This study explored Master of Social Work students’ attitudes towards transracial adoptions (TRA). The literature suggests that when children of color are transracially adopted, they are often deprived of the opportunity to learn and express their birth culture, and to develop a strong sense of self. The researchers decided to survey this population because MSW students are future foster and adoptive professionals. As such, they will have the opportunity to directly influence macro policies around TRA and adoptive families in micro practice. The researchers utilized a quantitative self-administered survey, with thirty-three questions to ascertain the attitudes of a diverse pool of MSW students at Cal State San Bernardino. Eighty-eight students completed the online survey. The researchers used descriptive and inferential statistics, including a t-test and one-way ANOVA to analyze the survey data. MSW students possess positive attitudes towards transracial adoption. Female respondents held significantly more positive attitudes towards transracial adoption than male respondents. Similarly, Black, White, and Latino/a participants held more positive attitudes towards TRA; however, these findings should be interpreted with caution due to the small number of Native American participants in our sample. We did not find significant differences in attitudes based on participants’ age, parental status, or life experiences related to diversity. Our findings are limited as our sample may not generalize to all MSW students or to social workers in general. The study suggests that MSW students, who are future social workers, view TRA as a positive option for children in need of families. Therefore, we suggest that schools of social work continue to provide and to expand their curriculum related to TRA so that future social workers are prepared to meet the needs of parents and children in TRA families.

Thesis advisor: Pratyusha Tummala-Narra / The purpose of this research is to learn about the racial identity development of White transracially adoptive parents through narratives about their adoption and parenting experiences. White racial identity development has rarely been explored within the context of transracial adoption, and existing research on transracial adoption tends to focus on the experiences of the adoptees. The present research attempts to address the need for more literature in psychology and other social sciences on the experiences of White parents adopting transracially. This research uses qualitative methodology, specifically narrative inquiry and conventional content analysis, to gather data from participants' (N=12) personal stories about their racial identity. This approach is inductive, naturalistic, and exploratory, focusing on participants' meaning making rather than causation, and fitting for an under-researched subject area (Denzin and Lincoln, 2005; Riessman, 2003). Narratives encourage the participants to talk about uncomfortable issues, which is critical, because literature indicates that White people experience discomfort when talking about their race (Altman, 2006; Foldy, 2005). As theoretical frameworks, White racial identity theory (Helms, 1990; 1995) and critical race theory help describe how parents cope with racial issues and racism from a psychosocial perspective. Issues examined include how institutional and cultural racism affects parents' experiences before and after parenting, what historical, social, and personal factors influence the parents' cognitive, affective and behavioral responses to racial stimuli, and how transformations take place in the racial identity development of the participants. Findings demonstrate that for the majority of participants, transracial adoption was a catalyst for increased awareness of White racial privilege and racism, and therefore for participants' racial identity development. This research contributes to theory, research, and practice. Participants' stories provide an understanding of the complex nature of racial identity development, and offer insight about how to better support transracially adoptive parents and their families. Implications for research, practice, and policy are discussed. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2014. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Counseling, Developmental, and Educational Psychology.

The purpose of this qualitative study was to investigate the identity development and adjustment among young adult Transracial adoptees. To achieve this purpose, I conducted two separate interviews with four Transracially adopted adults (ages 19 to 28) and spoke about their perceptions and experiences regarding their respective identities, and their adjustments in interpersonal contexts such as education. Although the participants have positive affect about their adoption placements, the participants continue to face challenges regarding their identities. However, as adults, the participants no longer dwell on such hurdles; they consider their identities to be continuously evolving, and their maturity has enabled their adjustment to be within their control. They suggest that a key aspect to this adjustment was their early knowledge of their adoption status. The participants also feel that educators should be aware of sensitivities with respect to Transracial adoption but not intervene specifically with Transracial adoptees except in the case of bullying. Future research should expand the current study by taking a more expansive view of the topic in respect to range of participants and data collection methods. / Thesis (Master, Education) -- Queen's University, 2011-01-30 17:58:19.429

