Living Abroad with Adopted Children?

April 16, 2015

I would like to hear from expat families living abroad with adopted children.

We adopted a child several years ago and are looking to adopt another soon. Both are interracial adoptions, though our kids will not look like each other. My spouse and I are both white though we live in a fairly diverse community.

My spouse is looking into long-term employment outside the United States, in the Gulf region or SE Asia, but I am concerned about raising our children outside the US, that attitudes about international/interracial adoption (which can be bad enough in this country) are old-fashioned or downright racist.

If you have experience living abroad with adopted kids, please share!

WizardofOz

April 26, 2015

I would be scared to live in the Gulf region because of the case of Matthew and Grace Huang in Qatar:

[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Huang_Case_in_Qatar]2013 Huang Case in Qatar - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/url]

Qatar does not appear to recognize or understand adoptions, and in particular not transracial adoptions. The Huang case was a Chinese American couple who adopted two African kids. Their daughter died in Qatar, and they were accused of murder, human trafficking, slavery etc. Scary story.

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Jessica Jamanca

June 10, 2015

We are just at the I800A approval phase of our adoption so we don't have children yet but we are expats and plan to be for a few more years (like 10 more). I think it really depends on the kids and the country you are going to. We live in a small community in Malaysia and so we are surrounded by expats. The typical expat child is very used to diversity and is very confident and open minded. Your kids would most likely be going to an international school with kids of all races and creeds. Even in Houston the expats with kids all kind of lived in the same area. I think maybe the emotional ability of your kids to move and leave their friends/surroundings behind might be a bigger issue. As well as looking at the country's adoption views-in Malaysia there is no stigma and many adoptions aren't fully legally finalized (among them).

From what I have seen in SE Asia and Oman your day to day living will be around a lot of other expat families between school, neighborhood, and activities. You might encounter some comments or questions when traveling or outside the bubble (what we call the expat areas) but it most likely would be out of curiosity than being negative. We have had to explain our plans to bank tellers, HR people, police officer in the paperwork process and they have questions but are really kind and we took it as an education session. The people of SE Asia and Oman (I haven't ravel the rest of the middle east) are some of the warmest and nicest people around. Hopefully you will hear from some expats families with adopted kids soon (maybe a military adoption group?) Best of luck!