Study of '94 Adoption Law Finds Little Benefit to Blacks

The law did result in significant improvement in research into interracial adoption, the report said, including studies showing that black children adopted by same-race parents do not tend to experience race-related self-esteem issues as sharply as black children adopted by whites.

The report cited a 2006 study of dark-complexioned adoptees in white homes, which found that "for many children . . . a white skin color was so desirable that they rubbed themselves with white body lotion, cream or white chalk, or, alternatively, tried to wipe off the brown color."

Dark-complexioned children adopted from outside the United States were often similarly troubled. Children "adopted from Sri Lanka and Colombia who expressed the wish to be white or to have been born into the family had more behavior problems," the new report said.

A 2003 study quoted an adoptee living with a white family in a predominantly white community as saying: "If we lived in a different neighborhood, I'd feel more comfortable. People wouldn't ask me so many questions or call me names. I feel a little more comfortable around people who are my color because I know they won't call me names."

Despite these issues, the new report, written by Susan Livingston Smith, program and project director for the institute, supports interracial adoption. It concludes that the practice "itself does not produce psychological or social maladjustment problems in children."

But, Smith wrote, "transracially adopted children and their families face a range of challenges, and the manner in which parents handle them facilitates or hinders children's development."

The report urged Congress, which is reconsidering the law, to require better assessments of whether prospective parents can fulfill a child's needs, including those related to race. It also recommended racial coaching for parents who are willing to receive it. Finally, the report said the Department of Health and Human Services should enforce the law's provision calling for more efforts to recruit black adoptive parents.

"It's in the best interests of the child," Pertman said.

Atwood said the recommendation "is both misleading and dangerous." He said it would create a giant loophole that would make placement decisions "vulnerable to subjective and ideologically driven considerations."