When Diversity Begins at Home

When Diversity Begins at Home: Lawyers and Transracial/Multicultural Adoptions

 

While many lawyers demonstrate their commitment to diversity by serving on hiring and diversity committees, mentoring attorneys of different races, or by serving on the boards of associations promoting inclusiveness, some lawyers make the commitment highly personal—by adopting children of different backgrounds.

Although adoptive parents once almost exclusively sought children who resembled themselves in looks, today multicultural families are far from rare. Many diverse families are formed through adoptions: Recent counts show that at least 17 percent of the nearly two million adopted children in the United States under the age 18 are of a different race than their adoptive parents and 13 percent are foreign-born.1

According to Sanford P. Krigel, a Kansas City, Mo.–based adoption attorney with 29 years of experience, lawyers are significantly represented among those adopting children of different races and from different cultures. For the most part, explains Krigel, transracial and transcultural adoption kicked off when Caucasian foster parents first started to adopt minority foster children. What followed was an increase in prospective parents adopting children from other parts of the world, particularly Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America.

Many of Krigel's clients are lawyers, and in most cases they adopt because, like other highly educated rofessionals, they have focused on their careers, often deferring marriage and/or childbearing until later in life. In a lot of cases, fertility issues have developed. Also, lawyers are typically able to bear the high cost of adoption and are comfortably proactive in court settings.

On the Cutting Edge

When Thomas Wardell, a partner in McKenna Long & Aldridge's Atlanta office, adopted a multiracial son in the late 1960s, it was considered very cutting edge. He and his then-wife were profiled by the media and sought out by other Caucasian couples curious to learn the hows and whys of assembling a multicultural family.

"In those days, adoptions like ours were frowned upon," says Wardell, whose practice focuses on corporate inance and securities. "The agencies discouraged us. Though we already had a birth son, we persevered and adopted Charlie (now almost 40), who is a wonderful mix of African Caribbean, African American, Native American, and Caucasian."

By 1972, two little girls from Vietnam were settling nicely into his growing family. Wardell had begun the slow-moving adoption proceedings—with the invaluable assistance of a friend serving in the war—long before it was common or feasible to adopt orphans from the battle-scarred country. Once again, Wardell proved to be ahead of his time.

Ever since he was a little boy, Wardell—who received the Southern Region Black Law Students Association's 2004 Trailblazer Award for his commitment to diversity—had always wanted to be part of a multicultural family. He is uncertain, but guesses the desire came from growing up in Montana, where he closely interacted with Native Americans. Whatever the reason, according to Wardell, when he proposed to his first wife, he made it clear that children of other races and other cultures would be part of their family.

In most respects, says Wardell, bringing up multicultural children simply requires honesty, common sense, and balance.

"Where we lived—on Boston's Beacon Hill and in Cambridge, where the children went to school—we had no problems within the immediate community," remembers Wardell. "In fact, our biggest concern was that they weren't made into darlings and treated too softly with kid gloves. I wanted our kids held accountable like everyone else."

On Boston Common, which served as the children's playground, or aboard public transportation, things were not quite so cosseted. It was the height of the busing crisis in Boston and race relations were bad. More than once, Wardell's eldest son was drawn into fistfights defending his adopted younger brother.

"In our family, we never pretended to be anything other than what we were; race was always on the table," says Wardell. "I think it has left my children feeling stronger and more comfortable being who they are."

Great Rewards

Eleven years ago, attorney Mary "May" Wall and her husband traveled to China to receive their newly adopted infant daughter May Li. For them, the adoption process was pretty painless, and the rewards have been great.

"We had what I laughingly call a very short pregnancy," explains Wall, a partner in the environmental department at Winston & Strawn, LLP in Washington, DC. "We decided to adopt in September and by February, we were in China picking up our new seven-month-old daughter. There was a lot of paperwork—things had to be notarized, authenticated, signed, sealed, and stamped—but as a lawyer I felt I was on my own turf."

From an Irish Catholic Boston background, Wall was first inspired to adopt transracially not long after a good friend brought a baby girl back from China. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, nearly half of foreign-born adopted children of all ages are from Asia.2

"Both my husband and I come from families of girls: He grew up with four sisters and I with five," says Wall. "The fact that girls are so devalued in China made the case of baby girls there waiting for homes pretty compelling to us. That, coupled with our desire to provide a good home to a girl who otherwise would most likely end up on the streets—or perhaps worse—allowed us to arrive at our decision to adopt without difficulty."

