keep trying to beat it off by waving my arms, even though I know that won't really do anything to make the fog go away. There were a few points throughout the day when I felt very unsociable, but thankfully I was able to work these off by doing cleanup and washing dishes.

I've had some good conversations with my husband about our current situation. We're having an individual meeting soon with one of the workers at the agency, and that should also help clear up some of my concerns.

Family Recipe: Pressure Cooker Collard Greens

Here's a recipe I modified from a great original vegetarian recipe. You could easily make it vegetarian again by taking out the meat, and it will still have a decent flavor. I don't have exact measurements, since the proportions are totally based on the size of the pressure cooker.

The great advantage to the pressure cooker is that the greens takes less than an hour to cook, as opposed to the traditional method, which can take all day. Also, collard greens have a bad reputation as the smelliest green. While they're cooking, they give off an unpleasant liver-like smell, but once they're done, they taste divine. Cooking collard greens in a pressure cooker greatly reduces the amount of time that they give off this unpleasant smell.

I've gotten a lot of compliments on this dish!

Ingredients
- a large amount of collard greens. Rule of thumb: they should look like twice the volume of your pressure cooker.
- canned or cartoned tomato chunks. Rule of thumb: including liquid, they should be a quarter of the volume of your pressure cooker
- two onions
- six cloves of garlic
- malt vinegar (European or Chinese, doesn't matter)
- liquid smoke
- 1-2 ham hocks
- bacon
- black pepper
- chili powder (not too hot... I recommend ancho chile powder, not cayenne)
- salt
- molasses and/or maple sugar

Directions
1. First, you need to cook down the collard greens in order to get them to fit in the pressure cooker. This may need to be done in batches, or in more than one frying pan. In a large frying pan or wok, cut and fry bacon, onions and garlic so that the onions and garlic cook a little bit in the bacon fat, just enought to turn translucent
2. Add the collard green pieces, salt, chili powder and black pepper, and cook them down a bit over medium heat, stirring vigorously. The greens should reduce in volume after 10-15 minutes. If you need more oil add some olive oil or vegetable oil.
3. Put the tomato chunks in the pressure cooker with the ham hock(s). Add the collard green mix from the frying pan. Put more spices if you want. Add about three tablespoons of malt vinegar, one teaspoon of liquid smoke and a quarter cup of something very sweet and flavorful like molasses or maple syrup.
4. Cook for 30 minutes at a high pressure setting.
5. Release pressure by running cold water on pressure cooker. Check greens for doneness. If not done, cook 5-10 minutes more. Repeat if necessary.
6. When you determine they are cooked to tenderness, take them off. Discard the ham hock from the bottom of the pot. Eat the greens or store in fridge. They will only taste better next day.

Apocalypto!

That last post was so depressing, I feel like ending the night with something more light-hearted.

I saw a teaser last night for Apocalypto, Mel Gibson's new movie. I'm pretty excited about it. Believe me, I'm not a Mel Gibson fan. I used to think of him as an unpleasant person with a weird torture fixation. Now I think of him as an unpleasant racist with a weird torture fixation. But the trailer for Apocalypto just blows all of that out of my mind. It's a big budget movie about the Mayan empire. Even if it was produced by Satan, written by Osama Bin Laden and directed by Uwe Boll, I would still have to see it. I do feel a bit bad about putting money in Gibson's pocket, but for recompense I'll donate the ticket price to a humanitarian Jewish organization.

In order to explain... no matter what the message is, the visuals in the movie are demanding that I absorb them further. The actors, almost all indigenous Mexicans, are wearing a wide variety of Mayan dress and also the typical huge piercings. This is going to be a must-see for anyone seriously interested in the world history of jewelry and body adornment. The colors are also striking. I've travelled along some of the Mayan route and seen the large ruins in Mexico -- Chichen Itza and Palenque -- and imagining them fully painted in glorious color was one of my favorite sightseeing activities.

A few years ago I briefly considered going to see that movie Memoirs of a Ho (ahem, excuse me, Memoirs of a GEISHA) just to see the costuming. Ultimately, I couldn't bring myself to do it. There are many Japanese movies that already feature beautiful traditional dress. But can you say the same about the Mayan empire? Visually, the movie seems like a revelation. It's going to be a monster hit in Mexico and very popular with Mexican-Americans too.

Here is an article from the Mexican newspaper La Jornada predicting great success for Apocalypto. It has an especially deranged picture of Mel.

Down Again

We just had a unit on transcultural adoption in our class. The facilitator made the excellent point that even within the same race, an adoption is often transcultural when it crosses socioeconomic lines. In a class where the large majority of parents are black, the discussion (mostly about black placements with white parents) was very interesting. I'd write about it more, but I'm feeling too down about a brief conversation we had before class. We're being gently but firmly pushed to move up to 8 from our current range of 0-5 years. Next Tuesday we'll have an individual consultation and get some more information about where we stand on this.

I'm also starting to get paranoid about where I stand because of my own race. After making it crystal clear that I don't care about getting a same-race placement, I've had several people tell me "I've seen Asian kids in Northwest states and Alaska, maybe you could look there." The kids in Alaska are Alaskan Natives, not Asians, and the Indian Child Welfare Act makes their adoption just as difficult for me as for any other non-tribal member. Once we're all certified we can adopt from out of state, but I know the agency strongly encourages us to stay within Georgia, for practical, financial and logistic reasons. I've already seen the photolisting sites in question and know there is a vanishingly small number of Asian children on them (as opposed to zero in Georgia). So what I'm hearing when people tell me there are kids available in the Northwest is "I'm ignoring what you say about not needing a same-race placement, and so state adoption will be a hundred times harder for you than for a black or white parent, but hey, don't lose hope!". I know the people who've told me this mean well. They really do. Like I said, maybe I'm just paranoid and hearing the wrong things. I do intend to get a clearer understanding of our situation by next week. Luckily my husband is maintaining an optimistic attitude.

All Look Same: C, K, J link

I'd encourage anyone who hasn't already tried it out to go take the All Look Same test. It's been on the internet for a while, and the editor keeps adding other tests, like the food test and the architecture test. The basic test simply gives you an Asian face and three choices: Chinese, Korean or Japanese.

I've explained the difference many times in my life but I think people don't always listen to me. Non-Asians so often feel either undeserved guilt or undeserved pride over the subject. Here's one way to sum it up:

1. If you think you can always tell Asians apart, you are not as smart as you think.
2. If you can never tell Asians apart, you might be as ignorant as you think.

Another way is to use a European metaphor. Take a Frenchman, a German man and an Englishman. Let's say they are all very average-looking people of average height, white, and dressed for a casual evening. You see them in a train station and try to guess their nationality. If you have any familiarity with Europeans, your chances are pretty good. The German's fashion sense is just a bit off. The Englishman has ears that stick out. The Frenchman does a unique kind of shoulder roll and holds his cigarette at an especially jaunty angle. There's a combination of dress cues, body language cues and genetic facial cues that separate the men.

