Adopting Deaf Children Barbara White Analysis

There’s a lot of literature about adoption of Deaf babies into Hearing families. One of the most vital things that most of the literature agrees upon is having the parents of the Deaf child be fluent in ASL. Barbara White writes in “This Child is Mine: Deaf Parents and their Adopted Deaf Children” about Children of Deaf Adults (CODAs) and their experience being raised with Deaf parents; while Deaf children in Hearing families who don’t know ASL are often ignored or cast to the side, CODAs—through ASL—are always fully immersed into conversation. Barbara White talks about this experience of being ignored as a Deaf child by her hearing family: “I grew up in an all hearing family and my frequent complaint, which is all too common by Deaf folks in hearing families, was that I was either ignored to …show more content…
White writes about some of these opinions to support her claims that Deaf children should be adopted into Deaf families, and I think this is important to consider. If being truly intentional in adopting a Deaf child, the attitudes of our child’s community is of utmost importance to consider. White begins by talking about adoptive parent entitlement, the idea that “adoptive parents feel that they deserve their child. Even though the child is not biologically theirs, they have a strong belief that they have the social, legal and emotional right to take full parental responsibility for and to attach to their adopted child.”1 White’s findings after interviewing 55 Deaf families who had adopted Deaf children showed that “entitlement is exceptionally strong among Deaf parents adopting Deaf children…and this factor should be given strong consideration by social workers making adoptive placement decisions for Deaf