After May Li became part of the family, not only did Wall's work schedule change to part time, but she changed, too. Wall says she experienced joys that added a new dimension to her life, and began to see the world through a new set of eyes, becoming outwardly, rather than inwardly, focused.

Early on, Wall and her husband made a commitment to expose themselves and their daughter to Chinese culture. Admittedly, without many Asian friends or neighbors, it has not been easy for them, but they have reached out in myriad ways. They host a party each year for May Li's class at school to celebrate the Chinese New Year. They make sure that May Li reads books about China and Chinese myths and legends. After school, May Li attends an easy-going Chinese language and culture class. She also enjoys some more traditionally western activities, such as riding lessons and the occasional ski trip.

"Sometimes I find myself wondering if teachers come to May Li with a certain set of expectations based on Asian stereotypes," says Wall. "I'm involved in the diversity forum at her school (as well as a member of Winston & Strawn's diversity committee). I don't know if I would have done that if I hadn't had a child from a different background. It's challenged my own perceptions and exposed me to the perceptions of a more diverse group."

This summer, the family plans to return to China. "It will be May Li's first trip back to the country where she was born. She is very excited and is a tad anxious: 'What will I do,' she asks, 'if people try to talk to me in Chinese?' "

A Sensitive Issue

Joshua D. Wayser, a partner at Lord Bissell & Brook, LLP in Los Angeles, looked to adoption as a means to create a family of his own.

"When I first thought about adopting, my then-firm was undergoing a massive reorganization. I had offers to go and head some very big departments at other firms," recalls Wayser. "At the same time, I knew I wanted to pursue something other than money, so I thought it might be the right time to start a family, so I stayed with my then-firm and off I went."

"As a gay man who was single at the time," explains Wayser, "I was open to children from diverse backgrounds. I had to be. It wasn't something I'd necessarily thought about doing, but I knew that I wanted a child more than I wanted to wait for a child who looked like me."

According to Wayser, the reality of adoption is a sensitive issue. In its own way, adoption is a competition where birth mothers choose among those seeking to adopt. Childless, Caucasian, professional, married couples are often Caucasian birth mothers' most desired choice. Those falling outside that description generally have to be flexible to significantly increase the chances to adopt more quickly. But as transracial adoption becomes more common, that flexibility no longer hastens the adoption process quite as profoundly as it once did.

Wayser went to an adoption lawyer in March 2000. His daughter, Julie, a biracial baby girl of African American and Caucasian descent, was home with him by June. Three years later, during the adoption process of his older son, Derek, who is African American, Latino, and Caucasian, Wayser met his life partner. The family continued to expand when the couple adopted their second son, Adam, who is Latino and Caucasian, just last year, and they expect to welcome a fourth child to the fold in the upcoming months.

"Generally, lawyers are well educated and successful, so it makes us desirable to birth mothers," explains Wayser, a litigation attorney with particular expertise in business and commercial matters relating to bankruptcy, reorganization, and creditor's rights. "Naturally, birth mothers look for successful people who live in desirable locations. My children's birth mothers know that we live in a good neighborhood, and that the children will be educated and afforded opportunities that otherwise probably would have been impossible."

It is very important to him that his children see people of color in positions of power, says Wayser—particularly his daughter, whose skin is darker than that of the other family members. Fortunately, says Wayser, his colleagues at Lord Bissell & Brook—with whom he does a lot of socializing—include some very successful and powerful Asian, Latino, and African American women and men.

In addition, Wayser maintains an ongoing relationship between his family and the birth mothers of his children, which he views as a positive for women who want to be in contact with the children they've given up for adoption.

"Birth mothers should always be treated with great consideration during the adoption process," says Wayser. "Attorneys and social workers strive to make sure that the adoption consent is freely given, and that the mothers' rights are protected. The risk, of course, is that a birth mother can change her mind during the process. This isn't usually the case with international adoptions because these safeguards do not always exist for those birth mothers."

"Even though we live in Los Angeles in a relatively diverse community," says Wayser, "I'd be naïve not to expect issues to arise as the kids grow older. This includes color, the 'two daddies,' as well as the usual adolescent issues. For now, my kids are young and they're happily identifying within their own family. It's a great time in our lives."

