To be or not to be the only brown one?

My stasis is bi racial and when they called me with a newborn babygirl I only said YES when they mentioned she is the same race as my son. They are 4 1/2 month apart So yes I was thinking of HIM....but if you feel like your family is complete then that's ok too..

It was very important to my son that he have a sister who is "brown" like him. We live in a very diverse area, he has a lot of brown friends, and his school is not predominantly white. Still, he really wanted a brown sister. :hippie:

My oldest child is Asian and our other children are full caucasian and biracial (AA/CC). At first, we wanted a child that looked like DD but we ended up being placed with my other two children.Sometimes I do wonder if my children want siblings that look like them but none of them have ever expressed that. I think my children notice gender differences more than skin color because my oldest daughter really wanted a sister. I am friends with another woman who was transracially adopted from Korea with her sister into a White family. For her, she didn't feel like having a sibling that looked like her helped her appreciate her Korean heritage more because they were never close and rarely talked about race, ethnicity and color. Anyways, to make a long story short, I think it depends on the child. Your daughter seems like she really wants a sibling that looks like her and if you feel ready to add another child to your family, then go ahead. However, if you think your family is complete, I would reconsider a second adoption.

Our son is an only child - and therefore the only African American member of our family other than one biracial cousin. It's not ideal. I would have loved to have another child, but it wasn't in the cards for us. For him, I do think it's okay. We live in a very diverse area. Most of his friends are other kids of color - mostly African American. Most of OUR friends are people of color. There are a lot of kids of color at his school and this is an absolute for us in terms of where he goes to kindergarten next year. I do think that race matters a lot. But I also think that kids can do okay as the "only" in their family as long as you have lots of people in your community and in your inner circle who share your child's racial identity. The older he gets, the more we see how critically important this is for him.

My DD is biracial (AA/CC) and was an only for a long time. She was more into getting a sib, and never expressed she wanted one that looked like her. As it happens, we were placed with another biracial baby (fost/adopt) and I have seen DD just be THRILLED and says how awesome it is to have a little sister who looks like her. I wouldn't adopt again though SIMPLY for that reason, but I do think there are benefits there if you want to grow your family. Best of luck to you!

Our DD is 4. She is very adamant that she needs a sibling that looks like her. "Mommy and Daddy are pink, she's brown, so we need another brown baby." We would welcome any child in our home and have been in the process for 2 years now to do so, but we'd prefer another AA or biracial child.

I don't think it is exactly essential, but I do think it is preferable for a child not to be the only one in the family who is different. Our first two kids are white. Our third is black/white biracial and looks more black than the majority of biracial kids. When we applied for a fourth, I thought, for sure that we would get another dark-skinned child, but we got a little blue-eyed blonde who was special needs because of very serious health problems. With our fifth and sixth kids, I said that we wanted a child with one parent who was black and the other could also be black or be white, Asian, Hispanic, etc.. My biracial son was four and a half when we got his black brother and he was just thrilled! Our sixth child is Haitian and Filipino.I have some friends who had adopted two white kids and then a little black baby girl. They wanted to adopt another black child but the father became quite seriously ill and they were unable to. Fortunately, they are best friends with another family who has adopted two black kids in the same age range as their daughter. We live in an area where the black population is mostly adopted kids. It's interesting how the black kids all know each other, but they don't become good friends unless they hit it off, personality-wise.

We've decided to renew our foster to adopt liscence for another 2 years. We have been praying about this for a while now and have decided to go ahead and put our homestudy out there. We had been talking about the posibility of adopting another child for a while. One of the main reasons we thought about this in the beginning was so that H would have another AA family member. I greatly appreciate all of you sharing your experiences and thoughts about this decision we are makng. We agree that adding a child just to have another AA child is not the right reason, but now that we've been thinking about another child in general we think it is right. There are no guarantees that personalities will get along regardless of skin color. We want to open our family for one more child. We don't have a lot, but we do have a lot of love to offer. We will request to be matched with only AA children. The boys wanted a little brother, but none of them want to share a bedroom. Our boys are now 21, 16, 14, and 12. I respect their wishes to not share a bedroom with a much younger child. And with their personality differences, I know it's important to not room any of them together. This means that we're going to persue a placement of another little girl. H is very open to sharing a room and is excited to have a little sister some day. We completed our renewal liscence and our SW will be submitting to the same county H is from in the new year. Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers as God leads us through this journey one last time. Thanks!

When we adopted our first child, my husband though "everything was perfect" and "why rock the boat?" If it had been only up to him, he probably wouldn't have adopted again. He agreed primarily because he didn't feel strongly about it and I did. I largely felt strongly about it because A. I though our daughter needed a family member that looked like her and B. we don't have the option of living in a diverse area, which don't really exist in our country. Oddly enough our children look VERY similar and even in adoption circles people assume they are bio-siblings. They are both "non-typical" for their ethnic group but they happen to be the same type of non-typical. I know this was not engineered by the adoption authorities because our second was simply the first waiting infant found in an orphanage in our country. Granted, I did want another child in my gut, period. But I'm sure to my husband, the second adoption was largely based on that reason. We are all very happy with the result. My husband has no doubts any longer and in fact he bonded with the second child faster than with the first and faster than I did. Just for the record.

I am really struggling with this right now. I have a bio DD who is white and a Adopted BR son who is now 7. We currently have a white FD who it looks like may go to adoption. I am really struggling with adopting her and a large part of it is because she is white. I actually asked my unusually mature DS how he felt and told him that it means he will never have a black sibling. He looked at me like I had 2 heads. I was very suprised that he most definately did not care if he had a brown sibling. And it is not like he is terribly attached to this baby. I truely thought it was super important to have a child of the same race as him and I have been thinking that since we adopted him 7 years ago. I am not sure why it doesn't matter to him. It may very well be that he really isn't into peer relationships anyway. Or it could be that race and mixed race familes are the norm in my town so it is not something he had ever been confronted with.