35 years ago there were tons of adopted Korean kids in my affluent town in New Jersey. My daughter’s best friend in elementary school was one. She was put into an orphanage by her parents, who couldn’t afford her. The only effect we noted was that she tended to gobble her food, since she said she remembered being hungry all the time. My daughter keeps up with her and many of the others, and there seems to be no ill effect - in fact they have all done very well.
After it became difficult to adopt from Korea many parents adopted from Colombia, and many of those kids seemed to have developmental problems eventually. The parenting level was about the same, but perhaps the set of kids put up for adoption was different.
This is purely anecdotal, I haven’t seen any statistics.
Some friends of mine were looking to adopt 25 years ago. They had a very difficult time, because she was Jewish, and he was not, so a lot of religious-affiliated agencies would not work with them, and pretty much all European adoptions were closed to them. They finally found a child with the then-new concept of open adoption. At the time, very few adoptive parents were interested in open adoption, but it seemed fine to them, and it has worked out great.
This happened to my cousin. She was adopted by my aunt and uncle as a teen. She languished in the foster care system after being given up at birth, but having drugs in her system. Couples refused to take a chance on her, because she’d had a single seizure during her detoxing. But she was put on anticonvulsants, and left on them for years, just because of the medical neglect a lot of foster kids suffer. Turned out she didn’t need them anymore, but she had to be very slowly weaned off them at that point. She was very heavy, mostly because of the side-effects of the drugs, and she had normal intelligence, but wasn’t doing well in school, cause, you know, foster care, general neglect, and being on anticonvulsants.
She was very lucky to end up with my aunt and uncle. They got her on an IEP, and into resource, brought up her grades, got her off the drugs, and she lots like 80lbs. (plus still grew another few inches). She’s beautiful now, and even though it took her an extra year to finish high school, she got into college, and then grad school.
So a lot of those fears are unfounded, but kids get buried under them. I’m sure for every kid like my cousin who gets lucky with great foster parents, there are hundreds who drop out of school, and struggle all their lives.
Not to mention, it’s possible that a child who looks Asian could have been adopted domestically.
I don’t blame you at all. I have a cousin who is an Ashkenazic Jew, with curly dark hair, and E. European looks, married to a man who is half Ethiopian Jew, and half Sephardic. When she is out with their kids without him, people often assume the kids are adopted. She hates that. People never assume the same thing about him when he is by himself with the kids.
Yes, this feels like “political correctness” to me, in that you are looking for reasons to be outraged by something, based off of the general consensus of strangers on a left-leaning message board.
People are very capable of making stupid assumptions.
My mom would take out her 3 oldest kids when we were toddlers (almost 50 years ago). The oldest had white-blond hair, the 2nd had dark hair, brown eyes and olive skin, and the 3rd very red hair and very white skin. People would ask her if they were all hers, and look at her funny when she said yes.
Even that doesnt always work out well. I have heard many stories of couples who had found a pregnant mother who wanted to give her child up for adoption, then last minute changed her mind and kept the kid. Meanwhile the new family was not only grieving but often out thousands of dollars for the medical bills.
THEN the mothers often insist on some sort of joint custody where they still get to see their kid and that can get messy if they need money or support.
No, its easier to do international adoptions.
Foreign adoptions seems to come in waves.
For a while it was kids from Vietnam.
Then Korea.
Then China.
Then Russia.
Then Guatemala.
Adoptions come in waves as the host countries have internal issues but after awhile they stop adoptions. Sometimes the host countries become embarrassed to see all their children being adopted by westerners and wonder why they cant care for their own children. It can be very hairy for the families when the doors are about to be closed. I know of a family in Guatemala whom they basically were told to take the kid and jump on a plane asap because the government was about to stop adoptions.
I dont know but I think adoptions are mostly from Africa now.
Yes, my guess is if the children were wanted for domestic adoption, then they would have been adopted locally.
It is probably the children that are not wanted locally that are allowed to be adopted internationally.
Returning to this -
For certain values of “some”, maybe. Of course it is also true that the notion that some folks want babies for bullshit reasons is not a made-up one. Depending on what one considers bullshit maybe more often for parents of biological children than is the case for adoptive parents.
Are parents “guilty of, well, something?” Well maybe some people do want babies because they are cute. And some parents are guilty of lots of things, of various ignoble motivations, of never wanting/intending to be a parent, even of neglect and abuse. Does it therefore “trouble you” when you see a parent with a child?
The op puts up something quite “detractive” about white couples who have adopted Asian babies. Your contributed an anecdote of validation of the op. How should the intent of that be understood?
Well if you wanted to know you could read post #38. What you think, about where international adoptions come from now, and about the sequence of waves, is wrong.
