Introductory Essay

Abstract

Suppose you want to writeOf a woman braidingAnother woman's hair-Straight down, or with beads and shellsIn three-strand plaits or corn-rowsYouhad better know the thicknessThe length the patternWhy she decides to braid her hairHow it is done to herWhat country it happens inWhat else happens in that countryYou have to know these things-Adrienne Rich, "North American Time"Although Adrienne Rich tells us we “have to know these things,” we are often willingly blind to the rich stories of those with whom we are most intimate. You may braid someone's hair without knowing very much about her. You may even write about it, though the writing would rapidly become very dull. In this issue of Law & Society Review, the authors examine how legal regimes facilitate knowing (and ignoring) stories when making families. For people seeking to adopt a child in western national states, the law has sometimes made it easy not to know about who bore a child, why she is available for adoption, and why a family might have raised her one way rather than another—braiding her hair in cornrows or in plaits. Also, in intercountry adoption, children often arrive with no history available, a condition legal adoption allows and often facilitates. We need not know “what else happens in that country.” Recent scholarship notes the historical and cultural specificity of the practice of ignoring. Adoptees, mothers who have placed their children for adoption, and adoptive parents have all claimed a right to know their own or their child's history, sometimes for different reasons. Scholars have followed, explaining that creating an “as if” family, in which all of this knowledge is foreclosed, does not fit with the experience of families. Articles in this issue address three interlocking themes that question the practice of not knowing: the commodification of children and family in a market economy, contests over the framework of choice in the making of a family, and the identity of children.