In a recent blog post, Danielle Pennel, shares a conversation that inspired the question: Are Adopted Siblings Who Look Alike “Blessed”? If you’ve adopted transracially, how did you come to the decision? Would you be happy if your children looked alike? Has anyone commented on your children’s similar or dissimilar looks?

I have had several people comment to me that they think the girls look a like and that this is amazing. They did not say its a blessing but they still mentioned it in a way that I have been thinking there must be something to it. Personally, I think they are coming from a perspective that as an adoptive family we want to look as “normal” as possible. To them, they expect us to want to hide the fact that we have a non biological relationship.
The most fun is when people ask me whom my oldest daughter, Anna, looks like and I just answer her grandma(which is true but its her biological grandma she looks like and she does not look at all like her bellymom) and suddenly their faces are all smiles. I always wonder why people even ask this in the grocery store etc. Anyway, I believe your teacher was thinking along the lines of, oh its good for them when they look alike so that they do not have to talk about being adopted.

I have two children from China who look nothing alike (well, except for the black hair!) so this isn’t something I’ve dealt with as a parent. However, I am adopted and my sister is the bio child of my parents. When we were young we thought it was hilarious when people told us we looked alike (we don’t!) or when they got confused about which one of us was adopted.  Sometimes I think people see resemblance where they want to, especially when two children are the same minority race.
Do I care if my kids look alike? Nope.  Do they care? Not yet—they are 4 and 6.  But maybe as they get into their preteen and teen years, when they go through that stage when they just want to be like everyone else, they will not want to deal with “is that your Real sister/brother” quite as often. I guess that could be a sort of blessing.

People can never choose the looks of their children, whether they donate their genetics or adopt.  We had some very intense discussions when we were deciding what races to choose in our adoptive profile regarding matches.  We decided to choose all race combinations that had caucasian.  Example - Caucasian, African American/Caucasian, African American/Hispanic/Caucasian, etc.  It had nothing to do with looks.  We just thought that if our child would be identified as a different race, we would still have something in common.  Our oldest daughter is biracial, AA/CC.  So, when it was time to adopt a second time, we narrowed the field in hope to have another child that would look like our first daughter.  It was close.  Our youngest daughter is AA/CC/Vietnamese.  Some things about them are similar, some are not.  The differences between the two of them, and between them and us, are more noticeable when the whole family is together because the remainder of the family is CC.  Most of the time, I forget about it until someone makes a comment.  But that’s a whole different forum!

That families are supposed to “look alike” is learned very young.  I had this experience driven home when my adoptive daughter who is Chinese (I am Caucasian Hispanic) was about 7 or 8.  She was attending the back up day care center at my work when she was about 7 or 8. I went to the center to pick her up for lunch and she was involved in an activity and not ready to leave yet. She looked up long enough to acknowledge me with a “Hi Mama” and went back to what she was working on.  As I waited there, one of her playmates asked her “Is that your mom?” and she affirmed I was without even lifting her head. Her friend was clearly puzzled by this, looking from Katy to myself and then back at Katy again before commenting “Oh. You look alike.” I believe she somehow had the idea that mothers and daughters must have similar features and made us fit.  Several years later she said to me, after she met her African American friend’s biological father who was white, “Taylor doesn’t look like her dad.” I just smiled and said “You don’t look like me.” So even our kids from mixed racial families are not immune to these comments.