How important is a physical match

Interesting question, I'm white, family all white, simba is white British/African, so we look nothing like each other.

Very occasionally he says he wishes he was the same as me, we have a little chat and he moves on. Where we live is more ethnically diverse than his home town. I have been to birth dad's home, and one of his African aunties, and I have more African things, books, photos things I've collected from my travels, littered round my home than they do. In some ways he has more aspects to some parts of African culture than he would if he was still with birth family, because he has a full sibling who lives with dad who looks more European than Simba does and who I believe had struggled more with identity issues than Simba has.

As I'm single Simba doesn't really have that choice but at the moment I don't really feel it's been a significant issue that we don't look alike. The school I chose for his mainstream placement is a sea of black faces but the two particular friends he's made are white. I found several of the Todd Parr books helpful when talking about differences of all kinds. I'm not naive enough to think that his dual ethnicity won't ever be an issue but I suppose at the moment it's not his biggest need.

intereting topic.  my children identify more with their white british culture than their Chinese one, but they do take what they want from both! my daughter looks more Chinese than her older brother and looks more like her Chinese relis than does my BS but even my AS people say looks like me!  but he certainly has mannerisms like mine.
from the other side though, I have often wondered what it would be like to have white british children.  I had potential for red haired and blonde haired children and do wonder sometimes what that would have like and have to admit to having  an extra soft spot for some of my fosterlings, particularly the blonde bombshell, becoz they are so blonde! but then I have a soft spot for curly hair too.  we always want what we don't have!

Oh Choti you have started a thread on one of my favourite topics (will try and not rabbit on too much)

I don’t think it is essential to have a resemblance to your adoptive family, but I think it helps in terms of privacy, i.e. you do not automatically have strangers looking at you and saying “oh, they are adopted” like you do in Tran racial adoptions, where your children’s status is blatantly obvious to every one at first glance.

I’m adopted and it was always important to me to look like my parents and siblings as I always wanted to blend in and not attract attention. My parents had dark hair and my Dad had brown eyes whilst my Mum had blue eye. All four of us were adopted, (not genetically related), and myself and my brothers all had dark hair and brown eyes and resembled our parents, whilst my sister had blonde hair and blue eyes with sallow unblemished skin that tanned beautifully even if she sat in the shade (used to be soooo jealous ), while the 3 of us had typically Celtic freckled skin that burned if we didn’t take care. Sister was out and proud. Much more confident than I was, loved telling everyone “she was chosen”, loved attention and looking different, whereas I was less confident and just wanted to blend in and not attract attention, hated people knowing my business and valued my privacy only telling close friends that I was adopted.

I have white friends who adopted two fully black children whilst living abroad. They cannot hide the fact that they are adopted, as it is obvious every time they are out and about. They are known as “the adopted kids” in their street  and that is my point. They don’t have a choice of who knows and who doesn’t.

If I met Serrakunda and Simba, I would automatically assume that Simba was hers and that the dad was black. I wouldn’t even think to ask, is he adopted, I would just assume ex partner was black. Tokoloshe’s situation is different, as she said Oyster is very dark, so it is obvious that she is adopted, whereas Shrimp could be hers with a black partner.

A white single adopter with a mixed race kid is very common, so does not raise the questions that a white couple with a mixed or black or Asian child does, not these days with so many inter racial relationships.

I have another friend with 3 birth children. Friend is white, her DH is black and the eldest is quite dark skinned, middly is medium skinned and youngest is really fair skinned, almost white and they all have the same mum and dad. Mixed race children’s skin colour, and hair type, can vary so much even within the same family depending on what share of the genes they get from mum and dad.

My DD’s are half siblings. EDD has quite dark skin, but has straight, slightly wavy, Caucasian hair. YDD has very light skin and afro hair and in my opinion they do not look alike at all, but some people think they do and have commented on how alike they are, despite not knowing they are adopted. EDD did have the mum of a friend at school pass a comment once, that I could not be her mother because DD’s skin was too dark. This enraged DD because BM is fully white British, even whiter than I am, and DD was really annoyed at this woman for doubting that I was her mum.

Resemblance is interesting though. I have an adopter friend whose children all look like her. Her eldest DD is the spitting image of her, so much so that people don’t believe she is adopted. DD is autistic and tells everyone she is adopted, whether they want to know or not, and people just look at her and her mum and smile and think, why is she saying that, she is so obviously yours?

Love this topic

Oh I meant to add that our birth son looked nothing like either myself or exDH.

He looked really like ex's best friend (who was white, same face shape and features ) which caused all of us much amusement as BS was definately mixed race and definately my ex's child as they shared the same genetic condition that ex is a carrier of.

Ironically YDD looks very like my ex, people always commented on their resemblance, so adopted kids can look more like their adopted parents than their birth child can. 

When they were little everyone said the girls looked like me - but I think that was because of their colouring which was similar to mine (when my hair was blonde). Everyone would say that "you can tell who his Dad is" about my son. He was blond with blue eyes and DH is dark haired with hazel eyes!! I could never see it myself but I got it so often..... But people always claim that AS has my eyes (they are very similar in colour, actually). We don't get it now, but mostly everyone we know knows they are adopted.

Bizarrely we were often asked "are they twins?". Although we don't know if they are identical, they look as though they could be - to the extent that even my husband couldn't tell them apart for ages!

