Fe and Gareth Hall adopted Christian from China in 2002, when he was a baby. Christian told them he wanted to find his birth mother. “We always made sure that he understood, ‘We love you. Your mother loved you too. You’re not a throwaway child,’” Fe Hall said. “He would always say, ‘Mom, I just want to know what she looks like. It’s not that I love you less, it’s not that I don’t love you. … I just want to know.’”
Fred Adams / Spotlight PA/NBC News
Fred Adams / Spotlight PA/NBC News
Fe and Gareth Hall adopted Christian from China in 2002, when he was a baby. Christian told them he wanted to find his birth mother. “We always made sure that he understood, ‘We love you. Your mother loved you too. You’re not a throwaway child,’” Fe Hall said. “He would always say, ‘Mom, I just want to know what she looks like. It’s not that I love you less, it’s not that I don’t love you. … I just want to know.’”
According to The Adoption Council, there are almost 114,000 youth waiting to be adopted.
A study published by the Institute for Family Studies found that almost half of the adopted children surveyed were adopted by parents of a different race.
Nicole Fowler, adoption counselor for Adoptions From The Heart, Melinda Glen, transracial adoptive Mom, and Falesha Martin, owner of Extreme Beauty Supply and Retail and Turn N’ Heads Weaving & Braiding Studio who provides hair care services to transracially adopted children, joined us on Monday for The Spark to discuss adoption and transracial adoption.
Fowler said, between 2017 and 2019 about 28% of all adoptions were transracial and there’s been an increase in the number of adoption within the country since the start of inflation and COVID-19. However she said, foster care and adoption agencies are still faced with the challenge to place children over the age of five and with special needs in foster care and adoption circumstances.
“We definitely are in need of the homes of people who are welcoming of all different children,” Fowler said. “But we understand that comes with a lot of work. So, families that are prepared and educated is a big need.”
Martin said, she has been a part of educating and supporting transracial adoptive parents by providing their children with hair care services and recommending hair and skin care products, as she said there is a big need for those resources within the community.
Glen said, she benefited tremendously from a hair stylist who also caters to transracial adoptive parents and children. However, she said she also faced challenges outside of hair care being the mother of three transracially adopted children.
“It’s been wonderful learning about cultures and making sure that we include those in our family traditions and celebrations,” Glen said. “It’s important that we have surrounded ourselves with with friends and family who look like my children. There have been challenges. We have had rude and ignorant comments made. We got written out of half of the family’s will when we brought home our children. And we said, we’ll miss you. And then there was just a learning curve for making sure that I was taking care of my children, specifically their hair and their skin, making sure that I was taking care of them appropriately.”