Then, take facial profiles of these men with neutral expressions and try to distinguish them. Your chances will go way down. There's a facial type that's more typical of Germans, English and French -- the kind of face that you would see on a travel poster advertising the country -- but the majority of the white people in that country are in a wider range. There are plenty of Englishmen with ears that lie flat against their head, blond Frenchmen and brown-haired Germans.

There are more "typical" Chinese, Japanese and Korean faces, but even these faces could easily belong to a different group than the group they supposedly typify. From my perspective, I never try to tell any Asian apart if they're not foreigners or first-generation immigrants. The only thing I do is look at their name, and even that can be misleading sometimes.

One fascinating thing I've learned about human genetics is that there's more genetic variety within the African continent than there is outside of it. In other words, a Japanese, Norwegian and Cherokee have much more in common genetically than an Ethiopian, a Nigerian and a South African. If you look at someone of Khoisan descent (most famously, Nelson Mandela) and compare their facial features to a typical West African, there are very, very few similarities. Skin color, bone structure, feature size, everything is different. The human species has lived in Africa longer, and we've had more time there to grow apart.

Anyway, getting back to my perspective, I can tell Chinese, Japanese and Koreans apart only under certain circumstances. They have to be nationals or first-generation immigrants. If I hear them speak, I can distinguish Japanese easily and Chinese somewhat easily, mostly from watching so many Chinese martial arts movies. I can’t always distinguish Cantonese from Mandarin. I can tell Korean speech mostly by process of elimination, since I've never lived in a place where there were many Koreans and don't really have a feel for the language. If there are other Asian countries in the equation, especially countries that have more cultural diversity than Japan or Korea, I basically throw my hands in the air.

If I don't hear them speak, I can always distinguish Japanese by body language. Japanese often use a very distinctive posture that I call "ready-to-bob" mode. In any given social situation, unless a Japanese person is a) very relaxed b) very absorbed in something c) very drunk, they will hold their shoulders, neck and head in ready-to-bob mode. Head-bobbing is a natural part of a Japanese conversation and it's hard to describe when it's done… it can be a sign of social deference and politeness, of greeting, of nervousness and discomfort, of acknowledgement, of happiness, of agreement or of determination. And when someone else bobs their head, you respond by bobbing your head. It's infectious. If you're not used to this and you do it all day, you'll actually get a crick in your neck.

I believe Chinese and Korean people also have head-bowing in their repertoire of body language, but nothing that approaches the frequency of Japanese head-bobbing. They also have less of a physical comfort zone. When I went to China, I was initially shocked at how people would get up in my face during conversations, and how they would elbow and jostle each other. The group dynamics are completely different.

It's better not to make assumptions in the first place, but it's understandable that someone with little knowledge of Korea and Japan would mistake who is from where. Going only from facial cues, I think it can be just as easy as mistaking an American for a Canadian, or a Mexican for a Guatemalan. But the consequences of that mistake are more severe.

For example, in a Spanish class I took in Mexico, we had several Korean students. We were doing a unit on national holidays. The teacher asked a young Korean woman what they did in a typical holiday in Japan. The response was an immediate explosion of "¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡NOOOOOOO, NO SOY JAPONESA!!!! ¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡NO SOY JAPONESA!!!!! The teacher staggered back a little bit and never made the mistake again.

Laparoscopy Pre-Op

I had an appointment with my doctor today to talk about my upcoming diagnostic laparoscopy. Although I have an "unremarkable" uterus (this is good) and my hormones and ovaries are fine, there's an issue with both my fallopian tubes. The laparoscopy will use a camera to determine the exact extent of the issue. If there's any non-trivial blockage, I've asked the doctor to go ahead and remove the tubes. There's no reason to leave them in if they're damaged, and having them taken out would completely take away any risk of ectopic pregnancy, which I'm absolutely terrified of.

After the laparoscopy, I could find out that my reproductive system is just totally normal, or else that I'm incapable of natural pregnancy. If it's the latter, there won't be much of an impact. But I don't know what I'd do if I find out I'm normal. I told my husband and mother in that case I'm leaning towards birth control for a year or until a first adoptive placement gets settled. My husband is very intelligent but handicapped at "emotional multitasking" or thinking in two different ways at the same time, so his only response to that was "we'll just take it as it comes and see what happens". I guess this is the drawback of deciding on adoption before my infertility is 100% determined.

Otherwise it was a pretty good day. We had an amazing rabbit stew for dinner at my mother's and are settling in to watch "Heroes" tonight.

Adoption/Foster Blog Roundup

I was ecstatic to find so many blogs about the foster care system when I first started looking. Following them has turned into an addiction. Some of them are updated more frequently than others, some of them have high drama and others concentrate more on daily routine, but they're all very valuable to me.

If you're noticing all the funny names, keep in mind that all these blogs use fake names or nicknames in order to protect the privacy of the children.

Adventures with Toots and Noodles: This woman's 12-year-old daughter (Toots) is going through some terrible times. Toots had just been released from a psychiatric hospital, but after the latest episode it looks like she cannot stay home because she is too self-destructive. The mother is heartbroken. This is the saddest point of any story I have been reading on these blogs.

"Don't Underestimate Baked Goods" at WRAL.com: This woman's daughter, Hayley, has been through a lot before adoption, but seems to be doing very well now. Her daughter talked about her sexual abuse with other children at school, and now her mother is dealing with the emotional implications and wondering how to protect her in future.

The Open Window: This is a waiting mother blog. This post describes an anxious day spent waiting to see if she would be approved to adopt the little boy she had applied for.

Spotted Dog Turn: Another waiting blog… until a week ago! This mother now has the placement of her little boy and is going through the daily happy turmoil of being a new parent.

Pre-Midlife Crisis: This woman has already had several foster-to-adopt placements, but now her baby daughter is scheduled for adoption very soon. This post describes her relief on hearing about the generous adoption subsidy she'll be receiving and how much it will help their family.

Navigating The Maze: This is not strictly an adoption blog, since the couple are currently fostering only. They were given the emergency placement of a young girl found in a motel with a known child predator (given the great nickname of "Burt the Pervert"). The girl has lots of discipline problems and was 5 whole grade levels behind, but her academic progress so far has been very encouraging to read about.

My Chosen Child: This blog is by a foster-to-adopt mother. She just finalized the adoption of her toddler daughter. This post describes running into her daughter's biological mother, the conversation they had and how happy the mother is now that she knows and can tell her daughter the name of her biological grandmother.

The Transracial Adoption of Children with Special Needs

This is from a paper called "Outcomes of Transracial Adoption" by Arnold R. Silverman, Ph.D.

I found this today surfing the web. The 6^th section is on special needs adoption and jumped out at me, so I skipped ahead to that, although I'll go back later today and read the whole paper.

