Adopting a child who is ethnically different from you requires you to become educated about what that other ethnicity entails. Having a heart full of love and wanting to build your family through adoption are prerequisites, but adoption is a unique adventure and can get complicated, even without the added challenge of parenting a child from a different ethnic background.

You might feel motivated to rescue an institutionalized child or a teenager who's aging out of the foster care system or an older child who is in another country's orphanage. Such positive and powerful motives should be tempered with education and research, as well as a clear-eyed assessment of your own strengths and weaknesses for taking on such a complicated challenge. It is one thing to want to do good in the world and another to live in a family that faces the challenges of a transracial adoption. You need to think not only about what your beliefs are, but about what kind of family you are most comfortable building and supporting. If you believe a transracial adoption would be too challenging for you, that is the right decision for you and you can certainly adopt a child of your own race instead.