Listening to the Voices of Adoptees & Former Foster Youth
When parents and caregivers are raising adopted, foster, or kinship kids, it’s easy to focus on what they need to learn and do to raise their children with resilient, confident identities. Sometimes, parents and caregivers forget that they have a resource available to them that is rich with lived experience: the voices of adoptees and former foster youth themselves.
Listening to adoptee voices is a crucial part of preparing yourself before your child joins your family. The insight and wisdom of adoptees and former foster youth can also help parents and caregivers connect with their child’s thoughts and feelings about being adopted across the ages and stages of growing up.
To support and strengthen parents and caregivers who wish to listen to adoptees and former foster youth, we’ve curated a combination of CreatingaFamily.org’s content and other resources we trust and respect. Our lists are by no means exhaustive but we hope they provide a starting point for you to listen and learn.
- Beyond Words Psychological Services, LLC
- Amanda Baden, Ph.D.
- Cam Lee Small, MS, LPCC
- Tara VanderWoude
- JaeRan Kim (aka Harlow’s Monkey)
- Meggin Nam Holtz, LMSW
- Nicole Chung
- The Adopted Life
- Identity Learning Co
- Redefining Normal
- Adoptee Rights Campaign
- Adoptees for Justice
- I Am Adoptee
- Chinese Adoptee Alliance
- Korean American Adoptee Adoptive Family Network (KAAN)
- Adoptee Reading – a resource website featuring books written by and recommended by adoptees
- Intercountry Adoptee Voices – a support network created by intercountry adoptees for intercountry adoptees of any country of origin
In addition to the social media accounts attached to many of the above-listed adoptee/former foster youth resources, you should also check out these accounts on social media:
- Isaac Etter, founder of Identity Learning Co, is on Instagram
- Identity Learning is on YouTube
- Amanda Woolston, MSS, LCSW, CT is active on Instagram
- Diary of a Not-So-Angry Asian Adoptee is active on Facebook and Instagram
Creating a Family has many other resources featuring adoptee and former foster youth voices. Here are a few that we think you will find particularly helpful.
- Navigating Identity & Belonging As an Adoptee (article)
- Home is Where: An Adoptee Shares Her Search for Identity (article)
- Centering the Adoptee Experience in Adoption Narratives (article)
- Transracial Adoptees Teach Us About Adoption (1 hr. podcast w/ expert panel)
- Transracial Adoption from the Eyes of Adoptee, Birth Mom, and Adoptive Mom (1 hr. podcast)
- You Should Be Grateful: Stories of Race, Identity & Transracial Adoption (1 hr. podcast)
- Courage & Resilience: A Foster Child’s Story of Success (1 hr. podcast)
*Disclaimer: The external links listed here were chosen by CreatingaFamily.org for the value we think they bring to this conversation. However, CreatingaFamily.org does not warrant, endorse, guarantee, or assume responsibility for the accuracy or reliability of any information offered by these third-party websites or social media accounts.
Image Credit: William Fortunato
Additional Resources
