The Interracial Adoption Option: Creating a Family Across Race

Marlene G. Fine is a Professor of Communications at Simmons College in Boston. She is also a facilitator for the YW Boston City-Wide Dialogues on Race and Ethnicity. Fern L. Johnson is a Professor of English and a member of the Communication and Culture faculty at Clark University in Worcester. The authors are parents of two adopted African American sons and live in Massachusetts, USA.

Acknowledgements. Introduction. 1. Making the Decision to Adopt a Child of Another Race: When Birds of a Feather Might Not Flock Together. 2. Talking about Race and Adoption with Others: You're Doing What?!! 3. Helping Your Child Develop a Healthy Racial Identity: 'Daddy, Why Am I Brown and You're Pink?'. 4. Talking about Race and Adoption with Your Child: 'Mommy, Who's My Real Daddy?'. 5. Navigating School: Homework for Parents. 6. Creating a Support System for You and Your Child: It Takes a Village. Index.

'Rarely does a book address the particular challenges of parenting children adopted into a family of a different race. This work eloquently weaves together cutting edge scholarship on racial identity development in children with pragmatic approaches to parenting transracially. Fine and Johnson offer the reader, both parent and adoption professional, a highly accessible map to traverse this previously unexplored terrain of transracial adoption. They provide rich vignettes that boldly and poignantly illustrate the preparation and skills necessary for all involved in the field of transracial adoption. This is a highly valuable contribution to our understanding of adoption across races.' - Kathleen Reardon, Ph.D., MSW, Founder and Co-director, Crossroads Counseling Associates, Harvard, Massachusetts, USA 'Much more than an excellent guide to transracial adoption, The Interracial Adoption Option: Creating a Family Across Race is an invitation to the opportunity, joy, and richness of becoming a multiracial family. It underscores how critical it is for white parents of children of color to acknowledge their own privilege and to make a lifelong commitment to guiding their children in developing a healthy racial identity - and provides a wealth of concrete ideas, examples, and resources for doing so. Fern Johnson and Marlene Fine seamlessly combine the wisdom of scholars with the warmth of loving, adoptive mothers in a beautifully written and accessible book that blends exhaustive research with the fullness of lived experience.' - Kara Mikulich, Adoptive Mother 'Based on my experience as the adoptive parent of an African-American son, this book succinctly captures the unique rewards and challenges of adopting a child of a different race. Many dilemmas and decisions explored by the authors mirrored my own journey, and made me wish that this book had been written twenty years ago. Their informative and straightforward discussion offers insights for those considering forming a multiracial family through adoption, and for those seeking to understand and support such families. It fills an important gap in the adoption literature and offers insights for all involved with transracial adoptive families.' - Linda Pursley, Adoptive Parent