Transracial Parenting

Mom of three Rachel Garlinghouse joined HuffPost Live Tuesday to talk about the challenges that come along with parenting children of another race.

Garlinghouse and her husband decided to adopt children after she was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. 

All three of their children are black, and since mom and dad are white, Garlinghouse says her family doesn't have the privilege of being "color blind."

"When my family walks into a room, everybody knows my kids are adopted," she told host Marc Lamont Hill. "Everybody knows I'm white. Everyone notices my kids are black. 

There's no holding hands, there's no tolerance. There's none of that. That is the first thing people see. My kids have seen color since they were 2 years old. They know they're brown and I'm pink."

The hardest part, Garlinghouse says, is preparing her children for the racism they might encounter down the road -- something she does not have the experience to do alone.

"I'm white. I have to go to the community that we've created around ourselves to help because truly when you adopt transracially, it does take a village," she said. "I am not enough for my children to prepare them for the racism they're going to encounter because I haven't experienced it myself. I have to go to those we've surrounded ourselves and say, 'Hey, I need help with this.' Transracial parenting, it takes humbleness and it takes help."

She said that she has a mentor that has been with the family for over two years and has been invaluable.

"I wanted a long standing relationship with someone who could help me parent my children." Garlinghouse said. "She's not only mentoring the girls, she's mentoring me. It's been an incredible experience."

Today, approximately 40 percent of adoptions in America are transracial — and that number is growing. In decades past, many American parents of transracial adoptions simply rejected racial categories, raising their children as though racial distinctions didn't matter.

"Social workers used to tell parents, 'You just raise your child as though you gave birth to her,' " Adam Pertman, executive director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, tells NPR's Neal Conan. "An extreme majority of transracially adopted kids ... grew up wishing they were white or thinking they were white, not wanting to look in mirrors."

Pertman's organization has conducted extensive research on transracial adoption in America. He says turning a blind eye to race wasn't good for anybody. "We don't live in a colorblind society," he says.