Distrust Overseas

Since traveling to Russia to adopt her young son, Beau, in June 2004, Kimberly A. Newman, a partner at O'Melveny & Myers' Washington, DC office, has learned a thing or two. While changes in federal law have made it easier over the last few years for Americans to adopt foreign-born children, foreign regulations and bureaucracies remain for the most part burdensome. Last year, Russian adoption laws were revised when it became known that about a dozen of the 50,000 children adopted by Americans from Russia (over the past 15 years) had been victims of child abuse. Consequently, the number of adoptions has dropped from approximately 5,800 in 2004 to 4,600 last year.3 Despite the increased paperwork and delays mandated by the legal changes, Newman hopes to return to Russia for another child next year.

"On the way home with my newly adopted son, I stopped by Paris to visit a friend," says Newman, recalling a bureaucratic hiccup. "I then spent one frantic hour in the Charles de Gaulle airport convincing the French authorities that my son, who was then traveling on a Russian passport, was actually an American citizen who did not need a visa to exit the airport. They eventually let us go, but only after issuing a temporary visa for my son."

And life at home isn't totally glitch-free for Newman either. She cannot work late or arrive early at work without making special arrangements for child care, nor travel or go to trial without asking her mother to cover at home. She also often works into the night after putting Beau to bed.

"In all candor, it's exhausting to be a single mother with a demanding career," says Newman. "But motherhood is the most rewarding job that I have ever known."

Foster Care

"In my first year as an attorney at Shook, Hardy & Bacon, LLP in Kansas City, Mo., a senior partner had me cover a foster care adoption for him, and I loved it," recalls Melissa Taylor Standridge. "As a lawyer, almost everything is adversarial. With a foster parent adoption, parental rights already have been terminated, so it's a celebratory experience: Everyone is happy; there are pictures with the judge. Over the next couple years, I handled lots of these types of adoptions and became active in supporting the foster care cause."

Single and on track to partnership, Standridge harbored hopes of becoming a foster mother, but frankly did not see it happening. When a friend and partner at Shook Hardy was appointed a federal magistrate judge, he asked Standridge to be his law clerk, knowing her abilities and that a flexible nine-to-five job—opposed to the 60 hours a week plus travel with the firm—might make her dream of fostering children a possibility.

Days after starting as Judge David J. Waxse's clerk in 1999, Standridge enrolled in foster care classes. Not long after, she was asked to take two foster kids, Latino siblings Sergio and Anna. After a year and a half, it was determined that the children's natural mother was unable to "keep the children safe" and that the time had come to sever ties between the birth mother and children. Immediately, Standridge was asked if she was willing to adopt, and "in a New York second," she answered affirmatively. A year and a half later, Standridge adopted again: this time, Clint, an African American foster child who had been placed in her care.

For seven years, says Standridge, she has belonged to an intimate circle of African American friends within which she is the only Caucasian. She is at ease with diversity. Not for a moment, she says, was she uncomfortable with adopting children from outside of her race.

"I make it a point to celebrate differences. But I also celebrate our similarities," explains Standridge, a fair-skinned red-head. "I'll say to my daughter, 'Our skin is different, but we both love word games.' It's important that the boys (both now eight) and Anna (seven) feel a sense of belonging and know that I'm their mother."

Since adopting, Standridge married a judge whose job requires that he live in a house across the nearby state line with his teenage children from a previous marriage. Whether together or apart, the family maintains a "no tolerance" policy regarding ethnic or racially biased remarks—not so much as a blonde joke. In Standridge's house, Rosa Parks' death prompts a family discussion and Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday is celebrated with a cake and balloons.

"It's difficult to imagine now, but I never got into this to adopt," says Standridge. "I simply wanted to lend a hand to families by caring for the children while the parents cleaned up their acts, but lucky for me, things have turned out very differently."

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Patrick Folliard is a freelance writer based in Silver Spring, Md.

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NOTES

1. See "Facts for Features," U.S. Census Bureau (Sept. 20, 2004), at http://www.census.gov/Press-Release….
2. Id.
3. See "Immigrant Visas Issued to Orphans Coming to the U.S." U.S. Department of State, at http://travel.state.gov/family/adoption/stats/stats_451.html. 2005.

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From the July/August 2006 issue of  Diversity & The Bar^®