Lydia's Culture And Pre-Adoption

From my own experience as well as the discussions and readings from this class, I believe that all adoptive families must actively take part in the “pre-adoption” process where each family member must acknowledge the potential for their own personal forms of ethnocentrism. This way, prospective parents and families can gain awareness of the cultural sensitivities associated adoption and verify their own willingness to adopt. Slowly but surely, my family and I learned how to integrate Lydia’s culture into our own culture and grow our awareness of the cultural differences that came along with adopting a Chinese baby girl. However, this learning curve is not specific to my own family. As a result, I believe that it is absolutely crucial for prospective …show more content…
Some families, like my own, choose to be very open about the child’s adoption and previous life in another country while other families choose to wait to tell the child or even wait for the child to come to them after realizing themselves that they are adopted. Although there is no “right” or “wrong” approach or any specified way of going about this, because of my past experiences with Lydia as well as the topics from class, I believe that adopted families should be as open as possible with their adopted children. Adopted children, like any other child, should be respected and be free of discrimination. According to the Early Childhood Australia Code of Ethics we must all “work to ensure children are not discriminated against on the basis of gender, age, ability, economic status, family structure, lifestyle, ethnicity, religion, language, culture, or national origin.” Hiding the truth of their adoption, therefore, is like hiding a piece of who they are and may mitigate their ethnic identity. Because of adoption, the child’s culture and identity become as much of a part of the identity of the family as the identity of the family becomes part of the child. The adopted child’s culture and adopted identity should not be seen as a problem in need of fixing, but as a portion of the child’s life that should be celebrated and embraced. In short, the culture of the adopted child needs to be absorbed and celebrated within the existing culture of the family in order for effective integration to occur. The acknowledgement of the child’s culture can be celebrated in even incredibly simple ways. For example, little ways that my family and I have personally attempted to integrate Lydia’s culture into our own can be seen in how we celebrate her “Gotcha Day” when she was first placed into my parent’s arms, how we talk