Recently, Rosenthal, Groze, and colleagues reported on the outcome of transracially placed special needs children and, most important, compared these children with both inracially placed minority children and inracially placed white children, all with special needs.44,45

The study focuses on the adoptive outcomes of 760 children with special needs who had been placed by three public and one private agency in Oklahoma, Kansas, and Illinois. Of these, 293 were minority or mixed-race children, 78% (230) of whom were placed inracially and 22% (63) of whom were placed transracially in white families. A total of 460 placements were of white children placed inracially with white parents. Data were collected by means of a mailed survey sent to the adoptive parents.

Here are some of the conclusions. After listing them, I'll try to relate them to the current situation in Georgia as I understand it.

- The average age at placement differed: "5.0 years in the transracial group, 4.6 years in the minority inracial group, and 6.0 years in the white inracial group."

- The inracially placed children had a family life that scored better in measures like cohesiveness and family satisfaction, and this difference grew with age of placement. In other words, children placed when 12-18 years old seemed to do much better inracially than transracially.

- "Of the children in the transracial group, 39% were disabled as compared with 14% in the minority inracial group; 23% of the transracial group had been in group homes or psychiatric placement prior to adoption in contrast to 7% in the minority, inracial group; 33% of the transracial group had experienced sexual abuse prior to adoption in contrast to 15% in the minority inracial group. All of the differences listed are statistically significant."

- "It is important to note that children in the white inracial group had the highest incidence of behavioral problems (47%) and the highest incidence of sexual abuse prior to adoption (43%)."

One thing that instantly jumps to mind is how damaged the white children are. The study puts the word "damaged" in quotes because it's a horrible word to use for children. I can’t think of any other word to use myself, though, that would be honest enough to describe the lasting effects of the abuse they have suffered.

There is another side to the institutional racism that leads to more black children being removed from their homes. Since often (at least in Atlanta) the removing social workers themselves are black, I think the imbalance has more to do with the economics of racism and generational poverty. Anyway, the other side to the imbalance is that white children are removed less frequently from their homes, and at older ages. By the time they're removed, they've suffered worse damage.

Meth versus crack may also be a big factor. At least here in Georgia, there's a weird segregation of drug addiction. White people smoke meth; black people smoke crack. More white people cross over and smoke crack than the other way around. In the black community, meth is looked down on even more than crack. I've also heard that meth addiction is worse than crack addiction. No child would want to have their parents addicted to crack, but apparently meth is even more threatening to life and sanity.

The study also shows that the minority inracial group children had suffered much less damage than the minority transracial group. In basic language, the black children placed in black homes had fewer problems to begin with. The black children placed into white homes had more problems to begin with.

"Rosenthal and colleagues offer the following explanation: "The large numbers of minority children among those waiting for adoption provide minority applicants greater opportunity to adopt a younger child or one with minimal handicaps. Thus the older or handicapped minority child loses in the supply-demand market and may face delay in adoption or the possibility of not being adopted at all."47

Rosenthal's explanation is that black parents are more in demand by the system, so they are given the children with the least problems.

This dynamic points out that social workers cannot simply assign a waiting child to the parents with the right resources and background. They have to match the needs of the parents as well. Workers will always push parents to adopt older children than they were looking for, or children with greater handicaps, but there's a limit to how much pushing can be done.

The dynamic is also morally somewhat disturbing. It doesn't really serve the needs of the older child with more problems. According to Rosenthal's study, transracial placement for special needs children has a neutral or at most slightly negative effect on outcome. Let's say it does have a significant negative effect. Wouldn't it be better to place the children with more damage inracially, so as not to add on another burden? On the other hand, speaking practically, that might drive away minority parents.

I will keep an eye out for more studies like this and see if I can find the original Rosenthal study. This summary doesn't really break down the minorities a lot, or talk about minorities adopting different minorities, so minority basically equalled black.

My general opinion is that race should be a factor, along with culture, in all adoptions, but should never be the single determining factor. If there is a special needs child out there and my family is being considered as a transracial placement, along with another family as in inracial placement, and our families are similar in most respects, I would totally understand if the other family was deemed more suitable. But if the child was black and that other black family lived somewhere like Idaho (far-fetched, but let's use that as an example), things would be less clear-cut. Peer interaction is pretty important too, especially as a child gets older. Where I live, we'd be choosing between schools that are 50% black, 95% black or 99% black.

I really wonder how my being a (different) minority is going to affect our placement. I feel like my family may be in a better position than the other few white couples, but I also feel kind of gross about considering any part of this process as a competition. There are so many competitive aspects -- the application, the screening, the classes, and so forth -- I can't help thinking of it that way sometimes, but I keep trying to talk myself out of that mode. After all, I know we don't want the healthiest child or the youngest child, just the one that is somehow "right" for us.

Punishment for Cursing

I had a hilarious ESL class last night. We did part of a unit on Thanksgiving that talked about the Pilgrims coming to Massachusetts. The chapter mentioned that many of them were "Separatists" from the Church of England, a concept which I had to explain at length. I also mentioned that these people were very religious and lived by a strict code.

One of the students -- a young Brazilian woman who is both a fervent Christian and irrepressibly curious -- was fascinated and wanted to know lots more. "Like what?" she asked, which is her favorite question.

"Well, if they thought a woman had relations with another man outside of marriage, the woman had to wear a red letter on their clothes, and everyone would point at them. People were also punished for cursing."

"What is cursing?"

I wrote "curse/cursing" on the board. "Cursing means to say curse words or bad words. For example, we say 'damn' a lot nowadays, but back then the word 'damn' was a very bad curse word."

"Like this, 'damn'?"

"Right, you'd get in trouble for that. Maybe they would tie your hands."

"So what if I say 'shit'?" the Brazilian woman asked.

"Um, oh boy, maybe they would throw you into the ocean or something" I said (I make up stuff like this all the time in class).

"So what if I say 'c*cksucker'?"

The whole class explodes laughing.

"Hahahahaha, they would fall over dead I guess..."

The same day I was given a teacher form that asked me to note any really memorable events in the class so that they could be turned into little stories and put in the newsletter. Unfortunately, I don't think I can use this Thanksgiving story. I wonder if there are any historians out there that know the appropriate level of punishment for the word in question.

50 Experiences of Racially Mixed People

1996, Maria P. P. Root, Ph.D. Racial Experiences Questionnaire and 2003 In The Multiracial Child Resource Book. Seattle, WA: Mavin Foundation.

50 Experiences of Racially Mixed People
Maria P. P. Root

"The 50 questions or comments and experiences evolved from a questionnaire I developed for a study on biracial siblings I conducted from 1996 to 1997. These questions and comments provide an introduction to the way in which race consciousness is brought up directly, sideways, and from all sides for people of mixed heritage. These comments and questions, though not an exhaustive list, provide a window into how this country internalizes assumption about race, belonging, and identity. They socialize the mixed race person to understand as well as question race American style. It is a monoracial system; one race per person. Not everyone experiences these questions or comments the similarly. One person might enjoy being asked, "What are you?" whereas their sibling might dread and resent the question. This list provides a launching point for sharing, discussing, laughing, debriefing, and educating."

