This study included 468 adult adoptees of all races and ethnicities, with the largest percentage of participants being Korean adoptees (179 respondents). This is THE largest study to date of adult adoptee experiences… most other adoption research studies focused on the adoptive parent experience OR asked questions of young adoptees while their adoptive parents sat in the room.

Way to stifle their voices, y’all.

This time the study asked adult adoptees to answer questions concerning personal demographic information as well as two aspects of identity important to transracial adoptees: adoptive identity and racial/ ethnic identity, both concepts that center around the all-encompassing “who am I?” question.  Who am I as an adoptee, with ties to both my first, biological family AND my adoptive family?  And, for those adopted transracially, who am I as a minority person raised by Caucasian parents?

The results speak for themselves.  For the first time, those within the adoption community can point to valid research that supports the personal anecdotes we’ve heard for these past twenty years.  The study states that adoption issues are important over a lifetime, peaking not during childhood nor adolescence, but later in adulthood.  The importance of adoption did indeed increase during the adolescent years, but it continued to grow during young adulthood for both Korean and Caucasian respondents.  In other words, adoption is a life-long journey… it never ends.

The study also states that racism and discrimination shape the identity of transracial adoptees in a huge way.  The majority of Korean adoptee respondents (78%) stated that they “sometimes/ often/ all the time” experienced racial teasing, but only 22% stated that they faced teasing because they were adopted.  These Korean adoptees faced this racial discrimination in childhood and adolescence “sometimes/ fairly often/ very often” from strangers (80%), classmates (75%), friends (48%) and teachers (39%).  The study also stated that the transracial adoptees who reported less racial teasing came from more diverse communities and more functional families.  Still, 78% of the Korean adoptee participants reported that they considered themselves or wanted to be White as children, although the vast majority grew to identify themselves as Asian-Americans during adulthood.

The study also included a list of activities the adult transracial adoptee participants thought would be helpful in forming their identities as adoptees raised by parents of a different race.  Adoptive parents: sit up and take notice:

Travel to birth country (74% thought it would be helpful)
Attending racially diverse schools (73%)
Having childcare providers, teachers and adult role models of their same race/ ethnicity (73%)
Family travel to culturally significant places (72%)
Reading information on the internet (71%)
Living in a racially diverse neighborhood (70%)
Reading books and articles on adoption (68%)
Cooking ethnic food or dining at restaurants (68%)
Regular contact with people of their same race/ ethnicity (67%)
Exposure to multicultural entertainment (64%)
Take classes to learn the history/ culture of birth country (64%)
Have same-race siblings (63%)
Events by adult adoptees/ adult adoptee organizations (63%)
Support group for adoptees (62%)
Involvement in ethnically diverse religious and/or social groups/ activities (62%)
Culture camp (61%)
Study birth language (59%)
Events sponsored by own ethnic group (55%)
Have traditional objects (dolls, toys, etc) from birth country (49%)
Having contact with birth relatives (47%)
Study martial art, traditional dance, etc (38%)

My husband and I were very fortunate to hear Adam Pertman, the executive director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, speak about the initial results of this study last year. It profoundly changed the way we parent our daughter, whom we adopted from China in 2005.

I hope and pray that it gives significant food for thought for ALL adoptive parents.

Related Posts

• Love and Adoption
• Across the Generations
• What Matters Most
• Just Trying to Get Coffee…
• Favorite and Popular Adoption Songs

The Chinese celebrate Harvest Moon Festival by gathering together with friends and relatives during a meal. It is a time of picnics, puppet shows and fireworks or lit, little red candles. Children sometimes wear pomelo hats , walk around carrying battery-powered lanterns hanging on sticks and hope that the Moon Lady, Chang Er, grants their one-of-a-kind, unforgettable, never-before-heard wishes. Families enjoy eating mooncakes, Rabbit-in-the-Moon cookies and Bubble Tea. Everyone spends their evening eating, drinking and gazing at the moon, looking for Chang Er or the Jade Rabbit, which is the Chinese equivalent of our Man in the Moon.

Most importantly, families spend the time together thinking of relatives far away, whether geographically or in the afterlife. Carrie Kitz, author of We See the Moon, inspired me with these thoughts about the Moon Festival:

The Moon Festival is one of my favorite times of year… In China, it’s also a time where folks wish on the moon to send messages to those who aren’t able to be with them for whatever reason. If there is any time in the year that our children’s birthparents might be thinking of them, this holiday is the one. So in our house, we use the Moon Festival to remember those who aren’t with us right now, but who are a part of our families. We think of aunts, cousins, grandparents, special friends and birth family who are half a world away.

And this sums up why our family celebrates the Mid-Autumn Festival.

