Consider the Kid

I had a family’s cover letter for their dossier in front of me last week, and I couldn’t believe what I read. This family had actually written in their letter, which is addressed to the CCAA, that the reason they had chosen China was because of the well-known intelligence of the Chinese people. What?!?

This instantly drew me back to a story my social worker friend told me a while ago about a family she met with. They too were wanting to adopt from China, and when speaking about struggles with race that the child might encounter, the husband laughed. He then went on to explain that his children (speaking about his prospective adopted children) would never experience anything bad. When my friend pushed him further to explain why he thought this, he said that there weren’t bad concepts of Chinese — people only think that Chinese are really smart, and that’s not bad, and therefore, they’ll never have problems. Truly, this was his argument.

So, I sat there staring at this letter wonder what to do. I mean, when it comes down to it, this letter won’t offend anyone in China. If anything, they’ll most likely feel proud that they’re all considered highly intelligent. I decided that I wouldn’t ask the family to re-write the letter, but that I would explain to them the seriousness of stereotypes such as what was expressed in their letter, and follow-up with a conversation with their social worker. After all, just because their stereotype won’t necessarily hurt their chances successfully going through review in China, these sort of ideas will most certainly have an impact on their child. I don’t even want to imagine what it would be like growing up as their kid, being Chinese, and hating school — getting crappy grades and wanting to play sports more — or something like that. I mean, really, those are some big shoes for a kid to fill, and it’s unfair to expect them to do so.

I think it can be easy for families to overlook positive stereotypes like this because when one thinks of the word “stereotype” one often thinks of negative or hindering assumptions about a race or group of people. Therefore, sometimes positive stereotypes can be overlooked as non-issues, and it is here where social workers and placement agencies need to educate families on what stereotypes are out there and how they could potentially affect your child.