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.