Transracial Adoption Research Articles

Reframing Transracial Adoption: Adopted Koreans, White Parents, and the Politics of Kinship. KristiBrian. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2012. 214 pp.

Reframing Transracial Adoption: Adopted Koreans, White Parents, and the Politics of Kinship. KristiBrian. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2012. 214 pp.

Multicultural families: Deracializing transracial adoption

In 2010, the Coalition government announced its plans for adoption reform which included ‘removing barriers’ to transracial adoption. The government has blamed social workers’ looking for ‘perfect ethnic matches’ for denying black and minority ethnic children placements with ‘loving and stable families’. The paper draws upon qualitative research with professionals and parents, which shows that the government has failed to take into account the complex ways in which race and ethnicity matter within adoption. Their wish to deracialize transracial adoption fits with wider concerns about race mixing, families and national belonging in multicultural Britain. While they attempt to minimize the importance of race and ethnicity, they continue to place race at the heart of these debates.

Conservative Christians and Support for Transracial Adoption as an Alternative to Abortion

ObjectiveThis study examines whether support for transracial adoption (TRA) among evangelical Protestants and Catholics is uniquely tied to their cultural and political opposition to abortion. Mainline Protestants, persons of other religious faiths, and the religiously unaffiliated are used as comparison groups, and support for same‐sex adoption is used as a comparison issue.MethodData are taken from the 2005 Baylor Religion Survey. I estimate logistic regression models to examine the link between support for TRA and abortion attitudes across all five groups considered, net of relevant sociodemographic and ideological factors.ResultsFor evangelicals and Catholics, opposition to abortion under any circumstance has a positive net effect on their support for TRA. However, opposition to abortion does not predict support for TRA among mainline Protestants, adherents to other religions, or the unaffiliated. Support for same‐sex adoption is a strong predictor of support for TRA across all groups.ConclusionAn interesting paradox is thus observed in that evangelicals and Catholics who support TRA are more socially progressive on most other issues (younger, more racially tolerant, support same‐sex adoption), except in their views toward abortion. On this issue, they are more conservative.

Claiming Others: Transracial adoption and national belonging by Mark C. Jerng (review)

Claiming Others: Transracial adoption and national belonging by Mark C. Jerng (review)

Somebody's Children: The Politics of Transracial and Transnational Adoption

Somebody's Children: The Politics of Transracial and Transnational Adoption

Babies without Borders: Adoption and Migration across the Americas by Karen Dubinsky, and: The Traffic in Babies: Cross-Border Adoption and Baby-Selling between the United States and Canada 1930–1972 by Karen A. Balcom (review)

Reviewed by: Babies without Borders: Adoption and Migration across the Americas by Karen Dubinsky, and: The Traffic in Babies: Cross-Border Adoption and Baby-Selling between the United States and Canada 1930–1972 by Karen A. Balcom Alice Hearst Babies without Borders: Adoption and Migration across the Americas. By Karen Dubinsky. New York: New York University Press, 2010. 204 pp. $20.00 paper. The Traffic in Babies: Cross-Border Adoption and Baby-Selling between the United States and Canada 1930–1972.By Karen A. Balcom. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011. 448 pp. $35.00 paper. In recent years, scholars have looked not only at how “family” is redefined by child adoption, but at how the practice shapes and is shaped by public concerns extending beyond the domestic sphere. Two new books examine how the movement of children within and across national borders has become a project in state building itself. In Babies without Borders, Karen Dubinsky argues that concerns about the transfer of children reveal deeply rooted anxieties about nationhood. As she notes, debates about adoption tend to be framed in terms of either kidnap or rescue. Dubinsky, however, demonstrates the limits of that framing: “Kidnap and rescue speak to certain truths but they are incomplete, partial and abstract. . . The intense emotional attachments between and adults and children in our world are too complicated to fit into simple binaries . . . Ultimately, the . . . problem [with these narratives] is that they . . . simply bear too heavy a cultural burden” (pp. 20–21). The first of the three contexts in which she explores this “cultural burdening” is Cuba. On the heels of the Cuban revolution, many Cubans believed rumors that the revolutionary government planned to “nationalize” children—rumors fueled largely by stories broadcast on CIA-funded Radio Swan. Scores of parents sent their children to the United States in the early years of Castro’s reign—via Operation Peter Pan—hoping to “save” them from a communist [End Page 185] future. Starkly opposing narratives emerged on either side of the Straits of Florida: what Cubans saw as wholesale kidnapping, Americans saw as a noble sacrifice by parents protecting their children. Dubinsky then places that story in dialogue with the drama of Elian Gonzalez, whose return to his Cuban father after his mother drowned while crossing from Havana to Miami drew international attention in 2000. The public debate around Elian echoed the dispute over Operation Peter Pan: while Elian’s father was clearly entitled to custody of his son, in Cuba, the story was cast as imperialist kidnap, while sixty miles away, Cuban Americans decried “abandoning” Elian to Castro’s evil clutches. In both cases, the stories were far more complex than those suggested by the kidnap/ rescue narratives that emerged, as these “national” children became symbolic of the countries themselves. Dubinsky then examines the limits of rescue/kidnap discourses in transracial (or “hybrid”) adoption disputes, comparing the adoptions of black and biracial children in Montreal to those of Aboriginal and Metis children in western Canada. In the late 1950s, Montreal’s Open Door Society championed transracial adoption; “the ‘we adopted a Negro’ narrative,” according to Dubinsky, “became a quintessential feel-good story of the times,” not incidentally allowing Canada to position itself as a land of “racial tolerance and liberalism” by comparison to the United States (pp. 66–67). Adopting parents saw themselves as rescuing children, but ambiguity infused the practice: biracial rather than black children were favored for adoption, and black communities in Canada were ambivalent about the project. Moreover, the project supported—indeed, redeemed—the white women who surrendered infants while largely ignoring the needs of black women. Aboriginal children on the other hand, experienced “the ragged edges of adoption” (p. 88). First Nations people saw the disappearance of children as part of an ongoing project in annihilation, while adopters framed their actions as a rescue project freighted with risk: “Individual horror stories, of Native kids ‘gone wrong,’ abused, addicted and ‘acting out’ circulat[ed] widely,” leading to dismal adoption failures (p. 79). As Dubinsky explains, however, narratives of “cultural genocide or humanitarian rescue” blot out a more complicated picture of both needy children and families and ill-prepared adoptive families (p...