The purpose of this study was to explore the lived experiences of elementary school counselors working with students adopted transracially (SATr) and their families. Previously, the voices of elementary school counselors have been omitted from the limited scope of professional literature available related to school counseling practice with SATr. Using a phenomenological method, research questions were developed to capture the perceptions, needs, and practices of elementary school counselors working with SATr and their families. The purposeful sample of 11 participants represented elementary school counselors from Northern and Southern Virginia and West Virginia. The participants had professional school counseling experience ranging from one to 27 years where they worked with a range of one to over 200 SATr and their families. A structured analysis process was used that included coding (i.e., open, axial, selective), writing textural and structural descriptions that were verified by participants, and developing composite summaries. This structured process uncovered the categories, sub-categories, and themes leading to a core category. Bracketing was used to maintain the trustworthiness of the research study. The findings included eight themes as continuums reflecting the various perceptions, needs, and practices of the participants in working with SATr and their families. The shared lived experiences can best be described as a 'CONTINUUM OF COMFORT AND CONFIDENCE' whereby elementary school counselors relied on using foundational counseling skills, understanding human development, applying multicultural competency, and being sensitive to adoption related practices. Additionally, they continually refined their practice strategies in being responsive to the needs of SATr and their families. Although the findings of this study cannot be generalized, the narratives of these elementary school counselors offer important insight and generate recommendations for practice. Salient recommendations include frequent collaboration among school and mental health counselors, the need for elementary school counselor advocacy to promote acceptance and inclusion of SATr and their families, and the necessity for counselor educators to include coursework on transracial adoption. Future research with middle and high school counselors, SATr and their families who have used school counseling services, and professional development training will deepen our understanding for inclusive comprehensive, developmentally appropriate school counseling programs. / Ph. D.

The purpose of this transcendental phenomenological inquiry was to explore the experiences of adoptive parents who have Black transracially adopted children. More specifically, I sought to understand how the parents perceived their child's cultural and racial identity development and how they perceived the child-parent relationship. Therefore, I used the cultural-racial identity model created for transracial adoptees as a theoretical framework to answer the following questions: What are Black transracially adoptive parents' perceptions of their child's racial/cultural identity development? What are Black transracially adoptive parents' perceptions of the parent-child relationship? Upon approval from the Institutional Review Board, six transracially adoptive parents with Black transracially adopted children participated in this study. Participants engaged in a 60-minute interview that was transcribed and coded to develop themes consistent with other participants. There were six themes identified from the data: (a) experience of the child-parent relationship, (b) impact of trauma, (c) becoming a transracially adoptive parent, (d) cultural, racial, ethnic, identity development process (CREID), (e) encounters with microaggressions, and (f) cultural socialization practices. Implications and conclusions drawn from the themes were identified for transracially adoptive parents, counselors, counselor education programs, and transracial adoption researchers to inform culturally responsive practices when working within the adoption kinship network.

Las familias adoptivas transraciales en España: un estudio sociológico con documentos personales persigue explora el proceso de socialización cultural y racial en las familias españolas adoptivas transraciales. A través de sus propias narrativas, madres y padres adoptivos de niñas y niños de origen racial y étnico distinto a ellos, dan significado a su construcción familiar y al modo en que van a hacer frente al desafío de la paradoja racial y étnica por la adopción de sus hijos en países extranjeros.

Thesis advisor: Ruth McRoy / Thesis advisor: Summer Hawkins / Adoptive parenting contributes to the dramatic growth in lesbian and gay (LG) parenting. Research on adoptive families has mostly focused on heterosexual parent families and the limited research on LG parenting has primarily emphasized child adjustment outcomes. This three-paper dissertation utilized subsamples from a large (N=1616) and recent (2012-2013) comprehensive dataset, The Modern Adoptive Families Study, designed to compare family characteristics, experiences, and adjustment outcomes across different types of adoptive families, especially families headed by sexual minority parents. The Minority Stress model is used to frame a deeper understanding of parenting processes in heterosexual and lesbian and gay parent adoptive families. This framework takes into account the potential for families, led by sexual minority parents, to encounter discrimination and suggests processes may exist within the family to help buffer interpersonal and systemic bias. Paper 1 used logistic regression to examine the associations of adoptive parents’ satisfaction with their mental health services and their pediatrician. Pediatrician satisfaction was specifically related to the parental perception of their provider’s understanding of their minority status; based on 1) adoptive family status, 2) parental sexual orientation, and 3) transracial adoption status. Overall, 51% of the sample of parents who sought mental health services reported satisfaction. Satisfaction was positively associated with being a gay father, having a higher household income, and having a child whose race was identified as Asian. Satisfaction was negatively associated with having a child older than 11 years old. Of parents who reported on their satisfaction with pediatricians, 82% of parents reported satisfaction. Having a higher household income was positively associated with respondents’ satisfaction. Paper 2 used confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to explore how findings from two racial socialization measures compared across parental sexual orientation, in transracial adoptive families. The scales measured parental endorsement of cultural competency pertaining to race and related self-efficacy enacting racial socialization practices. In Paper 3, cultural socialization theory was used to investigate parents’ endorsement of socialization related to being raised in a same-sex headed family with two newly developed scales using exploratory factor analysis (EFA). Results of these studies will help to inform policy and practice by addressing critical questions impacting a growing number of adoptive families, especially those headed by sexual minority parents. Contributions to the literature include findings about parenting practices, perceptions, experiences, and relationship dynamics within lesbian, gay, and heterosexual adoptive parent families. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2018. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Social Work. / Discipline: Social Work.

