The Effects of Interracial Adoption on Children The adoption of children by parents of another race has been a topic for controversy for a while now (Perry, 2011). Even though it has been a controversy many people still adopt transracially whether others disagree or not. According to Kreider & Raleigh (2016), the practice of adopting a nonwhite child by white parents has existed for over fifty years and a recent report shows that one in every six children who are adopted are foreign born. A numerous number of children adopted are Asian or Black. With transracial adoption comes a lot of challenges and difficulty, for example black and biracial transracial adoptees often have challenges in life. Therefore, transracial adoption has negative …show more content…
Even if the process is successful, it would be very hard and challenging for both the adoptee and the adoptive parents. Some challenges include, low levels of English, lack of interpreters in U.S. schools, disadvantage of racial and ethnic minority status, and other challenges depending on their age (Thomas, 2016). This may cause the transracial adoptee to have a hard time to understand the people around them and cause them to perform poorly in school. Children who arrived in their teens were most likely to do more poorly in school than those who arrive in the U.S. when they are below the age of six. Not only do transracial adoptees do poorly in school, but it could affect them mentally too. Studies on the health, social, and psychological outcomes of transracial adoptive children portray how they will adapt to their new families (Thomas, 2016). Even if a child looks happy you may never know what happens at school or how they feel internally. Children may be bullied and face racial discrimination. Studies have shown that racial discrimination causes low self-esteem, stress, and depressive symptoms (Dolan, 2015). Another problem that could be involved with transracial adoption is child trafficking. Many people argue that adoption practices that involve forceful acts or fraud is a form of child trafficking (Brown & Roby, 2016). This argument has brought upon attention towards problems with unethical activities in intercountry adoption. Adopting a child and doing such unethical acts towards them should not be allowed. Before placing a child into the hands of someone else their background should be thoroughly examined before they are approved. They should have a trial period where the adoptee can bond with their potential adoptive parents to see if they match because the child's happiness is the top priority for the process. Children should not just be adopted just because they were