"Sometimes we also came across a mother in the playground who thought her child shouldn't play with Rahel because she's dark, or there was a woman next to us at the beach bar who thought it was totally wrong to adopt a child from a foreign culture. Yes, we've also experienced those sides."
These are the words of Mrs Amsler (all names changed), mother of two adoptive daughters of Indian origin. Another adoptive mother, Mrs Faber, spoke with anger about the curious looks her family would receive when out and about:
"People always stared at us, maybe also because we parents are both white and we were with a dark-skinned girl. Not necessarily disapprovingly – just out of curiosity. But after a while it simply gets annoying because you just want to be a normal family. We were just a family like any other."
Racism towards their own adoptive children, derogatory comments about their chosen family model and being stared at are experiences that all 13 adoptive parents interviewed for this study had shared at one time or another.
That the adoptive child happened to come from India was often coincidental. The adoptive parents had usually initially thought to adopt a child from Switzerland, and chose intercountry adoption merely because there were more obstacles to adopting a Swiss child. Mrs Amsler remembered this clearly:
"Then we began making enquiries. We were too old for a Swiss adoption, that was very clear. There was an age limit, and we were over it, so that wasn't an option – even though we knew that there were adoptive children in children's homes in Switzerland who couldn't be placed. We were also told, 'We have homes and they need to be filled and managed, that is why the children are not placed for adoption'. That certainly gave us pause for thought, but we didn't get too hung up on it because we thought that an intercountry adoption would also be okay."
Mrs Amsler and her husband had initially considered adopting a child from South America before the placement agency suggested an Indian child. The Amsler family could imagine adopting a child from India because they already knew a little about the country from their travels. Other adoptive parents interviewed had no connection to India until the adoption.
What advice or support did the adoptive parents receive to prepare them for adopting a child of colour?
Experienced support in short supply
In the period from 1973–2002, there was hardly any public debate on the topic of racism. The following excerpt from a brochure published in 2004 by several well-known organisations illustrates this.
Excerpt from the brochure Adoption of Children from Foreign Cultures, published in 2004 in German and French by the Marie Meierhofer Institut für das Kind [Marie Meierhofer Institute for the Child], the Schweizerische Fachstelle für Adoption [Swiss Centre for Adoption Matters] and the Swiss International Social Service foundation, p. 19 f.
While they do at least mention the "problem of racism", the authors deal with it rather perfunctorily and their argumentation is dubious from a racism-conscious perspective. What is striking is the way in which the brochure consistently exoticises the adoptees as "cute dark-skinned babies" whose otherness will always be a reminder of their "foreign roots". Today we are aware that the othering of individuals based on arbitrary characteristics such as their physical appearance or place of birth is precisely what defines racism. Instead of questioning this othering, the brochure reinforces it.
The brochure also states that the adopted child will inevitably encounter racism, "even if this only manifests itself in uncomfortable comments". This statement downplays the extent of the racism faced by the adoptees and their families. All of the adoptive parents interviewed described having witnessed the racism experienced by their adoptive children. These encounters included racist language and insults, someone refusing to shake their child's hand or sit next to them and unsolicited touching, hair grabbing and being stared at in an unpleasant way by strangers. Some also spoke of the racism that their adoptive children continue to experience as adults, including racial profiling, racism in the workplace and racism in the armed forces.
Finally, although the booklet encourages the adoptive parents to be aware of racism and support their adoptive child, it is unclear what this might involve in practice. Finally, the booklet suggests that adoptive parents may overestimate the amount of racism their child will face and cautions against "transferring" anxieties to the child. This grossly underplays the profound impact of racism in society. A recent study commissioned by the Service for Combating Racism shows that racism is not limited to racist remarks and affects every aspect of the lives of people affected by racism.[FN1 Leonie Mugglin, Denise Efionayi-Mäder, Didier Rued in & Gianni D'Amato, Grundlagenstudiezu strukturellem Rassismus in der Schweiz, Neuchâtel 2022.]
Despite occasional efforts by the adoption agencies to raise parents' awareness of the issue of racism, the interviews with the 13 adoptive parents from the cantons of Zurich and Thurgau who adopted children from India between 1973 and 2002 show that they received little support from the adoption agencies to help them prepare for the issues they would face in raising a child of colour in Switzerland. The support they were able to offer their adoptive children depended on their existing skills and resources.
