Understanding Transracial Adoption: Considerations and Best Practices for Adoptive Families
In approximately 40% of adoptions, the child is of a different race than their adoptive parents. Of those, about 90% involve white parents adopting a child of color. Additionally, around 50% of Black adoptees and 90% of Asian adoptees are adopted by white parents (NCFA, Adoption Statistics, 2025). These patterns reflect broader systemic realities, including the disproportionate number of Black children in foster care and the prevalence of international adoption from Asian countries.
Transracial adoption has increased significantly since the 1990s, in part due to legislation such as the Multiethnic Placement Act and subsequent policies aimed at reducing the amount of time children spend in foster care by allowing placements across racial lines. While these changes have helped more children find permanent homes, they have also introduced important considerations for adoptive families.
Identity, Loss, and Belonging
Grief and loss are inherently part of adoption. For transracial adoptees, this grief and loss include the additional loss of growing up outside the racial/ethnic culture of their birth family. This can make the normal developmental phase of identity formation and questioning more complex as they navigate the added layer of questions related to belonging, curiosity about their origins, and feelings of difference.
Race and culture are one of many important components of identity. From an early age, children notice differences between themselves and their families and communities. Many adult transracial adoptees have shared that they internalized feelings of being “different” or “less than”—not necessarily because they were explicitly told so, but because those differences were not acknowledged, affirmed, or discussed in meaningful ways (Learning from the Lived Experience of Two Transracial Adoptees, Kwiatkowski, 2022).
As adoption professionals and caregivers, the guiding question in all these matters should always be: What is best for this child? Considering how to support every aspect of a child’s identity, means including their racial and cultural development in that consideration.
The Role of Adoptive Parents
Parenting in a transracial adoption requires intentionality and a commitment to ongoing growth. Welcoming a child of a different race or culture into your family means expanding beyond your own lived experience and creating space to learn, adapt, and integrate your child’s identity into your family life.
It also means preparing for conversations and experiences that you are unfamiliar with right now. Children will encounter questions, biases, or situations related to race that you may not have personally experienced. Knowing how to engage in these moments in a way that supports your child is essential but also involves having open conversations in your home outside of those uncomfortable moments in public so that your child knows they can talk about that with you and knows you are their advocate.
Building Cultural Competency
Developing cultural competency does not mean you need to know everything about a particular culture. Rather, it means cultivating the ability to engage with people and experiences outside of your own with respect, curiosity, and humility.
According to a blog post on identitylearning.co entitled “Beyond Words: Understanding What Transracial Adoptees Children Need to Embrace Their Identity and Culture” the following stats highlight the importance of this preparation:
·78% of transracial adoptees report wishing their adoptive parents had better prepared them for racial and cultural experiences (Hollingsworth, 1997).
Transracial adoptees are 2–3 times more likely to experience depression and anxiety compared to same-race adoptees (Lee, 2003).
85% of adoptive parents report feeling unprepared to address racial and cultural issues in adoption (Baden, 2015).
These findings underscore the need for proactive, intentional parenting in transracial adoption.
Practical Ways to Support Your Child
There are meaningful ways adoptive parents can support their child’s racial and cultural identity:
Cultivate diverse relationships: Ensure your child has trusted adults and mentors who share their racial or cultural background. These relationships provide connection, understanding, and representation.
Be the first teacher: Help your child learn about their race, culture, and identity within the safety of your home and community, rather than leaving them to navigate it alone or online.
Create a culturally inclusive home: Incorporate books, art, music, food, and celebrations that reflect your child’s heritage.
Model respect and awareness: Be mindful of how you speak about people of different races and cultures. Your words and attitudes shape how your child understands their own identity.
Prepare for discomfort: Growth often involves discomfort. Be willing to engage in difficult conversations and moments of discovery with your child. Get comfortable with discomfort.
Commit to lifelong learning: Continue educating yourself through books, training, and the voices of those with lived experience.
Listening to Lived Experience
One of the most valuable resources for understanding transracial adoption is the voices of adult transracial adoptees. Listening to their stories, both challenges and strengths of their adoption experience, can inform more thoughtful and responsive parenting. There is a broad spectrum of adoptee experiences, so some stories may be hard to hear as an adoptive or prospective adoptive parent. Whatever feelings these stories bring to the surface for you, be curious about that and reflect on why that might be happening and what – if anything – that might be saying about your own experiences and new areas of growth in your journey.
Adoption in general is not simply a matter of providing a home and family for a child; it is about nurturing the whole identity of a child, which includes the unique aspects of your child’s adoption story. In transracial adoption there is the additional opportunity to expand one’s understanding of culture, community, and belonging, while also recognizing the responsibility that comes with it. Your child’s identity will be a journey through their years of development and processing their adoption story. Be present with them, eager to listen, and embody that they are safe to share their emotions, grief, questions, and negative experiences as a transracial adoptee.
Lifelong Journey
At its core, transracial adoption calls for intentionality, humility, and love expressed through action. By actively engaging in your child’s racial and cultural identity, you give them the tools with which they can process this part of their identity as they develop a strong, secure sense of self.
The goal is not perfection, but presence. You will make mistakes and get it wrong sometimes. Just keep showing up, listening well, and growing alongside your child.
Resources
Podcast/Docuseries of Transracial Adoptee
Race and Identity in Transracial Adoption: Suggestions for Adoptive Parents
Understanding What Transracial Adoptees Children to Embrace Their Identity and Culture
Learning From the Lived Experience of Two Transracial Adoptees
References
Baden, A. L. (2015). “Do you know your real parents?” and other adoption microaggressions. In R. M. Lee (Ed.), Adoption matters: Philosophical and feminist essays (pp. 133–154). Cornell University Press.
Hollingsworth, L. D. (1997). Effect of transracial/transethnic adoption on children’s racial and ethnic identity and self-esteem: A review of the literature. Social Work, 42(2), 104–114.
Kwiatkowski, K. (2022). Learning from the lived experience of two transracial adoptees. Identity Learning. Identity Learning
Lee, R. M. (2003). The transracial adoption paradox: History, research, and counseling implications of cultural socialization. The Counseling Psychologist, 31(6), 711–744. https://doi.org/10.1177/0011000003258087
National Council For Adoption. (2025). Adoption statistics. National Council For Adoption
Identity Learning YouTube Channel
U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, Administration for Children and Families. (n.d.). The Multiethnic Placement Act of 1994. Child Welfare Information Gateway. Child Welfare Information Gateway
“Race and identity in transracial adoption: Suggestions for adoptive parents.” (n.d.). Training resource/article provided in course materials.
“Understanding what transracial adoptees need to embrace their identity and culture.” (n.d.). Identity Learning. Identity Learning Blog
Etter, I. (n.d.). Discovering My Identity [Docuseries]. YouTube. Identity Learning YouTube Channel