The Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute Releases Latest Study on Adoption & Culture

Monday November 16, 2009

The Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute has released the results of a new study regarding interracial adoption. Beyond Culture Camp: Promoting Healthy Identity Formation in Adoption findings may surprise you. Then again - maybe they won't.

The report focused on two-parent, White adoptions of 179 South Korean adoptees and the 156 Caucasian adoptees out of the 468 adopted adults that completed surveys.

I found this report extremely fascinating because of the experiences we've had with culture and adoption. My sister was adopted into a bi-racial home - White/Hispanic. She told me that growing up she assumed that she too was bi-racial. That is the culture she identified with best. She thought that upon meeting her birth family she would discover that she was bi-racial. Nope. To my knowledge, Caucasian only. I wonder how that impacted her identity or did the adoption reunion itself fill in the needed pieces because now - she no longer has to guess or assume?

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