Avoiding the topic of racism
The adoption agencies' apparent tendency to avoid or inadequately address the topic of racism is unsurprising in this social context and historical timeframe. Since the end of the Second World War, racism has largely been portrayed as a problem of the past and racist attitudes as an exception, leading to a generalised belief that racism is not a major issue in Swiss society. It is only in recent years that the realities of racism in Switzerland have been recognised and openly discussed. In Switzerland like in other parts of Europe, people lack the vocabulary for an informed discussion about racism. White people who reject racism are often not sure what to do or are afraid of saying the wrong thing and don't want to offend. Such avoidant strategies are also evident in interviews with adoptive parents.
As Mr Bertschi put it, "We simply brought them up like normal children here. They were just children to us and not special. “I mean, children are always special, but it's not like, 'Oh, look, they're ... !' They were just here, and we started a normal family."
In the words of Mrs Faber: "And you don't even see this colour anymore, Tina is just Tina and I just don't register the colour."
Photo: A girl from India adopted in eastern Switzerland stands next to a big snowman in the winter of 1982. Private archive.
There is a wide range of views among the adoptive parents interviewed about the extent to which their adoptive children experience racism. Some suspect that their adoptive children did not tell them everything they experienced, either as children or as adults. Some say that they do not know whether their adoptive children experienced racism, while others say they never noticed anything themselves, but can't rule out the possibility that people were being racist behind their backs. Some of the parents are adamant that racism is not a problem for their adopted child: "I've also never heard that she [my adopted daughter] felt that she encountered racism. I never heard anything.[...] I'm not aware of anything serious." None of the interviewees expressed any concerns that this could be an issue that worried or constituted a burden for their adoptive children in the past or present or could have a long-term impact.
The word racism was rarely used by the parents, who instead spoke of 'bad experiences', 'reservations', 'odd' or 'these/such experiences', 'uncomfortable situations', 'jibes' or '(stupid) remarks' and 'comments', as illustrated by Mrs Amsler's statement: "The thing with the comments didn't happen a lot."
Dealing with racism
How and to what extent did the adoptive parents address issues of racism with their adopted children? Mrs Amsler explains how she and her adoptive daughter would practise what to do when accosted by "older Swiss men" on public transport: “Then we practised how she could respond in role plays. Honestly, we just role-played it until we laughed ourselves to tears. She simply said, 'It helps me to do that. Sometimes I can let a comment go or it doesn't bother me as much. I can take my distance.'" Mr Engel emphasises how important it was for the children to develop good self-confidence during their upbringing, "We didn't always succeed, but we did manage to ensure that she [Reena] has good self-confidence and is not so bothered when accosted by others or things like that."
Some adoptive parents responded when their children were subjected racism. They had conversations with individual school children or gave a talk about India and adoption to the kindergarten class.
In 1980, a couple from eastern Switzerland await the arrival of an Indian child with a basket of dolls of different skin colours. Private archive.
Others report that they sometimes deliberately ignored racist comments and avoided certain people, as Mr Engel describes: "Perhaps were able to simply ignore certain things or look the other way and not associate with people who think like that, or had a thicker skin or enough self-confidence."
Mr Engel’s testimony also shows that it took strong nerves and a lot of self-confidence for adoptive parents respond to racist comments, suggesting that he may have been troubled by the issue.
Some parents also tended to downplay racist incidents. Mr Hagenbuch commented: "The appearance thing, you tone that down a bit. So I also said to her, 'You mustn't think... Anita also gets teased, she has ginger hair – and you're a bit darker. I mean, she was also always teased about it at school.'"
The difficulty of talking about racism in Swiss society and the tendency to avoid or trivialise the topic affected the adoptive parents to varying degrees.
The interviewees typically reported that race was not a major issue within their families. Overall, it can therefore be assumed that the children were only able to discuss racism with their adoptive parents to a limited extent.
Zethno Podcast, "No vocabulary for racism?" Nadine Gautschi on adoptive parenthood and racism in Switzerland
How do Swiss adoptive parents of Indian children navigate experiences of racism in Switzerland? What strategies do they employ to address racial discrimination in a society in which, until recently, the topic of racism was rarely discussed in the public sphere? In this Zethnopod episode, Nadine Gautschi talks about the 'Adoptions in the Cantons of Zurich and Thurgau, 1973–2002' research project, which examines the experiences of people affected by intercountry adoption.
Zethno-Talk: https://zethno.ch/pod/07/
