Tez3 -- multiracial adoptions are not allowed in England? Why?
Here in the states it seems just the opposite, anything goes, except that few people will take advantage of their freedom to adopt the available kids. I think ultimately that most couples don't want to admit that they want kids that "look like them".
Girlbug, these 'states' you live in. I do not think they are the ones with their capital in Washington, DC. White kids are placed with White families. Black kids are placed with Black families and so on. It's almost impossible to adopt across the color lines. Mixed couples pretty much can't adopt because at least one parent will be "wrong". We found out when we started the process. They were very sorry. They were sure we'd be fine parents, but it was best for the child if it grew up with two parents who "could provide the correct cultural environment".
I did a little checking and found out what "the correct cultural environment" means. It means that you don't mix light and dark meat on the same platter. In earlier more racist days it just wasn't done. During the late 60s/early 70s the Association of Black Social Workers raised a lot of hell. They yelled. They applied pressure. They threatened lawsuits. They compared transracial adoption to "genocide" and called it a "cultural Holocaust" against Blacks. They said it would be better for a child to grow up in an orphanage or shuttled from one foster home to another than to be adopted by a family that wasn't all Black.
That became the accepted way of doing things. It was applied across all the stupid artificial ethnic categories we've created. And it hasn't changed significantly. Everyone with an ethnic axe to grind likes it. The liberals go with the Black social workers. The conservatives prefer the way it was done before when people kept more to their own. The ABSW and their sort feel important. The children who need homes and the parents who ache to provide them are just not that important.
The process of adopting is long, hard and like something out of Kafka. It will, not could or might but
will cost many thousands of dollars. They will look at everything and apply strange standards about income, neighborhood, undefined "suitability", weight (like Tez said) and a lot of other things. Very often after all the time and money and heartbreak the birth mother will change her mind or the birth father will suddenly appear or you'll just be told that it isn't going to happen. Sometimes "after" means when the papers have been signed and the child is actually in your arms.
Some friends who got through the process a few years ago ended up spending thirty thousand dollars on two false starts before things finally worked. It took just about exactly twice as long as it would have to produce a child the old-fashioned way.
in this country seem to believe that if you dont say you absolutely love what people are doing than you are a hater.