But what do we do exactly, since we don’t have authentic knowledge of the traditions and customs? Personally, I think doing something is better than ignoring it all together. So we try. And we learn new things every year. Last year was my first attempt at making bubble tea. The mooncakes were a bust, so we *blush* ate moon pies. (I know, I know.) We’ll be trying again, hopefully with more edible results, but – if not – the back-up moon pies are in the pantry.  We spent some time gazing at the moon, or – in the case of the Tongginator – gazing at the flashlight beam, which for some reason seemed much more interesting.  We also sent out an email yesterday to our family and friends who live far away, reminding them of this Asian holiday and ending with the sentence: “If you have time on Saturday night and the skies are clear, get outside, enjoy the moon, be still for awhile and know that we are thinking about and praying for y’all.”

On Saturday, we will attend a Fall Festival sponsored by our local Families with Children from China chapter. We also have a neighborhood celebration to attend – it’s potluck, so I’ll bring Rabbit-in-the-Moon cookies (recipe found in this book). The Tongginator typically goes to bed by 7:30 every evening, but she’ll stay up later on this special night.

(Did you know that Chinese folklore states that the later one stays up on this night, the longer one’s parents live? Not that this in any way influenced our decision. *cough, cough*)

During our special, past-bedtime family hour, we will read a few books outside, by flashlight, including We See the Moon, The Moon Lady and Round is a Mooncake: A Book of Shapes. We’ll also read two poems by Li Bai about the moon that we found in the book Maples in the Mist: Children’s Poems From the Tang Dynasty as well as this poem:

We are hoping that our new books Moon Festival and Lin Yi’s Lantern arrive in time, but I just ordered them, so we will see.  (The book Moonbeams, Dumplings & Dragon Boats: A Treasury of Chinese Holiday Tales, Activities & Recipes also has a chapter on the Moon Festival, with a few recipes and instructions for making shadow puppets.)  And we’ll probably have a few coloring pages on hand (found here) for the Tongginator, if she’s feeling the urge to color rather than create.

What will y’all do?

Related Posts

• New Research Encourages Going Beyond Culture Camp
• Seeing Color: Transracial Adoption
• Just Trying to Get Coffee…
• Love and Adoption
• Kids and Culture: What’s Most Important?

My older daughter is on a letter writing campaign. She wants to get letters from all over the world. I told her if she wanted to get letters she had to start sending them. I put out a call for participants on my blog and we were swamped! One of the participants was a family from Texas with two adopted daughters from China. In their letter they sent a silhouette of Texas made from one of the girls paintings and a map of China with the two provinces the girls were born in circled. I immediately knew what I wanted to be my first freezer paper stencil attempt to be! A silhouette of S. Korea for my youngest.

What a great way to celebrate your child’s birthplace or current state. Using a map outline makes for an interesting and cool graphic. You will be amazed at how amazingly simple freezer paper stencils are to do and how beautiful they come out! I bought several t-shirts thinking…better get backups in case I mess up. Well, I didn’t mess up and now I can make more t-shirts! You can choose to make a stencil using a map or any image you and your children would like. I made my other daughter a Tinkerbell shirt.

I used an old party decoration we had. So be creative and have fun with this.

Supplies:

• T-Shirt (washed)
• Iron
• Freezer Paper (Reynolds)
• Fabric Paint
• Foam Brush
• Map of country of origin or home state
• Pencil
• Exacto Knife
• Cutting Board
• Tape

1. Print out your map. I just Googled map South Korea and picked the one I liked best.
2. 
3. Tape the map to a window.
4. Tape a piece of freezer paper – non waxy side up – on top
5. Trace your map. Don’t drive yourself crazy with too many detail.
6. Cut out using exacto knife. Please be careful.
7. Cut a piece of freezer paper to slide inside your shirt and iron down. Use high dry heat. This will prevent paint seeping through to the other side and also prevents the shirt from moving around as you paint.
8. Center your stencil on the shirt. Iron down.
9. Painting – Paint gently! Paint from the edged in. I started on the paper and the moved towards the center of the design. This prevents the paint from seeping in at the edges. If you are too aggressive and paint towards the edges the paper may peel up. Leaving you with a messy edge.
10. Let dry the full amount of time before carefully peeling off the stencil. Set with an iron.
11. Optional. I sewed on a little sequin and bead to mark Seoul. You could use a French knot or leave it as it is.

Kim King can also be found blogging about crafts and her family at Four Crazy Kings.

Related Posts

• New Research Encourages Going Beyond Culture Camp
• Korea Chose Us
• Adoption: 25 Things to do while you wait
• Neither, Nor (or how I learned to hate my face but lived to find some beauty in it)
• Across the Generations