Somebody’s Children: The Politics of Transracial and Transnational Adoption

Somebody’s Children: The Politics of Transracial and Transnational Adoption

Race and Power in the Shadows of Family Making Kristi Brian . 2012 .Reframing Transracial Adoption: Adopted Koreans, White Parents, and the Politics of Kinship. Philadelphia, PA : Temple University Press .

Race and Power in the Shadows of Family Making Kristi Brian . 2012 .<i>Reframing Transracial Adoption: Adopted Koreans, White Parents, and the Politics of Kinship</i>. Philadelphia, PA : Temple University Press .

History of Transracial Adoption: A New Zealand Perspective

History of Transracial Adoption: A New Zealand Perspective

Race‐Conscious Adoption Choices, Multiraciality, and Color‐blind Racial Ideology

Analysis of interview data illustrates how White adoptive parents rationalize choices regarding adoptee race. Parents who were willing to adopt children of color stressed unwillingness to adopt Black children. The preference for adopting multiracial children goes against the prevalent method of racial classification, hypodescent, by defining multiracial as distinct from Black, assuming that multiracial children would not experience racism. Those who adopted children of color also relied on racial classifications of hypodescent and challenged color‐blind ideology by recognizing the importance of race. They also defined race in terms of perceived race versus birth parent racial identity. Findings have implications for how agencies, social workers, and counselors portray various groups as well as prepare, counsel, and support adoptive and multiracial families.

MSW Students' Attitudes Toward Transracial Adoption

This study explored the attitudes of MSW students (N = 147) toward transracial adoption and included an investigation of the students' personal experiences that may affect their attitudes. Statistical analyses revealed that although the majority of students supported the practice of transracial adoption, a number of students gave neutral responses to several items related to transracially adopted children's ethnic identity, likely indicating a lack of awareness of the consequences of transracial adoption. White students were more likely than students of other racial groups to support the practice of transracial adoption. Personal experiences, such as dating interracially and supporting interracial dating, appeared to affect students' attitudes toward transracial adoption. Limitations and implications for social work education and research are discussed.

History of Transracial Adoption: A New Zealand Perspective

History of Transracial Adoption: A New Zealand Perspective

TRAPPED IN LEGAL DISCOURSE: TRANSRACIAL ADOPTION IN THE UNITED STATES AND ENGLAND

“Making the NABSW the villain of the story, making that group responsible for why black children were disproportionately in the child welfare system, misses that organization’s real and substantial contribution to this debate: it tried to call attention to the ways black single mothers are targeted by the child protection systems, and tried to defend those mothers”.There are large numbers of ethnic minority children in state child care that are awaiting adoptive families. For many, these adoptive families never materialise. This is true in the United States as well as in England. Some argue that the solution is to promote transracial adoption—for white adoptive families to adopt ethnic minority children. The idea of transracial adoption is a highly emotive one, bringing together issues of race and adoption, both of which on their own can bring forth strong visceral reactions

Transracial Adoption in Britain

Transracial adoptions by white parents are situated at the intersections of family and public policy. Debates on racial integration are juxtaposed with child rights and the private sphere of the family. In Britain, the practices of transracial adoption and ‘racial matching’ continue to invite fierce debate and discussion. Several factors, including the ongoing disproportionate representation of minority ethnic children in the public care system, the ‘unavailability’ of suitable minority ethnic adoptive parents, concerns about adoptees' racial/cultural identity and the ‘suitability’ of white parents to raise racially competent children, form the backdrop for such debates. For the last decade or so, political attention has been focused on permanence for children in care and adoption in particular. Within these wider debates, the allegedly low adoption rates of minority ethnic children, the ‘delay’ in finding suitable adoptive families, the ‘rejection’ of suitable white adoptive couples, and ‘ethnic matching’ are presented as some of the key concerns. Ravinder Barn and Derek Kirton seek to unravel the evidence base around transracial adoption and ‘racial matching’ in the symbolic representational battle being fought in the ‘best interests’ of minority ethnic children.