1. You have been told, "You have to choose; you can't be both." No
2. Your ethnicity was mistakenly identified. Yes
3. People assumed your race to be different by phone than in person. Yes
4. You are accused of not acting or wanting to be Latino, Asian, Black… No
5. You have been told, "Mixed race people are so beautiful or handsome." Yes
6. Strangers looked between you and your parent(s) to figure out if you were related. No
7. You have been told, "You don't look Native, Black, Latino…" Yes
8. You have been asked, "What are you?" Yes
9. People say things they might not otherwise say if they knew how you identified racially. No
10. You have been asked, "Where are you from?" Yes
11. You have repeatedly been the recipient of stares or longer than passing glances from strangers. Yes
12. You have been told, "You look exotic." Yes
13. Your choice of friends has been interpreted as your "selling out" or not being authentic. No
14. You have been accused of "acting or wanting to be white." No
15. Judgments of your racial authenticity have been based upon your boyfriend/s or girlfriend's (partner's) race. No
16. Comments are made about your hair or hairstyle, skin color, eye shape etc. Yes
17. You have been subjected to jokes about mixed race people. No
18. You have been told, "You think you're too good for your own kind." No
19. Grandparent(s) or relatives don't accept you because of your parents' interracial relationship. No
20. Your parents or relatives compete to "claim" you for their own racial or ethnic group. Sometimes
21. You have been told, "You have the best of both worlds." Yes
22. You have been asked about your racial or ethnic heritage as an object of curiosity. Yes
23. Upon meeting you, people seem confused by your last name. They do not think it "matches" you. Yes
24. People assume you are confused about your racial identity or have had a hard time figuring it out. Don't Know
25. People speak to you in foreign languages because of how they interpret your physical appearance. Yes
26. You have been told, "Society doesn't recognize mixed race." Not in America
27. You have been told, "You aren't really Black, Latino, Asian…" No
28. You have been mistaken for another person of mixed heritage who does not resemble you. Yes
29. You have been told you must be full of self-loathing or hatred because of how you racially identify yourself. No
30. You have been told, "You are a mistake." No
31. Different people perceive your race differently based upon the company you keep. Don't Know
32. The race people assign you varies in different parts of the U.S.A. Yes
33. You have difficulty filling out forms asking for a single race. Yes
34. You identify your race differently than others identify you. Yes
35. You are told, "You aren't like other Indians, Asians, Latinos…" Yes
36. Your siblings identify their race differently than you do yours. N/A
37. You have been called racial slurs of groups with which you do not share heritage. Yes
38. Friends suggest that you date someone based upon the race or ethnicity with which they think you should identify. No
39. Your parents identify your race differently than you identify. Yes
40. You are told, "You aren't Black, Latino, Asian…enough" No
41. Your mother was assumed to be your nanny or babysitter. No
42. A stranger assumes that your father is your "older boyfriend" or your mother is the "older woman." No
43. You were treated differently by relatives or your parents than a sibling on the basis of racial features. No
44. You were well liked by peers but were not asked for dates. Yes
45. You wish you were darker and try to get as much sun as possible. No
46. People assume your father was in the military. Yes
47. You have enrolled in Spanish language classes in order to develop the ability to say "Yes" to the question, "Do you speak the language?" and remove one of the blocks to authenticity. No
48. Your otherwise friends become more distant when they think associating with you will make their racial authenticity or popularity questionable. No
49. You have been knowingly approached and asked, "Your mother's white (black, Asian), huh?" Yes
50. You have tried to hide one or both parents from view of people who know you but are not your closest friends because you anticipate they will treat you differently. No

This was a great questionnaire to fill out for myself. It showed me how much I share with other multiracial people and also how much my experience may also be unique and separate from everyone else.

I look very Asian. Most non-Asian Americans look on me first as Asian and then on second glance think that I might be multiracial. I don't look quite Asian enough to be mistaken as full Asian by other Asians.

I have never had to struggle to be perceived as an authentic member of an ethnic group or race. I was always ruled out of group membership from the very beginning, so I never bothered trying very hard.

Even though most of my most visible racial features are like my father, I also closely resemble my mother. No one seeing the two of us together has ever thought we were not related.

The question about the military did indeed make me laugh. It's amazing how often I get that.

Rashad's Law

I'm too tired for a substantive post tonight, so I'll just mention a depressing local news story about adoption. It was posted on the African-American board at SOA. This is not the original AJC article, but it gives a better snapshot of the current situation.

Rep. Ron Sailor, D-Decatur, held a news conference promoting his bill to give fathers the right to seek custody of their newborn child before the infant is given up for adoption.

"Rashad's Law" was inspired by 17-year-old Jeffrey Rashad Head, of Lawrenceville, who is fighting to gain custody of his five-month-old son after the boy's mother gave him up for adoption. Head said he told the baby's mother he wanted to raise him with help from his family but she ignored his wishes and the infant is living with adoptive parents somewhere in Florida.

Surrounded by his family in the state Capitol on Tuesday, Head said he had never been allowed to see his son and had only one picture.

"I wouldn't want him to feel like he didn't have a place in this world. That he was not wanted," Head said.

Head's lawyer, Leslie Gresham, said under Georgia law if the parents are not married, the mother can give away her child for adoption without ever consulting the biological father.

The legislation would require that the mother inform the father of her plans to surrender her parental rights. The father would then have 30 days to object in writing to her plans. If the mother still wanted to terminate her rights the father could take custody of the child.

Here is a father doing the right thing and stepping up to the plate... and the law is against him. I'm not saying that private domestic adoption is necessarily unethical, but potentially getting into a dilemma like the one above really disturbs me. I would really like to know which agency it was that created all this heartache and mess.

Dinner and Heroes

The dinner for class was a great success. We've raised the potluck bar. I made a batch of chicken skewers, half teriyaki flavored and the other half barbecue flavored, the other couple brought chili and cake and my mother made her amazing potato salad. She has not been to any of the clases yet but will probably attend one or two before they finish... extended family are encouraged to attend.

After class, we watched a new episode of the show "Heroes". Some parts of it are a bit pompous, and the comic art is mediocre, but on the whole it's a good show. The plot has been very well-constructed so far. The basic premise is a variation on X-Men, with ordinary people suddenly developing superpowers. One thing that struck me tonight -- the thing that really sets the show apart -- is the interracial romance. There are more interracial romances on this show than on any other show I can think of. The show is stuffed to the gills with them.

- A black man married to a white woman with a biracial child
- A black woman in a relationship with a Hispanic man who breaks up with him and starts a new romance with a white man
- An Indian man flirting with a white woman
- A Japanese guy flirting with a white woman

This last is absolutely astounding. Asian guys NEVER get the white woman. Hiro is currently travelling back through time to see if he can save the top of his sweetie's skull from being scooped off by the mystery villain. Good luck, Hiro! Ganbatte!

Infertility and Adoption

I picked up the last of my medical paperwork today over the weekend. The doctor, seeing my adoption medical form, asked me in a polite way if I had experienced fertility problems. I told her yes, and that although I'm probably a great candidate for IVF, my husband and I had decided on adoption.

