Embracable, Teachable Moments
“We don’t give up our babies,” she said.
These words were spoken to me by a very, very dear friend who is an African American senior (senior=older than 65).
She said this in response to me telling her about our decision to adopt after three years of trying to conceive. I was talking to her about the pain and heartbreak of letting go of one dream and the mixed feelings I had about building another.
During our conversation, I asked for her help. For many years, she had worked with young African- American and Latino mothers and I thought that she may be able to help us with our adoption outreach.
As I’ve mentioned before, Nadia and I have decided to pursue private adoption, which means that a birthmom (or dad) will have to chose us from thousands of families who are also pursuing private domestic adoption. So I consider Nadia and me the equivalent of a needle in a haystack.
Anyhoo, back to my friend.
Given her connections to birth moms of color, I was asking her to be on the look out for women who may be looking for birth parents. And her response was “we don’t give up our babies”
“Huh?” I replied.
“Yeah, we don’t give up our babies.”
I waited two beats to process my reaction to what she was saying.
One. Two.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, in my 30 years of working with young mothers, I learned that African Americans and Latinos don’t put their kids up for adoption.”
I took a deep breathe.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
This time I wasn’t going to let this go. I don’t think I gave the best response but I’m not ashamed of my response either.
“In my limited experience with adoption”, I began, “I’ve learned that there were many, many African American and Latino children that were put up for adoption. So many in fact that domestic transracial adoptions have really exploded in the past 10 years.”
There simply are not enough families of color that are in a position to or open to adopting a newborn or older African American child.
I found some stats but they pertain mostly to foster care. I wasn’t able to find stats on the number of African American infants adopted last year, but based on the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS), in 1998 approximately 64% of children waiting in foster care were of minority background; 32% are white. Out of all foster children waiting for adoption 51% are black.
I know that my friends point is not adequately addressed by the stats above. Obviously, having a child forcibly removed from your home and put into child into foster care is not the same as voluntarily creating an adoption plan for domestic infant adopti0n, but I think that the data overwhelming shows that African American children desperately need stable homes. Adoption planning is one option to providing that kind of stability.
Additionally, in my experience, I’ve encountered several agencies that have created separate programs for African American and bi-racial kids to deal with their demand for adoptive parents. Some agencies even have different pay scales to encourage waiting couples to adopt what are referred to as “biracial” ( in this case, children born with African American genes mixed with another ethnicity) or “full African-American”, kids with two African American parents, like myself, which happen to be the kids least wanted in this world.
So my dear friend was dead wrong. But her reaction speaks to the fact that I that there is a lot of shame and ignorance about what’s really going on with African American domestic adoption, particularly in communities of color.
In the coming months I plan to do more research on African American infant adoption. Because the truth of the matter is that we “do give up our own” for myriad reasons and, thankfully, there are people out there who are anxiously waiting to embrace them mind, body and soul.
I do think the discourse about single parenting and adoption relinquishment is different in major respects in different communities (racial, religious, and other!). But, for instance, my (African-American) partner Lee was adopted in the ’60s, though it was by her biological grandparents rather than non-relatives, and this isn’t a rare story at all. The woman you spoke to would probably have acknowledged that but still thought of it as something wholly different from non-relative adoption. And yet I don’t think the pain of the experience for Lee’s birthmother Leah was significantly different than if she’d lost Lee to the state or placed her in a different sort of adoption; she was able to get the benefits of an open adoption experience but also the negatives of knowing her biological child was being raised by the in-laws who didn’t really like her…. It’s complicated no matter what, and claiming that relinquishment never happens must be hurtful and saddening for firstmoms of color.
I forget, are you and Nadia focusing on any particular ethnic backgrounds for the baby you hope to adopt? Although we’re trying to adopt an older child, that has been a really difficult decision for us. We’re focusing on black (and, like in infant adoption, “multiracial including black” typically counts as “black” in foster care) boys because they’re statistically the least likely to find homes, but we’re open to anyone who’s a good fit.
1Very interesting. I know the agency we used has a really hard time finding enough families to adopt the AA babies/birthmoms they have.
2I hope it happens soon for you. Our baby was born in June and she’s more joy than we could’ve ever dreamed.
I am new to BlogHer and I am looking through the infertility blogs on there, I absolutely love your blog!!! I look forward to following you.
Love, Hugs and Prayers,
3Tiffany
I am amazed, and yet NOT, at how some people respond when we get into an adoption discussion. Sometimes I wonder if I am really up for this because I recognize that I am going to have a life of teaching, leading and sharing the facts about adoption and dispelling stereotypes and ignorance. I understand how most are well-meaning people, but sometimes they aren’t and I hope that I will be able to handle that, especially when those moments happen in front of my child.
Happy ICLW,
4~nicole
That is so very fascinating. I have heard what your friend has said in the past but I will admit that i never thought about it in comparison to the number of children in foster care. I hope your research aids in the success of your journey.
5Wow. just. WOW. What a difficult conversation.
Happy ICLW
6Interesting topic. As someone looking into adoption I was told that if I was open to a minority child I would be able to be matched quicker which would say to me that there are more minority children then white but I never thought about asking about the percentages or anything.
7In my experience having worked with parents where we provided parenting, domestic violence and anger management classes mostly to people who had been court ordered and their children may or may not be in the system and working with a community Elder Council. I noticed there is a portion of the community who would prefer to put on the best facade so as to not attract any negative attention and/or possibly simple being optimistic. I don’t see it as a negative thing as long as it doesn’t block the discussion of here is a problem that we need to find a way to fix.
I wish you the best of luck on your adoption journey. I love your “teachable moments”. It is so important that more people understand IF and adoption.
ICLW
That seems like such an odd thing to say… or at leas an odd way to put it. Brava, though, for ‘teaching’ people about adoption whenever possible…
ICLW
8Fantastic read, so happy to have found you today.
ICLW
9Rach
http://www.thegalwho.wordpress.com
Wow, I always thought that too until I was told to move from bi-racial to African American child if I wanted to speed things up…… and lo and behold – !
10Strange huh, when all one hears about in county and private adoptions of of latino and aa/mixed newborns being placed. the first commenter talked about kinship adoptions, which I agree is much more common in communites of color.
11I love these teachable moment posts.
When we first began the process for our domestic adoption we tried to initiate a conversation with our lawyer about race. We are both white, but didn’t necessarily want or need to adopt a white child. Our main concern in regards to potentially becoming a transracial family was that perhaps the CHILD would someday prefer that his/her family had not been transracial (i.e. we were afraid that one day our brown child would look at us and think ‘oh my god , what am I doing with these clueless white people’?). Before we could even begin a discussion, however, our lawyer cut us off with “African American mothers won’t pick you…and they don’t tend to place”.
Well, okay.
And yet in the 14 months wait before we met our son, we were ONLY chosen by African American mothers/expecting mothers. We were ultimately chosen three times. The first two matches did fail, and both of the failures were pretty devastating. After the second our lawyer said she was not comfortable matching us with another African American woman (was she attributing the match failures to race?). We were in the process of researching new adoption professionals who would allow us to match with an African American woman when our son’s mother chose us.
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