It’s OK if the adoptive parents respect Asian heritage. Not OK if the kids grow up putting ketchup on everything instead of sriracha.
Really? Why?
My friends’ son has absolutely zero interest in Korea, although his parents have provided ample opportunity for cultural exploration. He is an American citizen who just happened to be born in Korea. He actually is more interested in Celtic stuff.
Have I been wooshed? I’ve been wooshed, haven’t I. 
I dont know if they still do it but for awhile their were so many kids adopted from China the parents had their own social club/group where the kids could all meet each other and learn about Chinese culture.
Why? I mean no parent should let kids smother everything in ketchup but otherwise you’re both making sweepingly stupid statements about Americans and somewhat racist ones about Asians.
Sort of whooshed methinks. The concept is real even if presented humorously: it is important to at least expose the child to positive connections with the culture of their origin, without forcing it down their throats. That’s the balance your friends and most of us try to hit. My daughter has been raised within the culture of a Jewish family in a diverse community. Like your friend’s kid she has had little drive to attach to Chinese culture and had to be pushed some to do the little she did (maybe a bit more to the subculture of others adopted from China). But it was important for us to provide that ample opportunity and encouragement.
That’s not what I meant. I meant that there are plenty of people of Asian descent living in the US-- many of them are fifth generation. Anyway, some non-zero number of the girls or women must get pregnant and choose adoption every year. So an Asian-appearing child who is adopted could have been born here. In fact, now that I think about it, I even know of one. He’s half Asian, and half white, but he was Deaf, and adopted by a white Deaf couple I met at the Deaf club one evening. They had one biological child, and decided they wanted a Deaf child, so they went looking for a Deaf child to adopt, and found a boy who’d been surrendered at birth, but had not been adopted right away when he’d been discovered to be Deaf. He was about 8 months old when they took him in. He seemed to be doing very well. He was about 9 years old when I met them.
Mainly, I find that reasonable on account of the strong emphasis on not jumping to negative conclusions about particular people you don’t know based on something which is in no way inherently wrong, such as opening your home and family to a child who has none.
However, I would say there’s another side of the coin when it comes to viewing Asian babies differently than foreign or domestic babies of African descent. Which is that American society will arguably view them differently also. The criticism of ‘trans racial adoption’ like a lot of racial issues is sometimes extended to all races other than white. But also like most US racial issues it’s really mainly about black v white. An Italian American family adopting a baby from Latin America is really only ‘trans racial adoption’ in a superficial and/or political sense. The kid might very well later be assumed by casual observers to be theirs biologically. That’s only ‘trans racial’ in a view which is dogmatically in favor of group racial identity based on biology over individual identity as somehow a way to overcome racism.
In case of say a Chinese or Korean kid with a family of European descent, OK everyone will know that kid is adopted. And that is not of zero significance to a child’s life compared to a child who would only know they were adopted once told by their adoptive parents when ready. Nor is there zero racism toward Asians in American society. But there’s never been zero racism in any human society. We have to consider real differences in the scope of the problem of racism depending which races’ interaction we’re considering. IOW there’s no real reason IMO to think ‘trans racial adoption’ has similar dynamics for an Asian kid with white adoptive parents to adoption of a kid of of African descent by non-black parents. The latter might not be enough of a problem to discourage such adoptions, but anyway they aren’t the same, socially.
So if white prospective adoptive parents considering that there are more challenges to raising an adopted child of African descent are called, or it’s implied they are ‘racists’, when some elements on the left (for lack of a better term) say it’s a racial problem if they do adopt a child of African descent, then we come up against ‘racist if you do, racist if you don’t’, a sign something has gone wrong in the logic.
Can we compromise on Tabasco? 
Well that person the OP knows said it was. Frankly, I would have said “smart.”
I am a white guy with an adopted asian baby because I live in Asia and an asian baby was available. I would have taken any baby. There will be racial issues that come with this situation, but I am prepared (ing?) for that.
No, that stuff is an abomination vs Sriracha. Well, I do like Tabasco green sauce, but the original doesn’t hit my palate the way Sriracha (or Crystal for that matter) does. And I’m white trash, FWIW.
I LOL’d at the Sriracha reference. But yes, to be pedantic, Asian genes minus culture prolly doesn’t have a positive correlation with Sriracha vs Tabasco. Maybe Trump would want the gubmit to focus on this IMPORTANT question vs whatever made up drama of the day is. I could get behind that! :eek:
IIRC, it was a thing in Manhattan 10-20 years ago now. Vanity Fair article from 2008 is here - although China is a much different place now that 10 years ago (BTW, the economy has doubled since then).
Here is a link with Families With Children From China. Note: just a casual internet search, but looks like what the title says. Methinks trying to bond with similar families, and highlight some good parts of Chinese culture to identify with.