She told me she also has problems. She and her husband have been exploring surrogacy, which tells me her reproductive problems could be a lot bigger than mine. She said she was tired of the years of treatment and ready for adoption, but her husband wasn't there yet. A tired look even came over her face when she said that.

I'm so incredibly glad I'm not in her position. It took me no longer than a few minutes to decide on adoption, and then a few seconds for my husband to agree. I already had it in mind as a backup plan.

Calling adoption a backup plan is not a happy thing, but to be brutally honest, that's what it often is. It's rare for fertile couples to think of adoption before a pregnancy. One reason is logistics. Adoption is long, drawn-out, strewn with ethical dilemmas, uncertain and often extremely expensive, especially when you compare it to the "have sex, then wait nine months" recipe. I don't mean to disparage pregnancy in any way, but it's an easier path to start walking on, with well-marked signs, no matter how difficult, tortuous and nerve-wracking it can get before the child arrives.

Reading Adam Pertman's book Adoption Nation taught me a great way to look at adoption and infertility. The circumstances surrounding a child's birth, like those surrounding the child's adoption, affect a child's destiny but should not be allowed to determine it. An adoptee may suffer mental anguish thinking of themselves as a "Plan B", but other children may also be hurt by knowing their birth was a happy or unhappy accident, or that their mother seriously considered abortion, and so on. Just because a child does not have two parents that loved each other, fully intended to have that child and planned well for the arrival does not mean there is a curse on that child and their parents. Otherwise, for example, children of rape would be doomed, and so would their mother. No matter how a child comes into the world, they deserve the same love.

That's not to say that the child won't have issues with the way they came into the world. They certainly will. I know I'll have to gracefully deal with lots of these issues as the child grows up and do my best to ensure they have a healthy connection to their first family. From the foster care system, it's pretty hard to get a sense of how that will play out. On the down side, maybe they'll be in jail or be too unstable for regular contact, or vanished… or maybe the extended family will be such an integral part of the child's support system that they'll never have to wonder or worry about where they came from.

So as much as I dislike saying it, adoption was Plan B, compared to natural pregnancy as Plan A and assisted reproduction as Plan C. But now that I've started out on the adoption path, those other choices seem pretty distant. It bothers me when people trot out the old cliché, "now that you're adopting, you'll get pregnant". I go into geek mode and tell them that statistically speaking, that is entirely false, and that the vast majority of fertility-impaired women who don't get pregnant while adopting tend not to stick out in the public consciousness. It bothers me because I have made the mental switch and now think of pregnancy as a cold, distant, abstract possibility, not as something I really want or need.

Dinner Dilemma

Our agency doesn't like spending money on frills, which I like. So they ask parents in the class to bring their own dinner. The classes are long and intense, and most people come there straight from their work, so dinner is fairly important. We've volunteered to bring dinner for next week's class.

Last week it was pizza, before that ham sandwiches, and before that pasta salad. I really want to cook my own food, and also cook something that will impress the class. It's not like our future children will depend on it, but I just love cooking and can get pretty worked up about it. The challenges are:

1) The floor has new carpet. Nothing crumbly like cornbread or with a lot of juices (that rules out my collard greens). Rice might be OK.
2) It has to be acceptable to a wide array of people. Nothing too spicy, and I probably should have a vegetarian dish. Keep it simple, Americana or southern: no kielbasa or kimchi.
3) No deli-wrap-roll-type foods. I hate those. Does anyone like them? They're easy to eat, but people are always mistrustful of them, since you can't tell what's inside.
4) Something that doesn't have to be served warm. I'll be cooking it the morning of the class, so it will need to be good served lukewarm or cold.

This is going to be tough.

My Other Class

Last evening I had a particularly well-attended ESL class. Attendance at the program classes is always very erratic, since so many students get caught up with work and family.

Our chapter this week was on the rights and obligations of citizenship. We finished the chapter, had some discussion on the election and the Iraq War, then did some extra reading that I brought in from news website printouts. I'd found a really great news story to read through with the class, since it covered both war and citizenship issues... plus adoption!

Granting a Wish To a Slain Marine: Citizenship Conferred on Vietnam Native

To summarize the story, Binh Le was a young Marine killed in action and granted posthumous citizenship. The students were quite surprised to learn of our practice of posthumous citizenship. I told them beforehand I did not recommend it as a path to their own. Anyway, it's now become such a standard practice to grant posthumous citizenship that the newspapers don't report the cases as much anymore. But this case was different, because Binh Le was adopted in Vietnam. His parents gave him to his aunt and uncle to adopt and take to America. The adoption complicates the immigration issue. He himself automatically got citizenship, but now who in his family gets citizenship rights? His Congressman has promised to do whatever it takes to make sure that both his birth parents get full rights.

The article was challenging, especially with all the motion verbs like "careen" and the military vocabulary (Corps = "Core"). The students were fascinated by the story and all thought it was very sad. I wonder if both his birth parents got their residencies; I haven't found news of a resolution yet.

"Overcoming Barriers to the Adoption of Children from Foster Care" Comment Post

Link to the Paper:

EVAN B. DONALDSON ADOPTION INSTITUTE
Listening to Parents: Overcoming Barriers to the Adoption of Children from Foster Care
March 2005
Funded by: The David and Lucile Packard Foundation
Prepared by: Jeff Katz, Senior Fellow, Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute in Collaboration with Harvard University & the Urban Institute

This blog post is based on something I originally posted to the Soul of Adoption forum. It's in response to a fascinating paper from the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute that analyzes the attrition rate in prospective state adoptive parents. This is an emotional subject for a host of reasons. The knowledge that my country has "waiting children" that have to be marketed to prospective parents is very disturbing. In fact, we have so many waiting children that some are adopted internationally into Canada. Is it a national shame that we export? Or is it a good thing -- ignoring national borders for the sake of the children? I feel conflicted on this subject. For now, I'm happy that there are Canadian families in the pool of prospective parents. But the pool should really be bigger here in America, and the paper gives some concrete recommendations on how to do that.

In this post I'm going to quote big chunks of the paper and relate the sections to my experiences with state adoption and the opinions I have been developing on the subject.

Please keep in mind that my terminology may be confusing. "Special needs" doesn't necessarily mean a disability, and its definition changes from state to state. Here is Georgia's definition of special needs from the GACRS website:

a. Any child eight years of age or older.
b. Any child of African-American heritage who is one year of age or older.
c. Members of a sibling group of three or more who are placed together.
d. Members of a sibling group of two where one is over the age of eight or has another special need.
e. Any child with documented physical, emotional or mental impairments or limitations.

State adoption has all kinds of jargon. For example, the paper talks about "general" adoption, which I have usually heard instead called "straight adoption". This means direct adoption of a waiting child, either photolisted or not, through a county agency or agency licensed to place children by that county. There is no fostering period in general adoption.

Here goes!

