Little Sophia is busy at work in her back-yard bakery. With cheeks rosy from the sun, bees buzzing all around her and dirt on her hands, she’s working on a masterpiece. Mixed with a little water, pebbles and dirt, Sophia adds an ounce of her final ingredient—love—for a very special person—her mom.
As the little chef hands over the freshly made mud pie to her mom, she looks directly into her eyes, hugs her as tight as her tiny arms will allow, and plops a big kiss on her lips. At a glance, all that is apparent is a child who loves her mother dearly and unconditionally. But if you look a little closer, you discover that although their eyes hold the same love for one another, there is indeed something very different about them.

Sophia and her 16-month-old sister, Fiona, are adopted. Their parents are Jeanne-Marie Hughes, 47, and her husband Alex Hosmer, 34, a Caucasian couple who live in San Francisco. They were eager to start a family after they married 10 years ago, but after numerous failed attempts at natural conception and in vitro fertilization, they adopted two beautiful baby girls from China. This culturally-mixed adoption is just one example of an upward mobile trend amongst thousands of domestic partners and married couples in the United States looking to adopt.

Over the last 10 years, more and more people have chosen international adoption over local county and private adoptions. This trend is increasing the rate of international children raised as Americans by nearly 58 percent, according to the National Adoption Information Clearinghouse.

This boost in international adoption is taking hold throughout the United States, and it is most commonly found in diverse and heavily populated states, such as California, New York, Texas and Florida.

As optimistic as Hughes and Hosmer are about their daughter's future in an ethnically diverse city such as San Francisco, the question still remains; should a family raise children as they would have been raised in their native culture, or should they simply allow them to blend into their Americanized surroundings?

Andrea Stawitcke, executive director of the Bay Area Adoption Agency, says the relevance of culture is different for each adoption case, and decisions on how to raise an international child in America must be made by the parents on a case-by-case basis. “Forcing something down a child’s throat is not going to make the child very receptive,” she says.

Few international adoption agency Web sites focus on the subject of culture to any extent beyond referrals or support groups. Aside from the expensive and lengthy adoption process itself, the transference of cultures is one of the biggest concerns for all involved. Families who want direction when blending moral values and diverse backgrounds together seem to have few places to turn for definite answers.

LaNette and Graham Markay, also adoptive parents of two Chinese daughters, thought San Francisco would be the perfect place to raise their daughters. They didn’t worry about cultural issues or negative outside influences. "Here [in San Francisco] we're all in a melting pot which is pretty cool to me," LaNette says.

The Markays are not the only people who consider ethnically diverse cities a safe-haven for mixed families.

“There are so many types of families that are acceptable here in San Francisco, like inter-racial, gay and lesbian couples,” says Stawitcke. “So different looking families don’t stick out the way they would in the middle of the west or in the south.”

The Markays stand firm on their notion of San Francisco as an extremely accepting place for inter-mixed families of all types to choose to hang their hats.

LaNette, 39, a full time at-home mom, feels confident her daughters will never feel out of place living in San Francisco, but there are times the Markays receive those “ignorant” remarks from people they were warned about. Comments like, “Is your husband Chinese?” or “Oh, are you the nanny?” But Graham, 36, usually has a snappy come-back ready to go: “Oh my goodness, did they exchange my child at the hospital?”

But adopted children often harbor issues that extend far beyond a thoughtless, uncouth comment. Adapting to a new culture is never an easy process for anyone, let alone a young, impressionable child. According to the Adopt-A-Child Web site, some children go through what is known as “baby shock”—they have continuous crying spells, an endless need for attention, jealousy, and unhealthy eating habits, such as cramming so much food into their mouth at once that they choke.

Stawitcke suggests that new adoptive parents attend group meetings and read literature that addresses the challenges their children may be having, as well as to see how other people in their situation have handled cultural issues.

The Markays' plan is to be completely honest and share information with their daughters about their original province. They even bought a book to share with their oldest daughter, Madelynn, 4, about the mountain where she was abandoned as an infant.
They are well aware that their girls are Chinese, but want to be careful not to cause them to feel “different” by making them do things their cousins or schoolmates never do.

When they took Madelynn downtown for the Chinese New Year, they didn’t dress her up in any traditional outfits because they had no desire to make her do anything against her will. “I didn’t dress her up because she’s American, and I want her to make the choice,” LaNette says. “I don’t want them to feel like they have to learn Chinese because they’re from China, but if they start, they will finish.”

Hughes and Hosmer have chosen a slightly different approach. Their daughters are currently enrolled in a Chinese day care, where they are learning to speak Mandarin and Cantonese. And since Hughes and Hosmer are both professors in San Francisco and have been exposed to many cultures, Hughes says they love and respect everyone. Because they fully respect their daughters' culture, Hughes and her husband are learning Chinese too. When the girls are older, Hughes and Hosmer plan to spend summers in China with their girls to further expose them to the culture.

However, if at any point Sophia and Fiona decide they aren’t interested in learning Chinese anymore, Hughes says she will be fine with it.

This early in the game, Sophia, Fiona and Madelynn are all far too young to understand how being raised in America, as Americans, will really affect them long-term. But Ann Akers (not her real name), says she didn’t have any problems growing up as a Korean girl in an American home with Caucasian parents, regardless of the fact that white faces dominated her world. “Until fifth grade, I didn’t know another Asian,” Akers says.

Luckily for Akers, growing up in Florida left her with nothing but positive feelings about her upbringing. Her parents didn’t treat her like she was a child from another continent, and her friends never made her feel “different” for being Korean. She’s happy she wasn’t forced to learn the Korean language, which could be a sign that the Markay’s choice with their daughters may be well received in the long run.

And although Akers says she wouldn’t mind knowing the language now that she’s in her mid-20s, she did what she felt was best for her while growing up. “When you stress the cultural differences, you make [children] feel different,” Akers says. “It alienates them, and if I’m the only one learning Korean, I’d feel different.”

But Akers' feelings about raising Asian children in San Francisco differ slightly from the Hughes and the Markays.

The abundant Asian population in San Francisco is somewhat limited to Chinatown and Japantown, which can leave little room for a Korean-American girl to fit in.

According to Akers, many people within the Asian communities in San Francisco speak their native tongue and participate in certain native religious practices. But she doesn’t speak her native language and she is a Methodist.

To Akers, raising an international child in a city like San Francisco can easily make him or her feel like an outcast. “Living in the Bay Area reminds you that maybe you don’t fit into your own ethnic community as well as you may want to,” she says. In Akers' case, she feels like she will never be Asian enough.