Both My Parents Were Transracially Adopted - Weekend Wisdom

Question: Can you talk about how being transracially adopted effects how adoptee’s children were raised? Both of my parents were transracially adopted and I don’t feel like there’s anyone else who can share this unique experience and I just want to understand better.

Resources:

• Generational Impacts of Adoption
• Raising a Child Through Transracial Adoption (Resource page)
• Suggested Books for Adults on Transracial Adoption

Transcript

Please pardon any errors, this is an automated transcript.

Welcome to Weekend Wisdom by Creating a Family. This is the show where we answer
your questions. So first things first, please send us your questions. You can send
them to us either via an email at info @creatingafamily .org or there is a link in
the show notes and you can click on that. Either way, it will get to us and we'll
spend about, I don't know, five to ten minutes answering your questions. So please
send them to us because we really have been getting some great ones lately. So
today's question is from a listener in California where both of her parents were
trans -racially adopted. They said, "Can you talk about how being trans -racially
adopted affects the adoptees' children and how they raise their children?" Both of my
parents were trans -racially adopted, and I don't feel like there's anyone else who
can share this unique experience and I just want to understand it better. You know,
as I said, this is such an interesting question and you are right. It is a unique
experience and especially in your case, where both of your parents were trans
-racially adopted. As I am want to do, I did try to find some research on this and
did not find anything. So, this is all kind of what I think. It does seem to me
that there is so many potential impacts. One, you have a lack of generational family
health information, and you have it on both sides because both of your parents were
adopted. Your parents experienced that most likely, that they didn't have health
information, genetic health information for them, for their families. But now, you as
their child also don't have that information. And I read an interesting article on
Harlow's Monkey, which is written by a, it's a blog by a transracial adoptee. She's
Korean with white parents and her name is J. Ron Kim. She's also a professor and
who does research in this area. But this particular one, this quote, she says, "This
lack of family health information doesn't only affect me, it also affects my
children. And she's right. And so that's, that's one of the impacts. You know,
another impact is that when you were growing up and you had the ubiquitous family
tree assignments in school, you weren't able to fill it out from at least from the
biological family standpoint. Now, your parents also experienced that, but that also
passed down to you. Now, you may choose to do it through your adopted grandparents,
and many people do, and there's nothing wrong with that. But if you were trying to
reflect your biological family, you would be struggling to do that. Another impact
that comes with the fact that both of your parents were transracially adopted, which
I assume means they were a different race from their adoptive parents, is how it
impacted their racial identity development. And obviously, this depends on the
experience of your parents or the adoptive person within their adoptive family. But
trans -racially adopted adults tell us that they often have to tackle their racial
identity and how that forms and how it develops on their own. And depending on how
they handle that, it could impact how they raise their children and how their
children's racial identity is formed. So I think that could be another long -ranging
impact of having a trans -racially adopted parent. And the other one would be,
again, along the racial lines, how did they figure out how to handle discrimination
and racism? One would assume that they have figured it out, and so they are able
to pass that down to you, whereas their parents, who were of a different race,
may have struggled to do that. But if they are continuing to struggle with Handling
that then that would be something that would be impacting you as their child and in
addition to racial identity We should also throw in cultural identity And you could
say some of the same issues there that there would be struggles and how they would
handle that with their own children And here's an interesting one. You know, there's
so many different forms of multi -racial going on here This is not the case with
you because you're both of your parents were trans -racially adopted, and assuming
which I may be wrong, they may be of different races, but assuming they are of the
same race, this doesn't really directly apply to you. But often they were in a
multiracial situation. Transracial adoptee is in, by definition, a multiracial situation
where their parents are of a different race. And if they marry a person of not
their race, so of a different race from them. There's just a whole lot of different
levels of multi -raciality. I doubt that's a word, but that are going on,
that are being navigated, which could be a beautiful thing. It could be a really
interesting and broadening experience, but it's just, it's an impact. It was not
neither a good nor a bad one, but it's an impact. So those were some of the
impacts and ways that your parents' transracial adoption influenced your experience.
So I hope that's been helpful. Before everyone goes, let me remind everyone that
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three session, one and a half hours each. So, check it out at bitlybit .ly /prenatal
-exposure -training. And thanks for listening to this week's Week in Wisdom.
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