While people may decide not to adopt for many reasons, the bottom line is that only a fraction of those recruited to call a child welfare agency actually do adopt.

Many people are initially very attracted to adopting a child from foster care. You can see pictures of the children on websites or TV. They need homes, and it costs nothing to adopt them! But the attrition is enormous.

The first informational call is key. People adopt for many reasons. For some callers, their first inquiry about adoption comes at the end of a painful journey that may include illness, infertility, degrading medical procedures, or unbearable loss. When making their first inquiry, applicants noted they wanted to obtain accurate information and to be treated well. Workers also mentioned the need for sensitivity.

Agencies often do not handle that first call well. Parents reported their initial contacts with agencies were the most difficult aspect of the process for two reasons: First, callers often had difficulty reaching the right person, being sent to voice mail or transferred from one person to another. Second, agency personnel answering the first call are often clerical staff with inadequate knowledge of the process, or the focus of the initial call is to screen out “inappropriate” applicants rather than to welcome prospective adoptive parents. Applicants who made a strong initial connection with a worker were best able to tolerate the inevitable frustrations of the process. This connection was often the “make or break” factor for prospective parents.

The emphasis is too often on weeding out applicants rather than recruiting them. Some agencies have procedures that are far more heavily weighted toward screening out inappropriate applicants rather than recruiting, and supporting, good prospective parents. Two examples: multipage questionnaires that must be filled out before callers may attend informational meetings; and informational meetings that begin with fingerprinting and focus on technical restrictions about who can adopt, rather than on the rewards and challenges of adopting a child from foster care.

Parents are generally satisfied with training and homestudy. Adopting a child who has been placed in foster care because of abuse or neglect is inherently challenging. The great majority of parents who completed the adoption training process reported being pleased with the preparation they received. Although some said their trainings portrayed the children in an overly negative light, most felt they had a better understanding of, and greater sensitivity toward, the children they would be adopting.

The attrition rate rises sharply as prospective families go from initial call to adoption. The research indicates states annually receive about 240,000 inquiries a year from prospective parents regarding the adoption of a child from foster care. Complications in data collection result in significant numbers of “general applicants” being classified as foster parents who adopt their foster children. However, using the state definition of general applicants, only one in 28 people who call for information about the adoption of a child from foster care eventually adopt such a child. Even under a broader definition of “general applicant,” the percentage that complete the process clearly is very small.

The recommendations are pretty commonsense: handle initial calls better, separate screening and training, try to work out a buddy system. I didn't think before about the screening and training issue. Basically, prospective parents fear their social worker may be the one who judges whether they are good enough to receive a child. It's a tricky situation because they may not honestly express their hopes, fears and expectations for fear of being judged not good enough. It makes more sense to have two stages. Once you are screened, you are assured you are "worthy" enough and then you can feel more secure about communicating what you can and can't handle.

My experience: the paperwork is pretty daunting, and I am going through a private agency that holds our hands much more than the country office would. The agency has been very welcoming and informative. From the very beginning they were inclusive and said that things like marital status or being a same-sex couple or home-ownership status did not disqualify you. Minor criminal records/youthful indiscretions would not disqualify you, and neither would illness, although they would be taken into account during the process. Our experience may have been very different if we had dealt directly with a state agency.

The written application process has been extremely stressful and emotional, and I consider myself a fairly articulate person who enjoys writing. It would be an order of magnitude more difficult for someone who had less experience in writing and less education. This is one aspect that needs serious improvement. I believe state agencies maybe should have special sessions between classes -- application workshops -- to help people work on writing about their family. I don't believe being articulate in written form is strongly correlated with good parenting.

The study mentions that most potential applicants do not have a college degree. Given the horrendous state of public education in Georgia, that means they are frequently semi-literate. I taught Comp 101 at a tech college once and was shocked at the level of writing skills. I'm not even talking about the proper use of a colon... I mean knowing what nouns and verbs are and how to put together sentences. These people may be extremely articulate in their speech and debate the most advanced concepts, but poor education has crippled their writing. I think that the state adoption process scares off a lot of people who don't have a college education, and in the process removes some people who might have been great parents. I've heard anecdotes from other prospectives that here in Georgia, during some classes, social workers need to "hand-hold" parents and almost ghost-write their applications because their writing skills are so poor.

I believe people should be forced to confront tough questions while in the adoption process, but if they communicate better verbally, they should have someone interview them to help them translate that into written form. This should be budgeted as a regular procedure, not a last-ditch resort by an agency desperate to get more qualified parents.

Here are some demographics on who is interested in using the system.

Data from the NSFG describe the women who reported they were currently seeking to adopt as disproportionately married (82 percent) and either sterile or with impaired fecundity (73% sterile). Two-thirds (67%) of these women were 35 or older and roughly the same number (67%) had had a prior birth. Less than a quarter of them (22%) had a college degree. The majority of women seeking to adopt were white (51%); 21% were Hispanic and 19% were black.

I noticed from our classes that a lot of the couples are "second-nesters". They have grown children who have just left the home and are ready to start again, but don't feel the need to adopt a small baby.

Given the demographics of inner Atlanta, more than 2/3 of our class is black and the rest are white except for me. There are no Hispanics. There are actually a lot of Hispanics in Atlanta, and I believe Georgia has the fastest-growing Hispanic population in the U.S., but they are such new arrivals that they have not really integrated into the city services yet.

Most respondents to the NSFG who were currently seeking to adopt reported that they would prefer to adopt a single child who is young and has no physical or mental disability (Chandra et al. 1999). However, a substantial share of respondents reported that they would “accept” a child who looks similar to children available from the foster care system. For example, 56% of persons seeking to adopt said they would accept a child aged 6 to 12 and 37% a child 13 years old or older. Of those seeking to adopt, 83% reported they would accept a child with a mild physical or mental disability and 33% a child with a severe disability. Two-thirds (66%) of adoption seekers reported they would accept a sibling group. Moreover, the vast majority of adoption seekers reported they would consider adopting minority children. Of all women seeking to adopt, 79% reported they would accept a black child and 90% other non-white children.

Very little information has been published on the characteristics of persons adopting foster care children. AFCARS data indicate that two-thirds (67%) of the foster children who are adopted, are adopted by married couples. Data from a small-scale study of persons adopting special needs children found that the majority were white (69%), married (84%), had not graduated from college (72%), and were either the child’s foster parent (43%) or relative (10%) (Rosenthal, Groze, and Curiel 1990). Children adopted by minority adoptive parents were more likely to be adopted by relatives, foster parents, single parents, or mothers who did not graduate college (Rosenthal et al. 1990).

About two-thirds of the class are straight couples. Out of a large class we have only a few singles, one man and one woman. We have both types of same-sex couples. Because Georgia is in many respects a regressive state these couples have no right to dually adopt; they are officially treated as single men or women who just happen to live with someone that also needs to be certified and go through all the classes. All of the adoption workers are very inclusive, it's just that the state law is not.

