Chapter 9: Counseling Transracial Adoptee Youth with Health Conditions: A Case of Cleft Palate

Almost one-third of the 1.4 million adopted children under the age of 18 in the United States are transracially adopted (Kreider, 2020), making transracial families increasingly commonplace (Marr et al., 2020). The 2013-2017 American Community Survey (ACS), the most recent comprehensive nationally representative dataset of adoptive children, suggests that there are significantly different racial profiles of transracial versus same-race adoptees (Kreider, 2020). While adoptees raised in same-race American families were overwhelmingly non-Hispanic White, the majority of transracial adoptees were children of color, specifically of Asian and Black backgrounds (Kreider, 2020), and most were adopted by White parents (Lee, 2003).

More than 30% of transracial adoptees were born outside of the U.S. (Kreider, 2020) and are thus considered transnational adoptees. The U.S. is the main receiving nation for transnational adoptees (Selman, 2012). In the last decade, the majority of foreign-born children transracially adopted into the U.S. have been, in descending order, from the following countries: China, Ethiopia, Russia, South Korea, Ukraine, Guatemala, and India (Kreider, 2020). China’s recent shift towards domestic adoptions (Dowling & Brown, 2009) and the reversal of the one-child policy (Zeng & Hesketh, 2016) have greatly limited the number of Chinese children who are placed for international adoption.