Adoption Policy and Transracial Adoptions - Assignment Example

Adoption Policy and Transracial Adoptions There were several learning pint that came up while doing this assignment. These were as follows; The inception of adoption and how it has grown to be the thing it is today. In this particular aspect, it was good to learn that adoption was started as a way to give people a heir and a person to preserve their heritage and wealth. This means that mainly adoptees were only male children because traditionally males have always been seen as more of a better social asset than females. In this regard, a couple that could not get a child of their own could mainly seek a male adoptee as opposed to a female adoptee. The other issue that came up with this kind of adoption was the fact that it was never done with the child as the main beneficiary (Barth & Miller, 2000). The consideration was mainly for the couple that needed child and the child’s welfare was never the main issue. This has since changed and today and therefore during an adoption process the main issue that must be addressed is the welfare of the child. Despite there being corruption here and there that may hinder the due process of adoption to unwind, the environment of today tries to make adoption to be able to focus on how comfortable the child is going be during after he has been placed in the hands of adoptive parents (VanderMolen, 2005).. In this regard, unlike in the early years when the adoption of a child was almost like accounting the child to the highest bidder, what matters today is that the family or individual willing to adopt a child has to show that they will be able to provide the child with a viable environment in which to grow. They must show that they are not only financially capable to provide for the child but that they are also emotionally stable to give the child the emotional needs he or she requires in order to develop well from childhood to adulthood. This has also meant that the process of adoption is a long one and it is not a one day process. Anyone willing to adopt a child today must be willing to take a lengthy process that will finally determine if they are qualified. I also learn that adoption has also changed in other ways. For instance, during the inception of adoption, adoption was mainly for couples who did not have the biological ability to have their own children. Today, even a single individual can adopt a child and so they do not have to be a married couple. Even untraditional couples such as in gay marriages can adopt a child, but that depends on the state from which they come because some states do not allow gay marriages and so this would be a precedence to determine if the state will allow them to adopt a child. I also leant that adoption is not only for adults today, even a child can adopt and this was surprising. Another learning point that came up was the fact that race was ever an issue until the 1950s when there was a necessity to deal with the big mismatch of the number of black kinds who needed adoption and the number of black families who either were willing or able to adopt them (Singer, 2010). In the initial years like in the 19th century, because most of the official adoptions were mainly targeted at helping wealthy owners to get heirs if they could not bear their own biological sons, it only means that most of the adoption was only for white land owners who had big real estate and did not want this to go to waste or be used by those who did not desire it. African American families back then never used to own a lot of wealth. There may have been a few black families with some real estate wealth, but these would be very few and the chances of one of them needing to adopt a child was low given the fact that a greater percentage of adoption cases were only when the couple could not get their own children. Things started changing in the 1950s. Throughout this assignment and the interview, I was able to learn how the adoption process was changed by the upcoming of many organization and associations as well as intervention by government thorough policy and legislation. The first problem that shows up was the fact that black children would not get enough black parents to adopt them and this was the fact that needed to be dealt with first. The solution was to make sure that even white families were allowed to adopt children. However, some black parents were not happy with this. In a summary, there are a lot of politics that go in to defining the process of adoption. Black associations that critic the trans-racial adoption believe that a while adoptive parent may not be able to give the child the kind of raising that the child requires if the child is black (Simon & Altstein, 2000). There is therefore the need to have a balance between what makes a good parent. Is it the color of her skin, their character of their social background? What I lean from the interview The interview reiterated much of what the literature review showed. More importantly, I was able to dig into the thoughts of the executive director of a major adoption agency. I would stay I agree with him on many levels. For instance, he argued that although interracial adoption is not necessarily the ideal option in many cases, it is definitely better than leaving a child without a permanent home just because there is no black family to adopt them. Instead of this, it is better to have the child adopted by a white adoptive parent than have them on foster homes which are never as conducive as an adoptive family, or even stable because such a child may find themselves being moved from one foster care to another. I also agree that the parental ability of a child is not determined by the skin color of the prospective parent. It is even possible that a white could be more of better adoptive parents to a black child than a black couple. What matters is the parental instinct and the emotional maturity and stability of such a cold or such an individual willing to adopt the child. Doing this assignment was an eye opener in many ways. I learnt that the adoption practices in the US were quite different from those in other countries, it was very eminent that the adoption process in the US is probably more developed and advanced, with the interests of the child placed at the heart of the whole process. This has also been influenced by the fact that social work in the US is much more developed than most other countries around the world. The fact that the adoption prices has changed to be more focused on the welfare of the child as opposed to it being just a way to dish out children to couples who want them is also another important things to be celebrated. However corruption of dishonest individuals who may not care for the welfare of the child also plays a big role in undermining the spirit of the modern US adoption process and this is a problem that must be solved in the future if the child is to be taken care of. References Barth, R., & Miller, J. (2000). Building effective post-adoption services: What is the empirical foundation? Family Relations, 49(4), 447-455. Simon, R. & Altstein, H. (2000). Adoption across borders. United States of America: Rowman& Littlefield Publishers, Inc. Singer, J. B. (Host). (2010). Adoption policy and practice in the U.S.A.: Interview with Ruth McRoy, Ph.D. [Episode 63]. Social Work Podcast. VanderMolen, E. (2005). Transracial adoption and sociological theory: Understanding my identity. Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge, 4(1), 53-106. Read More