Some parts of the adoption process are particularly vulnerable to worker unresponsiveness. For example, early studies documented the failure of adoption agencies to implement culturally sensitive recruitment strategies and eligibility standards for potential minority adopters. In the past, African American adoption seekers frequently did not meet income, housing, marital status, or other standards that qualified people for adoption (Day 1979; Herzog et al. 1971). Even when adoption standards were not culturally insensitive, researchers noted that most social workers dealing with adoption were white and that these workers frequently used white, middle class norms (i.e., size of home, family structure, education, and income needed to be “good” parents) to evaluate prospective parents. While many agencies addressed these issues and made significant improvements to their practices with minority adoption seekers, researchers continue to identify barriers to the recruitment

We went to one other agency orientation that specializes in recruiting minority parents. The orientation was very informative and I'm glad we went, but we didn't really fit in there because it was really laser-focused on African-Americans. I felt like it would almost hold up the classes to be inclusive of us... "oh, except for atlasien and atlasien's husband..." We thought about signing up anyway, but the dealbreaker was that the agency was located much farther away than the agency we ended up with.

At least in Atlanta, I think there has been a huge amount of improvement done in recruiting African-American parents. Even though officially African-American children above the age of 1 are considered "special needs", in reality this is changing. A healthy infant to toddler of any race will be placed very quickly, and the workers will have a choice of several homes. They will not really have to wait. This sounds to me like a great indicator of success in recruiting African-American parents.

It is not the case in Atlanta that social workers dealing with adoption are mostly white. I have only dealt with a few that are white; the large majority are black.

More information on where and why people drop out of the process:

In most states, officials estimate that a smaller number of persons who begin the home study process fail to complete it; in 23 states, fewer than 25% drop out at this point and in 8 states, between 25 and 50 percent drop out. States offered many reasons why applicants fail to complete the home study process. These reasons tend to fit into four categories: 1) Applicants do not want the children available for adoption or decide they cannot handle special needs children (22 states); 2) Applicants experience a change in their lives such as the birth of a child or a divorce, or the spouses cannot agree on the decision to adopt (14 states); 3) Applicants were eliminated due to agency concerns (11 states); and 4) Applicants found the process to be too burdensome (11 states). Of interest, states estimating that a low proportion fail to complete the home study process are more likely to contract out home studies (13 of the 23 compared to 3 of the other 13). It may be that financial incentives encourage private agencies to find ways to increase the completion rate or to select parents who are most likely to complete the process.

This makes sense to me. I don't believe the government should outsource things out of general principle, but in this case it sounds better to separate certain functions in the adoption process. The state should be able to concentrate on the needs of the child, not on balancing them with the needs of the adoptive parent. Likewise the potential adoptive parent, after being screened, needs to have someone they know is in their corner and understands their needs. An overloaded worker who doesn't separate functions might get to the point where they think "Well, this couple has some issues but there is one of my children who just really needs a home so badly now, if I fudge the home study just a tiny bit I could make a match" and then the match is bad and ends up disrupting.

The hazy lines between "general" adoption, relative adoption and foster-to-adopt:

States’ reliance on foster parents, relatives, and general applicants as adoptive resources varies greatly. As reported in the 1999 AFCARs data:

• In 11 of the 43 states (including the District of Columbia as a state) that provided data, foster parents accounted for more than 75% of foster care adoptions in FY 1999. In another 11 states, foster parents accounted for fewer than half of foster care adoptions.

• In 12 states, relatives accounted for less than 5% of children adopted but more than one quarter of all adoptions in 10 states.

• In 9 states, general applicants accounted for less than 10% of all children adopted, but in 9 other states, they accounted for more than 40%. The true extent of this variation is difficult to assess because of the practice in some states of converting general applicants to foster parents to enable the adopting parents to take advantage of adoption subsidies and the likelihood that general applicants will become foster parents because they believe it will improve their chances to adopt. In response to our survey of states, adoption officials estimate that:

• In 11 states, less than 25% of general applicants become foster parents to adopt.

• In 11 states, officials estimated this percentage to be between 25 and 50.

The number one problem I hear online potential adopters express with the foster care system is that they cannot handle the lack of permanence. I think public agencies do a horrible job of explaining that people can adopt children whose parental rights have already been terminated: once placed in your home, they will NOT be taken out again. On the other hand, general or straight adoption is a hard path. As the study shows, some people will end up converting to foster-to-adopt. Our agency does a few legal risk placements where TPR is scheduled very soon. This means that the period of uncertainty would be measured in weeks and months, not years. We have still not decided whether to do legal risk or not, but it has been explained that this is often the only way to get very young children placed with you.

State agencies should more clearly delineate and explain the different statuses prospective parents can have: Adoption, Foster to Adopt, Foster with prospect of Adoption. Some people will want to be able to move around within those categories, some people will want to move around but not really have the psychological/emotional resources to do so, and others will strongly prefer to stay in one category only.

Ending Note:

Last night my mother observed me beating my head against the table over the paperwork. She told me it was making her angry. "You shouldn't have to go through this. Of course you'll be perfect parents! They should just give you a baby... and RIGHT NOW!!"

I told her that entitlement perspective is becoming foreign to me after being enveloped in "Adoption World"! My mother raised the interesting point that someone could "game the system" and put all the right answers on paper, but still be a terrible parent. Ideally the home study and interviews weed out those people. Yet as we've seen in recent horror stories like the Holland murder, they don't work 100% of the time and some really unfit parents can slip into the pool.

Prospective parents in the middle of the process tend to start thinking of the social workers as fearsome almighty telepathic gatekeepers. In reality they are just human beings with specialized education, experience, and fortitude. I have to remind myself of this sometimes!

The Georgia Stealth Buddhist!

Whoah, my new congressman, Hank Johnson, is a Buddhist (Nichiren).

I didn't bother following his election returns last night, since I knew he would win. District 5 is quite solidly Democratic. The real battle was in the primary, where he defeated Cynthia McKinney. In the general election the same wingnut lady always runs and loses... the Republicans never bother to give her any money.

Today is the very first I heard about him being a Buddhist. I did notice that on his campaign site he had not put the usual "My family are proud members of ___ Church".

Now he is supposed to be the first ever Buddhist congressman. In a parallel story, Keith Ellison of Minnesota has become the first Muslim (Sunni) member of Congress.

The more religious minorities in Congress, the better, in my opinion. Religious minorities have more of a personal stake in preserving the separation of church and state.

What Us Democrats Really Want

This is absolutely hilarious. My favorite political cartoon of the season (it's not work safe).

Keyboard Kommando Komics presents…

Rollercoaster

Today started kind of flat. I felt really yucky at work, probably due to the disgusting and antiquated office heating system. Problems mounted as usual, but I dealt with them as usual.

At lunch, I went to the adoption office to get a piece of the paperwork finished. While I was getting it done, the worker reminded me that I might experience a long wait for our age range (0-5). She said that it worked in our favor that we were a two-parent couple and we were willing to take small sibling groups. I know this information already, but somehow being reminded of it always depresses me. Every time I think about a long wait I wonder, is it because we're not worthy as parents? How could we work to be better? We fill up the waiting as much as we can with classes, preparation, and work, but it's still hard not to beat myself up about it.

