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An Adoptive Parent Writes:

My husband and I are the white parents of 3 kids; two of them were adopted and have special needs. My bio son’s father is black, we have been divorced for many years and he has not stayed involved, but my son is very fair skinned like myself and many of his Jamaican relatives. My husband adopted him too. We have contact with his bio family but they live across the country from us. Our daughter is part Native, but she does not look mixed race either. My youngest son’s birthmother is biracial but he is fairly dark skinned and curly haired. He is the one I am writing you about. He has Spina Bifida but he walks normally. He has had several surgeries and is incontinent both bowel and bladder. That has always been his main area of concern along with his problems with learning. We have often talked about his feelings around adoption and being a black child in a predominantly white family but he always stated that it wasn’t a problem for him. The city we live in is not very racially diverse, however he does have several black children in his grade at school, but he has not hung out with them.

He has been seeing a psychiatrist and a psychologist lately because he has expressed a desire to be dead. He say’s his life is not worth living. He has always said it is because school is too hard and he can’t stand being incontinent anymore. Last night after a counseling session he told me he hates me and his father for adopting him because we are white. He feels very strongly about this. He said he would have rather grown up in an orphanage than with a white family. We went over his life book again last night. There is a lot of information in there about his biological family, but his birth mother requested a closed adoption.

My son has always loved me so much and I love him more than you could imagine. Of all the kids he has always been the most affectionate and happy. It hurts to hear him say he hates me but it hurts even more to see him in such pain. I know that a lot of what he is going through right now is developmental since he is now 14 and trying to separate from his parents and find his own identity. This is even more complicated for him because he is so dependant on us for his medical needs. He probably feels quite trapped at times. We are working on getting him to become more independent in that area but he is resistant to these changes. The adoption community here has always struggled to keep a support network going and I have not been able to find any help here. When we first adopted I was quite active in that area and attended 3 NACAC conferences. The last several years I have sought support more around the kids medical issues. My daughter has Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder and has been a handful to raise.

I am so afraid he will harm himself. Do you have any suggestions on how I can help him? Are there any moderated online support groups for cross culturally adopted youth that you know of?

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John Raible Answers:

Your situation sounds very challenging. From your comments, it appears that race is becoming a bigger and bigger issue for your son, as it does for many mixed race and transracially adopted teens. In my own adolescence, I remember how my feelings about adoption became racialized. That is, before I learned the language of adoption, I processed my negative feelings (about rejection/abandonment mainly) through the lens of race. I became very angry when the white people around me didn't validate my feelings about racism, which I knew instinctively was happening-- yet they tended to minimize it or try to get me to see that it was something other than racism. Underneath the anger were my feelings about my birth family, which I knew nothing about due to the closed nature of the adoption.

In hindsight, I now wish that my parents had been able to learn along with me about adoption (and race) issues and the grieving process that adoptees must go through. The point I'm trying to make is that race and adoption were two huge issues that were inextricably linked for me, and I would have benefited from support around talking about both, particularly from people who looked and felt like me.  

In your son's case, theses two huge issues loom large AND are made all the more complicated by his medical, psychological, and dis/ability issues. I am certainly not an expert in medicine or psychology. All I can say at this point is that you are right to be paying attention to the race issue; since your son has brought it up as a way he makes meaning about his adoption. I found comfort in meeting with other transracially adopted teens and young adults. I have seen a few web sites that claim to be for transracial adoptees but none seems to be very widely used yet. It's still too new an idea, I guess, but, obviously, your message makes it clear how needed such online support might be. In closing, your son needs continuing validation of his feelings and connection to others in his situation(s). Best of luck creating the support networks your family needs.

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