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David Glotzer, 53, an investment adviser, and Charlotte Meyer, 49, an emergency-room nurse, didn't set out to cross the color line to become parents, but they didn't hesitate to do so when given the opportunity to adopt Aaron, now 11. Daughter Hannah, 7, followed. Both children are African American, but Glotzer, who is Jewish and from New York City, and Meyer, a Catholic who grew up in Phoenix, Ariz., say their family deals with racial boundaries daily. Meyer had to take a class to learn how to braid and care for her daughter's hair properly, and Glotzer sits on the board of PACT, the nonprofit agency based in San Francisco that helped arrange their kids' adoptions. Glotzer and Meyer also decided to live only in racially integrated neighborhoods in Oakland and Berkeley, Calif. They turned down a chance to move to New England, where they doubted they would be able to find a similarly diverse community. "We have made major life choices about where to live and who our friends are in order to create an environment for our children that's right for them," Glotzer says. "We want them to have lots of black role models and to be around lots of people who look like them. I will never be black, as they are. And they will never be white, like us. But we can all go back and forth between the two worlds."
There is, of course, the danger of trying too hard. Cautions author Cheri Register: "Parents shouldn't make a fetish out of the whole thing. Some people overload on cultural traditions without really knowing what they're about." The trick, the experts say, is to expose kids to their birth culture while keeping in mind that interests may change as the children grow. Andrew James Marco Nelson, 15, and dad Jim went to Peru last year for Andrew's first visit to his birth country. "It was amazing," he says. "I loved the colorful art everywhere, and I liked seeing people on the street who looked like me." Now he is taking Spanish lessons back home in Ann Arbor, Mich., and has worked as a counselor at a Latin American-culture camp for adopted kids. Andrew's sister Malia, 11, was adopted from Bolivia. "We hadn't spent time in Latin America before the kids, but our children have brought us into this culture, and it is part of us," says their mother Kathi.
Raising children of a race or culture different from their own means parents must make deliberate choices of the sort birth families seldom have to think about. A veteran adoptive father of several children of different races describes the experience as a "roller coaster of exaggerated parenting." Experts have several recommendations for parents who willingly climb aboard that roller coaster to smooth out the ride for the family:
--NAME Incorporate your child's birth name into his or her American name, and use it with affection. Many parents choose to use their child's birth name as a middle name.
--NEIGHBORHOOD If possible, live in an ethnically diverse area where your children will see people of various races and cultures. Some parents hire baby-sitters from their children's homeland who can share native stories and customs with the kids.