Stephanie Dahl: A Lovely Problem to Have

Stephanie Dahl is a National Board Certified teacher with a Masters Degree in Early Childhood Education and a Bachelors Degree in Psychology.  After trying to conceive for many years, she stopped pursuing a biological child and focused on adoption.  One month after the birth of their adopted daughter, she and her husband received the joyful news they were expecting.  Currently a Stay-at-Home-Mom who plans to return to teaching when Sophia and Brianna are in preschool, Stephanie has recently rediscovered writing as a way of understanding her experience and improving as a mother.  You can read more at her blog A lovely problem to have.     

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As the mother of a transracially adopted child (my daughter is of Ethiopian descent and my husband and I have Scandinavian roots), I often find myself in situations requiring special care and consideration.  

Some of these situations I feel prepared for, such as when over-friendly strangers make inquiries or judgments about our daughter’s birth parents.  Other times, however, the situations take me by surprise and I feel less prepared.  Usually the surprise situations involve forms of racism.  As a highly visible family, we have had several negative experiences.  However, racism doesn’t always come in negative form.  It can also come in the form of gifts and praise.

Once, a family friend asked my daughter, “Are you gonna be a basketball player, Sophia?”  (I’d like to think he asked that because she is tall for her age and not because he sees limited opportunities for success because of her brown skin.)  And a family member once insisted that Sophia loves music and dance because “it is in her DNA.”  (It couldn’t be because we love music at our home and I have danced with her since she was a newborn.)

Another time, a couple gave Sophia the gift of a baby doll.  A white baby doll with big blue eyes and blonde hair.  Little circles of pink warmed up the plastic, peachy skin.  I didn’t quite know what to say.  I had anticipated seeing a doll with a deeper skin tone.  I thought of saying something like, “Thank you, but didn’t the store have any black dolls?” or gently suggesting through my daughter, “Let’s get a sister for your baby doll, Sophia.  One with beautiful brown skin like you.”

I often have mixed feelings about that gift.  For example, I envision her doll collection containing babies and children with many different skin tones, and a peach-skinned doll does fit into that vision.  But the gift of that doll also flurries me with unanswered questions:  

1. What were our friends were thinking?
2. Or were they simply not thinking?
3. Have they become so accustomed to wearing their white skin that they would never think to purchase a doll of a different color?
4. Did they not consider that Sophia might want a doll that looks similar to her own baby pictures?
5. In choosing a doll with white skin were they subconsciously disregarding her brown skin, valuing white over brown as happens again and again in our culture?

As Sophia’s parent, it is my job to ensure her dolls (and books, cultural experiences, musical repertoire, and cuisine) are reflective and inclusive of her African heritage.  It is not, after all, the responsibility of our friends.

Source:  istockphoto

That said, I now ask questions I never would have asked before, I've become sensitive to issues of race and culture, and I think about how my daughters, and we as people, connect to, or feel separate from, the world around us.

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Stephanie has always loved to write, but probably never imagined that adopting a baby, and nine months later birthing one, would give her so much that is rich, that is uniquely hers, to write about.

Have any of us, like Stephanie, found ourselves in a completely unexpected place, making unimagined discoveries?  How have these places furthered our dream?  Or led us to dare to dream?

If dolls are a "mini-me", or a projection of who we can be, and dolls don't accurately represent who we are, is it possible that our dreams become fundamentally flawed because we somehow don't build off our our innate strengths?

After reading Stephanie's post, you may want to re-read Michele Pierce's post A Mother's Thoughts on Adoption.

P.S.  Thank you to Melissa Stanton for introducing me to Stephanie, describing her "tale as a lovely story about adoption, infertility, family and race."

Comments

[Amy J o]

Overall, it is still a lovely place to be. Mothering comes with all forms of issues and problems, and having perspective like Stephanie's shows us all how to be better.

[Janna]

I think that we dreamers are often met with people who just don't "get" us. No matter the dream - whether it be a certain family makeup, a business, a new law that we want to see to fruition - many people simply do not agree that our dream is worthy or valuable.

Connecting this point to Whitney's question about basing our dreams on a wrong perception of our strengths, we see that it is all the more essential to drown out these voices of doubt and misconception of who we are in order to hear ourselves, our own voice of what is true.

[EHD]

My brother, his wife, and four children (all with blonde hair and blue eyes) adopted a beautiful daughter from Korea. Because she was so beautiful (she passed away at the age of five), I don't believe they ever encountered negative experiences, merely endless praise. (We are a visual society!) Nonetheless, as she aged, she was aware of being physically different, even if her experience was positive. I have several friends who have adopted cross-racially. One received a similar comment about her son growing up to be a great basketball player. On the one hand, I deeply sympathize with the insensitive comments they receive and the extra layer of challenges with which they deal. On the other hand, one (regardless of situation) can become "over-sensitized", seeing ignorance (regarding class, religion, gender, politics, and/ or race) where none was intended or is even present. Not an easy path to navigate!

[Sarah Korodi]

My girls were born in Guatemala. I was thrilled to discover American Girl came out with a new line of "Just Like Me" dolls who had much more ethnic coloring. My oldest almost immediately identified with one of the girls in particular. Guess what's coming her way for her 7th b-day next week! This is huge for a little girl who is always checking to see what color all the people around her are. It's amazing what a doll can do!

[JLBD]

Thank you for your your thoughtful insights. We have adopted transracially in our family. It has been enlightening, incredibly rewarding, and absolutely devastating at times. More than one person has commented to me that "they don't even see" my child's skin color. And I remind them that it is my responsibility as a parent to my African American child to always see his beautiful skin - to celebrate his whole self, to recognize injustice when it occurs in his life, and to insist upon good behavior from those around him. Sometimes this means informing a loving grandparent that a joke with racial undertones is not acceptable in our home or gently correcting my child's classmate who insists he speaks Spanish because of his dark skin. And most often it means loving him as he is and for who he is and teaching him to do the same. His experiences in life will be different from mine in part because of the color of his skin. And it is my privilege to help him negotiate the challenges and opportunities that are his.

[Bonnie Tonita White]

And where are the dolls with spinal bifida, cleft palates, deformed spines? I tend to agree with EHD's comments that often we become oversensitive. In our Father's kingdom, I hope we are all color blind - oblivious of these distinctions because what we are and what we can do are more transcedent than how we appear. We seem a long way away from no more "ites"