It was made very clear to me that if Simba's BM had been black and dad had been white I wouldnt have got him, as it is I do reflect his ethnic heritage. Though she is very blond and I have brown hair ( well I did once !) Also where we live makes a difference. there are loads dual heritage families where we live, we don't stand out at all, as JMK says peole will just assume that my ex is black and not give us a second look. Althouh as an aside, we have two universities here and a huge growth in numbers of Chinese students who do seem to find us interesting.

I think it would have been different if I'd lived in deepest Cornwall. When me SW went to interview one of my referrees in Cornwall, she turned it into a weekend break because of the distance and told me she had never felt so black.

So yes, SWs could 'see' Simba with me in that respect and that was important, and I would agree

Superficially kipper looks like he could be biologically mine, as he has a mad thick mop of uncontrollable hair, as have I, which is a similar colour, though he is just a shade darker. but DH and I both have blue eyes, and kipper has brown - a biological impossibility. Only one person has ever noticed this - a hairdresser who asked where he got his eyes from. 

 He has the most amazing dark eyes, the colour of conkers, and when he was a baby they had an almost oriental almond shape to them.  They are stunning and I fell in love with them instantly. However all the babies biologically in my family are like fat blond cherubs from a renaissance painting (LOBs you'd love them!), with rolls of fat round chubby little thighs, and big blue eyes.  kipper was lean slim,and long. 

Im sure these visual biological differences made me slower to bond with him, I did feel very aware that he wasn't genetically mine, and his distinctive eyes kept reminding me of his BM. 

We do joke with him about how like my hair his is, And we talk about who else has brown eyes in the family - DHs dad, for example. But I do wonder how he will feel about these differences as he gets older. 

We're all white but my girls, who are unrelated, look very different to each other and I always expect people to comment on this when one says the other is her sister - they don't but I can kind of see them thinking it! (Although dd1 often tells people they are both adopted anyway). Dh and I have similar colouring, though his eyes are green and mine are hazel. We both have dark hair (or I used to!). Dd2 is more like us re hair colour but has brown eyes. Dd1 is slightly fairer hair-wise but has blue eyes. But dd1 looks very like DH's sister and once when mil was looking after her as a toddler, someone came up and said she could clearly tell mil was grandma as they looked alike!

We were once in competition with another family for a child - in the end they were chosen as the father of the family had similar colouring to the child (we weren't impressed with this, needless to say)

The physical side of things affected me simply because dd2 is so physically different from dd1 - in size, skin type, body type etc as well as colouring - I found her quite difficult to bond with initially and one reason was because she DIDN'T look like dd1.

People are always commenting how alike Dash and his Dad are   We don't know what his BD looks like. And also how alike Dash and his big brother are (BS) . They all wear glasses which I think is one of the similarities people pick up on. The first visit from Dash's SW we learnt that Dash had long sight and astigmatism...same as DH! BS is very short sighted.

We are all pale skinned while Dash gets a tan in the shade (as jmk said about her sister) and he has the most beautiful brown eyes. DH blue/grey and mine green/grey....so also physically impossible?

Partridge wanted to belong

So he wanted to have the same eyes. Hair etc as my family

Thankfully my dad has the same colour eyes

They've got siblings who are different races so I'm unsure if race has impacted on this or not

My sister and bil both have brown eyes. My niece has greeny grey eyes! She looks more like her father's sister. Can't see that either my niece nor nephew look anything like their parents!

My middly can be a mini me - the way he talks, the things he says - he open his mouth and I hear my words!

I remember after being matched and meeting fc for first time a few days before intros, ex and I went to the meeting and ds's sw was there and her manager.

Manager just looked at me, up and down, then did the same with ex, looked wide eyed and smiled, turned to sw and said 'I congratulate you, the likeness to the birth parents is astounding!'. Sw looked very pleased with herself and nodded as if to say 'I know!' . I think she was mentally counting her brownie points.

I'm still not sure how I feel about that. I know we were in a competitive match and very pleased to have been matched with ds, but it felt like after months and months of training, home studies, learning, agonising and then months and months of waiting, the only thing we had to offer was our looks.

Ds has similar colouring to me, but no one has ever said he looks like me.

I'm not bothered myself, but I do catch looks frm ds when people (usually my mother) comment to friends how their children look so much lke their dad, or mum. Her favourite comment lately is to say to ex's mum how her new granddaughter 'is the image of you, isn't she?'. I know ds has to get used to this stuff, and maybe I'm feeling more for him than he actually feels, but that bothers me.

Personality wise I think ds and I are very similar. I can see so much in him how I was as a kid, which helps when he's being particularly strong willed lol!!

This is so interesting to read x one of our girls is Asian me and my husband are white. having our first grandchild at 38 we have heard people say ohhhh they must have adopted him when we have him out and about rather rude!!! I'm a very proud grandma xxxxx

But my poor hubby got horrid looks if he went shopping with D and GS along the lines of "Thia bride" We promised him a tshirt with grandad on....
Miss right is the spit of my eldest BD in everyway I do belive this helped me get over her arrival at 2 years old after always fostering teens xx

All our children (10) obviously look different but they all look similar to each other it's very strange we have team blue and team brown for eyes after me and hubby