After work I met my husband at a special seminar that's outside of our regular series of classes. I had found it through a state-related website. The seminar was given by two attachment therapists on the topic of attachment, bonding and RAD. They had trained with Nancy Thomas and several other well-known people. The presentation included a grueling 15-minute video consisting of text and voices from the point of view of an attachment-disordered child. The class was very informative and we enjoyed it greatly once we got to the more positive stuff.

I ran into one of the participants, a foster father, after the end of the seminar. I almost never do this, but I had to ask him, "I notice you have a little bit of an accent and I was just wondering if it's Hawaiian?" He cheerfully responded that he was "A Mexarican and a little bit of everything… Hispanic, but people all over the world think I belong to their race or group." He specialized in troublesome teenagers.

I've had a few Mexicans mistake me for Mexican, but I don't think any of them were sober at the time!*

Today the rollercoaster went down and then back up again after class. Then down again when my husband and I had a short but very stupid argument about whether to buy chicken, pasta or chicken and pasta at the same time. We both get grumpy when we're hungry and tired. Tomorrow's going to be another busy day, what with voting and another class at night, but I'll try to do at least a link blog post.

*As a sidenote, there is a small Chinese diaspora presence in the far north of Mexico.

Please describe a typical schedule

Please describe a typical schedule for your family during the week and weekends, beginning at 7:00AM. Please indicate what your childcare plan (day care or after-school and any preliminary providers) would be based on the age of the child for whom you expect to provide care.

This was a toughie. It's one of the thousands of questions from the written component of our paperwork… which we have just completed after three hard weeks. Since both of us have bad handwriting, I've been typing out both our answers, then we cut them out with scissors, paste them into the form and copy the form. Answering the schedule question around the age of the child was horribly difficult, considering that we're looking at wide age range: from 0 to 5.

I'll describe my schedule today. It's simple, on theme and I'm too tired for a more substantive blog post. I guess it's good practice for learning how we'll need to schedule our time once children are involved.

7:30 AM: Outta bed! Showers, coffee and check internet.
9:00-9:30: Mom arrives. I got to Unitarian church with her. Meanwhile husband reads Sunday NY Times then goes out on an errand.
9:30-11:15: Election sermon. Minister exhorts everyone to do more political activism (for which party is unstated but obvious). Makes a great point about the Iraq war and says Jesus probably would have supported gay marriage.
11:15-11:30: Unitarian coffee and socializing.
11:30-12:00: Stop by Target.
12:00-12:15: Get back home, pick up dog, collect husband.
12:15-12:30: Drive to mom's house.
12:30-1:00: Eat brunch cooked by mom: herb crackers with tomato aspic made last night, then grits, bacon and scrambled eggs. More coffee.
1:00-3:00: All go doorbelling for local Democratic candidate. Husband meets strange man who looks exactly like Newt Gingrich.
3:00-7:30: Mom stays and starts work on the moveon.org phone bank; I go back home with husband and dog. Husband mows grass, I work on adoption application for at least four hours.
7:30-8:00: Check internet, write blog post.
8:00-8:30: Cook and eat some hamburgers with zucchini.
8:30-10:00: ????????
10:00-11:00: Watch The Wire on HBO.
11:00-11:30: Read a bit then go to sleep.

Cultural Connections and Stupid Tattoos

We got our physicals today, and made a pretty big dent in the paperwork. I started off the day in a truly horrible mood but now feel a million times better.

I've been writing short answers in my paperwork about maintaining biological connections, and also reading about maintaining cultural connections online. I've been wanting to write a post about how my experience growing up overlaps somewhat with that of a transracial adoptee. But that's going to be such a fragile and difficult point to write about that I'd rather build up to it slowly. With this post I'll start out arguing a point about cultural connections and how not to think of them: like a scorecard.

When people ask me if I speak Japanese, my instinctual reaction is to say "**** off!" but I never actually say this. I usually just smile politely and say "No, I used to speak it when I was a little kid, but I forgot it all." Then they'll say, "Oh, that's terrible, I bet you could get it back again so easily if you tried!" Then I'll say, "Actually, that's false. I tried learning it again as an adult when I was older and it was just as difficult for me as for anyone else. The one exception was that pronunciation came more naturally for me than for the other students, so my brain must have held on to certain sound patterns. Japanese grammar and vocabulary were still extremely difficult and I gave up before I even got to the intermediate stage. The saying that you never forget a language isn't based on any linguistic theory that I'm aware of. The human brain has an incredible capacity to forget things, you know." This is such a long and geeky response, it usually shoots that conversation topic right down.

Sometimes people ask the question out of honest, simple curiosity. Maybe they just want to find someone to practice Japanese with. Still, it's been used as a standard to measure me so many times that the whole question feels tainted. I've had people actually tell me I should start studying Japanese right away, with a pitying expression on their face.

White people aren't expected to get up on stage and show off their cultural scorecard. Someone named O'Brien isn't looked down on if they don't know how to say the toast in Gaelic. But I think they can still get caught up in the game, especially if they're at an emotionally vulnerable stage. Sticking with the Irish -- a good friend of my husband went through a highly unhealthy Irish phase. I don't see him anymore (he moved from Atlanta) but I hope he's gotten out of it by now. Anyway, he decided to get in touch with his Irish roots. A healthy way to do that would have been 1) reading lots of books by Irish nationals written from lots of different points of view 2) joining an Irish-American historical preservation society 3) traveling to Ireland with an open mind, speaking to Irish people there and visiting famous places.

Instead, he went out and got a large IRA tattoo on his arm. My husband, himself partly Irish, used to gave him hell about it. Then they got sick of having a terrorism argument every night so my husband gave up and ignored it. But the first time I met this friend I just couldn't resist messing with him. "So why do you have the Italian flag tattooed on your arm?" I asked.

We have another friend with much closer roots in Ireland. His father was a national and he's traveled there many times. He has no illusions that he feels and understands Irish issues as deeply as real Irish nationals, and thinks people like our IRA-tattoo-friend are incredibly misguided at best and sub-morons at worst.

The reason behind the tattoo must have been the cultural connection scorecard. This guy was in an emotional state where a good score was important, and looked on it as a way to jack up his Irish points. In his defense, I know he is really a good person and a smart person with just a few wires crossed.

Cultural connections shouldn't be thought of as a scorecard. It's great to study another language; you shouldn't be thought of as less of a person for studying a language that doesn't belong to your ethnic heritage. Also, if you do get caught up in the game, there really aren't any shortcuts or killer moves. It's better to stay out entirely, or at least maintain emotional distance, or you'll be horribly hurt. Try to learn for the sake of learning, not to save your soul. Now that I've gotten this piece of advice down to such a condensed form it sounds a bit trite and even Yoda-esque, but it has really saved me a lot of heartache since I started living by it.