Transracial Adoption Case Study

This annotated bibliography is on the topic of whether transracial adoption is healthy for the child being adopted. I’m researching this topic so I have an understanding if adopting a different race child will have negative or positive effects.

Ahmad, I: Adoption in India: A Study Of attitudes. The Indian Journal of Social 1 Work 36: 181-190, July 1975.

Using data from a survey of 205 respondents belonging to two localities in Delhi, an attempt is made to analyze the difference in attitudes of the members of different religious communities to the passage of comprehensive legislation on adoption, assess their attitudes toward adoption as such, and explore the sources people tap for support when contemplating adoption. The possibility of adopting

School and peer relationships were equal in importance to the family as socializing agents as the child grew older. In terms of racial identity, the adoptees moved in one of three directions: true self-hate or an acceptance of the values of the dominant group and a resulting belief in white superiority and black inferiority; acceptance of one's blackness as a positive virtue without any element of self-hate; and a mixture of self-hate and self-acceptance, an ambivalent feeling about one's racial identity, with positive feelings about some aspects and 'negative feelings about other aspects. Three of the adoptees fell into the third category, and one fell into the first.

Dukette, R. Perspectives for agency response to the adoption record controversy. Child Welfare 54(8):545-555, September-October 1975.

This source explained how most courts would agree that, in a custody dispute, the best interests of the child should dictate the outcome; this rule applies equally to adoption cases. In adoption cases, the rights of the biological parents are deferred to, unless they have forfeited those rights by conduct causing the court to deem them "unfit." As a consequence of jealously safeguarding the rights of biological parents, the courts may ignore the equally basic right of a child to

Adoption and child custody: Best interests of the child? Buffalo Law Review 22:1-16, Fall 1972.

Three aspects of child custody cases are discussed: a "rule of thumb complex," the belief that courts find fact finding and adjudication of such cases a painful process; and the feeling that judges generally do not have and are not given relevant psychological insights that would aid decision. The "rules of thumb" of parental fitness and best interests of the child constitute the black letter law of custody. Two highly publicized cases that are both seen as "wrongly decided" and that were reversed by subsequent events or legislation are examined: Painter Bannister in Iowa and the "Baby Lenore" case, in which a Florida court refused to give full faith and credit to a prior New York decision and a later New York decision overruled the earlier decision. In the Painter case, the father was denied custody of ins child in favor of the maternal grandparents, who were able to provide a more affluent home. In the "Baby Lenore" case the natural mother, after having given the child up for adoption, was first awarded custody and later denied custody in favor of the adoptive parents who had cared for the child since it had been 1 -month-old. In the Iowa case there was no £ct or event that had the effect of terminating parental rights. In the New York case there was such an event Baby Lenore's surrender for adoption through an agency. To better safeguard the interests of the child