"We had three children and we wanted one more. I was about to go off pills when I read an article about American Indian children and I thought, why not?" That, as Housewife Judy Meredith of Boston explains it, is how she and her husband—both white—came to adopt a 13-month-old Indian called Tommy and a two-week-old black baby named Jackie. The Merediths' decision is part of a growing phenomenon known in sociologist's jargon as transracial adoption. Last year 2,200 black babies were adopted by white U.S. families, compared with only 700 in 1968. Today there are more than 10,000 "T.R.A. families" in all 50 states and in the ten Canadian provinces.
Today's Child. The trend is due partly to changing racial attitudes, but even more to an acute shortage of white babies brought about by the pill, easier abortion laws, and an increasing number of unwed mothers who keep their offspring. Because of the shortage, adoption agencies have changed their tactics. Instead of catering to childless parents in search of "perfect" white infants, many now concentrate on the needs of hard-to-place youngsters who are beyond infancy, physically or emotionally handicapped, black—or even all three. One such is Cindy Skilton, a seven-year-old black girl who wore braces on her legs until last month. She is now the adoptive daughter of Dave and Audrey Skilton of Los Angeles. To get such children out of temporary foster homes and mind-withering institutions, some agencies even cooperate in efforts to adverttse them. Generally this is done by picturing particular children in columns such as "Today's Child," which appears in the Toronto Telegram and is syndicated in 130 Ontario newspapers, or on TV programs like the Ben Hunter Matinee in Los Angeles and its imitators across the country.
As another spur to adoption of "special-needs children," agencies have relaxed eligibility rules for prospective parents. A capacity to understand youngsters who are "different" has become more important than marital status, youth, education, income, race or religion. Instead of charging fees, private agencies—and public ones in seven states —sometimes offer subsidies to families. Despite such changes, average T.R.A. parents are still much like conventional adoptive parents: 98% are married; most are under 40; well over half are college educated; two-thirds earn at least $10,000 a year; and a majority go to church regularly. Psychologically, Los Angeles Psychoanalyst Judd Marmor told the National Conference on Social Welfare, T.R.A. families are likely to be self-confident, self-aware, and given to judging people as individuals.
Not that T.R.A, parents are without prejudice. Families in the West or Southwest, for example, have more readily adopted blacks than Indian or Mexican kids. Asian children are often welcomed in the South, though blacks are usually not. A study in Britain recently found that some T.R.A. parents tended "to deny their child's color, or to say he was growing lighter, or that other people thought he was suntanned and did not recognize him as colored. Sometimes the reality was fully accepted only after the very light child had grown noticeably darker after being exposed to bright sunlight on holiday."