Rev. of The Best Possible Immigrants: International Adoption and the American Family by Rachel Rains Winslow

Abstract

Reviewed by: Rev. of The Best Possible Immigrants: International Adoption and the American Family by Rachel Rains Winslow Kira A. Donnell (bio) Rev. of The Best Possible Immigrants: International Adoption and the American Family RACHEL RAINS WINSLOW. U of Pennsylvania P, 2017. 312 pp. $45.50 (Hardback) ISBN: 9780812249101. In The Best Possible Immigrants, historian Rachel Rains Winslow argues that the rise in popularity of international adoption in the United States following World War II arose because it was in the interest of a variety of actors, agencies, and agendas to promote international adoption as a method of American immigration and family-making. By examining the objectives of governments, social welfare professionals, volunteers, national and local media, adoptive parents, and prospective adoptive parents, Winslow traces the histories of American international adoption from Greece, South Korea, and South Vietnam to demonstrate how international adoption "evolved beyond an episodic response to crises in the 1940s to become an enduring and embedded American institution by the 1970s" (2). Winslow makes several important interventions in the history of international adoption in the United States. First, she places the origins of American international adoption in Europe following World War II. She highlights the European roots of international adoption practices that are often overlooked by adoption studies scholars who focus their attention on the larger and more well-known cohorts of international adoptees from Asia, who arrived in the United States during the Cold War era. Secondly, Winslow identifies four distinct but overlapping paradigms that explain the multiple and often contradicting motives social welfare workers, government agencies, humanitarians, and adoptive parents had in promoting international adoption in the United States. The consumer adoption paradigm "applied market solutions to a social problem" and approached adoption from the view that well-connected persons such as doctors and midwives, and entities such as [End Page 265] for-profit organizations could proctor adoptions in a consumer-driven system to meet the flourishing demand for adoptable children (5). In contrast and in response to the consumer paradigm, the child welfare paradigm of adoption stressed the "best interests of the child" and advocated for the use of experts and professionals in social work to process adoptions in order to ensure an optimal placement for children, based on social psychology. As a relief-based strategy, the humanitarian paradigm focused on the altruism associated with child rescue. Popularized by celebrated media coverage, humanitarian-driven adoption was "far from a utilitarian pairing of a needy child with a family," but instead touted the moral, religious, and philanthropic motives for adopting (6). The humanitarian paradigm used by some international relief agencies shifted by the mid-1960s to the development paradigm, which encouraged countries in the developing world to become self-sufficient and "modernized." This paradigm prioritized the restoration of a developing country's domestic social welfare infrastructures. Rather than providing temporary aid through permanent international adoption placements, the development paradigm sought to establish social welfare systems in home countries that could address child welfare needs in the long term. These four postwar adoption paradigms highlight how international adoption used different strategies of purported child-saving to promote state interests. As such, the private and the public, the political and the altruistic, the family and the nation are, according to Winslow, inherently entwined in the foundations of the institution of international adoption. Finally, Winslow calls attention to the role of voluntarism in the shaping of American international adoption practices. Throughout her study, Winslow demonstrates how voluntarism—on a large scale and at the individual level—remained essential in the steering of international adoption practices and policies. She shows how the US international adoption system continually extended authority and funding to individuals and agencies "on-the-ground" to provide aid to children, who "remain the most worthy subjects of foreign relief" (220). Winslow argues that volunteers were essential in the establishing, expanding, and maintaining America's international adoption systems in which the boundaries between the public and the private continually intersected, blurred, and converged. The Best Possible Immigrants navigates a chronological and site-specific account of America's international adoption history. From Greece to South Korea to South Vietnam, Winslow demonstrates how the sanctioning of international adoption has...