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 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.

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 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

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O presente trabalho se dedica ao estudo da adoção inter-racial, como importante mecanismo de preservação dos interesses das crianças e dos adolescentes abandonados e institucionalizados no país, dos adotantes e da sociedade em geral. A pesquisa tem início com a análise das normas nacionais e internacionais destinadas à proteção dos direitos das crianças, com especial enfoque aos princípios da dignidade da pessoa humana, do melhor interesse da criança, da convivência familiar e da afetividade. Fixado o regramento jurídico geral a respeito do tema, passa-se à análise do processo de adoção, com especial ênfase ao perfil dos interessados e à adoção inter-racial. Após detalhado estudo das teses favoráveis e contrárias a esta modalidade de adoção, com fundamento na doutrina norte-americana, comprova-se que, uma vez ultrapassados o preconceito racial e a resistência dos interessados à transparência da paternidade afetiva, a medida é extremamente vantajosa aos interesses não apenas dos adotados, como também dos adotantes, dos pais biológicos e da sociedade brasileira. Por fim, a pesquisa conclui que a adoção inter-racial, por promover um reconhecimento positivo dos envolvidos, representa importante mecanismo de inclusão social, de desenvolvimento humano, de prevenção da violência e de combate ao racismo. / The present study aims to examine transracial adoption as an important mechanism to preserve the interests of abandoned and foster care children and adolescents in the country, the adopters and society in general. The research begins with the analysis of national and international standards for the protection of children\'s rights, with a special focus on the principles of human dignity, the best interest of the child, family coexistence and affection. Once the general legal rules on the subject are set, the study goes forward to the analysis of the adoption process itself, with special emphasis on the profile of all the involved in the process and on transracial adoption. After a detailed study of the pros and cons of this type of adoption, based on North American doctrine, it was proven that, once overcome racial prejudice and resistance to the acceptance of affective paternity, this source is extremely advantageous to the interests of both adoptees and adopters, biological parents and Brazilian society. Finally, the research concludes that transracial adoption is an important mechanism of social inclusion, human development, violence prevention and combating racism as it promotes a positive recognition of those involved in this process.