Transracial Adoption in Australia

Annotation: Transracial Family Placements

“…Research is badly needed in this crucial area, Transracial aspects of intercountry adoption. For intercountry transracial adoptions, "satisfactory outcomes" in general developmental terms are above 70% (Harvey, 1982;Pruzan, 1977;, In a cross-sectional study of 2071 adolescent intercountry adoptees, Versluis-den Bieman and found no significant behavioural differences between children who were ethnically different from their parents and those children who were of the same race. Kim (1977) found that the majority of the sample of 451 adolescents adopted from Korea to the U.S.A. "had relatively little 'Korean' identity".…”

‘Same Race’ Adoption Policy: Anti-racism or Racism?

“…No significant differences are found between the clinical profiles of inracial versus transracial adoptees. The research includes comparative studies of transracial and inracial adoptions in both Britain and the USA, and inter-as well as intra-country transracial adoptions, for instance Hong Kong Chinese adopted by white British (Bagley et ah, 1993) and Vietnamese adopted by white Australians (Harvey, 1982). 8 On the issue of development of the black identity which is seen by opponents of transracial adoption as essential to survival in a. racist society, empirical research findings are consistent.…”

“…'Because there is a black member of the family, albeit several generations apart, our assessment of the [biological] family is that they are of mixed race. 1981;Harvey, 1982;Gill & Jackson. 1993).…”

Inter-Country Adoption of Older Children in Australia

“…While not specifically focused on older children, the follow-up study of Vietnamese children in New South Wales undertaken by Harvey (1982) divided children into age groups and found that while outcome of most adoptions was successful, the young group (under three years) had a more positive rating, 95 per cent versus the older group's 60 per cent. There had been three adoption breakdowns at the time of the study and one more since, all for children from the older age group.…”

“…The questionnaire format was essentially that used by Harvey (1982) in his 1977 Vietnam study, as it was felt that it would be valuable to have a comparable pool of data for research purposes.…”