Each of us who comes to parenthood via adoption confronts the anxiety of “authenticity”: our feeling of being the real or authentic parent is challenged by the presence of another’s genetic material in our child, aside from our partner’s. It raises questions like, “Will I feel like a mother?” “Am I the real father?” “Will others be able to tell the difference?” “When my child finds out, will they accept me or, worse yet, reject me?” These fears can be heightened in transracial adoption and interracial families where the genetic differences are clearly visible: “Everyone knows we’re not a real family.” (Cringe)

Let me identify my family and myself from the outset: I am a White woman married to a Black man. We adopted our Biracial son (White birthmother and Black birthfather). The boy looks like I popped him out myself. But don’t think that resolves all those doubts. Appearances don’t make a family.

There are many opportunities for the psychological and emotional conflicts of interracial parenting to rise to the surface. One day while I was in the supermarket with my infant son, a Black man came up to me and joked, “Where did you get such a beautiful baby?” I briefly froze: “He can tell!” I thought. “Oh, get over it, Robin. He’s acknowledging that your boy is cute. Act like you’re one of the tribe.” I joked back: “I got him in the produce section.” We both laughed. I felt relief that I had “passed”.


People of color made such observations about my son from his earliest days: they recognized something of themselves in him, and I was included in the mix. Am I entitled to say “thanks” when someone compliments my son’s looks? (Yes) Am I obligated to correct them when they say that he looks like me? (Nope) When I let go of my anxiety, I feel blessed.

Still, our anxieties about authenticity can haunt us throughout parenthood. Most adoptive parents anticipate with dread the day that their child will hurl at them, “I don’t have to listen to you. You’re not my real mother!” “Surely this will happen by adolescence,” we whisper to ourselves. I thought that it happened particularly early for my son when, at the age of 4, he resisted putting on a pair of pants to go outside. I heard him yell at me “I don’t have to. You aren’t my parents!” Stunned, I took stock of myself and calmly reflected back, “If we aren’t your parents, then who is?” “Huh?” he said. He looked puzzled by my question. “Didn’t you just say that we aren’t your parents?” “No. I said those aren’t my pants! They’re Justin’s!” Pants…parents. Put this under the heading, “The Mother who thought she was a Pair of Pants.” There I was, caught in my own projection of anxiety about authenticity onto my son. It wasn’t his issue; it was mine.



My son brings his own issues to the mix, and, like any parent, I have grown a lot in responding to them. Though we live in a racially mixed community, our school is categorized by LAUSD as “Predominately Black, Hispanic, and Other” (PBHO). As a White mother, I am in the minority. I noticed that when I went to pick my first grade son up on the playground after school, he was waving me away with his jacket, and running up to me before I could get very far into the schoolyard. Clearly, he did not want to be seen with me.

We had a family talk about this: imagine the irony of his Black father chastising him for shunning his White mother in public. The boy was distraught and tearful. He loves his mother and doesn’t want to hurt me, yet at certain moments I represent his inner conflict: “Am I Black or White?” His behavior was saying, “Mom, they thought I was Black until you showed up!” Never mind that adults can tell he’s mixed just by looking at him. At those moments I can take comfort in this thought because it suggests we’re passing for a genetically related family...and then I chastise myself for my adoptism.


I like the challenges of interracial parenting. I signed on for it when I married my husband, knowing that this was going to be part of what we can offer a child and society. Other parents come to this option of family building through an intense self-evaluation and decision-making process that may include looking into their own backgrounds for a complex cultural or ethnic heritage. One mixed couple I know (She: Hispanic, He: White) found themselves confronting subtle racism between themselves: She was fine adopting a child with a Hispanic background, but when he expressed concerns about feeling “left out,” she asked, “What if I gave birth to a child? Would you feel left out then?” Ouch! They made a connection with their Hispanic birthmother a few weeks later.

One key to embracing interracial parenthood is ridding ourselves of any narcissistic investment we have in the notion of creating a family or children in our own image. We are here to help our children become their best, not our best. Acknowledging this, we then recognize a mistaken assumption: we’ve been thinking that the real mother must be a physical reflection of her child! What nonsense!

Helping our children become their best requires us to acknowledge that we don’t know everything about them, even if we birth them. Their personal and individual needs will guide us in what we need to know. Sometimes our learning curve is just one or two steps ahead of theirs, whether it’s learning the rules of Little League Baseball or how to braid hair. We have to be open to learning about their ethnic or cultural backgrounds, whether it comes from our partner or a birthparent, and incorporating some of these elements into our lives.

I’ve found that my sense of myself has expanded by living in my racially mixed community and family. Among many benefits, I can honestly say that there are one or two rap songs that I like; on Thanksgiving I make the yams and my husband makes the greens; and I get to go to The African Market Place and blend into the crowd. No, I am not Black and I am not masquerading. But I am a mother, and that’s my boy over there. The future NFL NBA Star Rocket Scientist First Black President of America.