The following research proposal was meant to identify concerns and desired resources for transracial foster families based on the perspective of social workers. This study utilized a qualitative design and included face-to-face interviews with social workers currently working at Ark Homes Foster Family Agency. Interviews included nine social workers who had clients who were transracial foster families. Data analysis included audio recordings and written documentation. Transcription of all interviews followed after data collection was received. Findings from this study showed that social workers working with transracial foster families felt culturally competent to provide information to their clients. This study also found that the majority of social workers did not feel a need for their agency to provide additional trainings in cultural competence and that bringing the topic up to their supervisor on a need-be basis was suitable. Policy implementation surrounding social workers and transracial foster families could include foster care placement stability. If policy was implemented that required foster parents to support their foster child’s racial identity on a weekly basis, then that could increase the bond between foster child and foster parent. Policy implementation in this way could minimize the disagreements between the foster child and foster parent and have an increased likelihood of placement stability.

The term intimacy brings to mind a type of familiarity between people that surpasses mere affection. Intimacy suggests a deeply personal relationship based on shared experiences, love, and the pursuit of common goals. The intimate lives of families, shared in the domestic sphere, are often thought to be beyond the reach of the state. By contrast, this dissertation demonstrates that intimacy has been the focus of the state through Indian Act legislation and child welfare programs that have uniquely intersected through the lives of First Nations and Métis women and children. Aboriginal transracial adoption provides a particularly vivid example of state sanctioned intimacy. Programs such as the Adopt Indian and Métis program, later known as AIM, REACH and the American version, the Indian Adoption Program, (IAP), created intimate bonds between white families and Aboriginal children. Transracial adoption represents a revolution in integration. The period of integration that took shape after the Second World War manifested in increased interventions of social welfare workers who encountered Aboriginal women and children in various domains. Race, gender, and space are interrogated through exploring Aboriginal women’s responses to the opportunities provided by increased access to child welfare programs, as well the limitations and serious handicaps that came as a consequence of their particular gendered and racialized location. In Saskatchewan, the CCF government under the direction of Tommy Douglas sought to utilize “technologies of helping”, a secular therapeutic social welfare approach to the problem of Métis marginalization and poverty through the Department of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation to effect Métis integration. Initially envisioned as series of government supported colonies to which Métis were relocated, the Métis policy eventually evolved to focus primarily on Métis children, and tangentially on Métis women. The Adopt Indian and Métis program, coming on the heels of failed relocation policies, increasing urban migration, and the compulsory enfranchisement of Indian women who married non-Indian partners, sought to present transracial adoption of Aboriginal children into non-Aboriginal homes as a potential solution to the breakdown of Indian and Métis families. The television advertisements and newspaper articles alerted the Saskatchewan public to the need for their assistance to love and care for needy children. This dissertation foregrounds concepts of Aboriginal kinship to illuminate the responses of First Nations and Métis leaders and activists to transracial adoption. Often characterized as “cultural genocide”, statistics reveal that there were in fact fewer adoptions than other forms of state based child caring provided to Aboriginal children. These concepts of kinship have been useful to provide a connection between calls for Aboriginal control of child welfare, sovereignty, and transracial adoption that emerged in the US and Canada in the latter half of the twentieth century. The tensions between conceptual and political goals and gendered manifestations of colonization have yet to be reconciled. Utilizing feminist ethnohistorical methodology along with oral histories from activists and Aboriginal peoples, this study proposes that the child welfare system provided both opportunities and oppression. Following the 1951 Indian Act revisions provincial law became applicable on reserve, and child welfare services were provided to Indian people who moved to urban areas. The Adoption Act supplanted former departmentally sanctioned Indian custom adoptions. Indigenous political leaders and activists have sought different methods to restore colonized kinship systems. These legal kinship systems express not only a uniquely Aboriginal identity, but serve to embed Indigenous children into their respective Indigenous political entities, simultaneously reaching backwards and forwards through time.

In South Africa, transracial adoption continues to be an option for many parents wanting to adopt a child. Previous research on transracial adoption has focused mainly on the psychological implications and the racial identity development of transracial adoptees. This qualitative study aimed to explore parental couples’ experiences of transracial adoption and was located within a phenomenological framework. In-depth interviews were conducted with three couples and the data were analysed using Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). Six themes were generated from the data. These include the aspects that were involved in beginning their journey to adoption, the pre and post adoption process, the avenues of support that were available to the participants, important aspects relating to the adopted child, the challenges that were experienced as unique to transracial adoption, and the implications of race in a transracial adoption. The implications of the findings for adoption organisations and future research are discussed. / Mini Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria 2017. / Psychology / MA / Unrestricted