Somebody's children: the politics of transracial and transnational adoption

Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 Part I. Transracial Adoption in the United States 1. African American Children and Adoption, 1950-1975 27 2. The Making of the Indian Child Welfare Act, 1922-1978 59 3. Crack Babies, Race, and Adoption Reform, 1975-2000 94 Part II. Transnational Adoption and Latin America 4. From Refugees to Madonnas of the Cold War 129 5. Uncivil Wars 160 6. Latin American Family Values 197 Part III. Emerging Fights Over the Politics of Adoption 7. Gay and Lesbian Adoption in the United States 241 Epilogue. U.S. Immigrants: The Next Fight over Race, Adoption, and Foster Care? 269 Notes 285 Bibliography 319 Index 353

Introduction to the Special Issue on Transracial and Transnational Adoption: New Directions in Critical Transracial Adoption Research

(2012). Introduction to the Special Issue on Transracial and Transnational Adoption: New Directions in Critical Transracial Adoption Research. Journal of Social Distress and Homelessness: Vol. 21, No. 3-4, pp. 111-121.

Transracial Adoption Policies and Practices

The over-representation of African American children placed in out-of-home care and in need of adoption continues to be a major problem in the United States. Many believed that the passage of the controversial Multiethnic Placement Act and subsequent Interethnic Provisions would address the problem by increasing the number of African American children adopted. However, the problem still remains years later. Ruth McRoy and Amy Griffin examine the factors associated with US practice and policy initiatives, which aimed to increase the number of adoptions of minority ethnic (especially African American) children in care. The lessons from these experiences may be particularly relevant as the UK develops a new legal, policy and practice framework for transracial adoption to increase permanency for minority ethnic children.

Counseling Families Formed by Transracial Adoption

This article provides a review of the literature regarding transracial adoption and counseling families formed through transracial adoption. Recommendations are reported according to essential awareness, knowledge, and skills necessary in work with this client population. The need for counselor competency in addressing client racial and ethnic identity development is a salient theme highlighted throughout the literature.

Reframing Transracial Adoption: Adopted Koreans, White Parents, and the Politics of Kinship (review)

From 1945 through 2004, the number of intercountry adoptions in the United States increased steadily as families increasingly considered ways to expand outside of biological relations. Initially, this phenomenon was linked to a more sentimentalized vision of childhood and the social chaos amid the aftermath of World War II. Although some postwar adoptees were of Japanese descent, most were of European descent and could be accepted as a natural part of the family. Two US organizations, the League for Orphan Victims in Europe (LOVE) and the American Joint Committee for Assisting Japanese-American Orphans, helped to create an infrastructure to address the needs of orphaned children, many of whom were fathered by US soldiers.Beginning in 1955, transracial adoptions began to take offas Korea, also recovering from the social chaos of war, placed more children for intercountry than any other country. Despite these overwhelming trends, the last several years have seen the numbers of adoptions decline from a high of 22,991 in 2004 to only 11,058 in 2010.1 Also changed are the rationale for adoption, the countries sending children out for adoption, United Nations' and state legislation, and popular and scholarly understandings of adoption. Kristi Brian's compelling book, Reframing Transracial Adoption: Adopted Koreans, White Parents, and the Politics of Kinship, focuses on one form of transracial/transnational adoption-the of Korean children by white American parents (6). Known as Korean-American Adoption (KAA), this form of has declined in numbers since the 1990s but has still resulted in 160,000 Korean children being placed in US families, most of whom are white. In interviews, Brian asks involved in the process about how they navigate US understandings of race and kinship, and offers her reflections on the formerly overshadowed and silenced participants in this quiet migration (18).Over the last decade, scholars of intercountry have analyzed through post-colonial relationships, cultural identity, and understandings of race and power (e.g., Eng 2003, Volkman 2005, Dorow 2006, Kim 2010). Noting that adoptive kin making in the United States must always contend with racialized social policies and legislation (17), Brian utilizes a critical race feminist methodology that promises to probe the micro to better understand their dialectical relationship with social structures and hierarchies at the macro level (16) and the ways in which certain knowledge has been subjugated within practices and discourse (17). Brian lays bare the structural inequalities inherent in the transnational practice of KAA, including the new racism of today...that preserves white supremacy in a mostly 'kinder and gentler' way (175). Reframing Transracial Adoption ultimately argues that the of overseas from Korea, which began with the lure of 1950s American prosperity, will hopefully come to a close through collaborative efforts to move beyond histories of denial, racialized rescue missions, and the privatization of the (176).Brian effectively analyzes the inherently political act of family building. In Chapter 1, she describes why and also addresses the matters of adoption. Keeping the focus on KAA, she provides an important and comprehensive overview of the history of this form of transracial and transnational adoption. Beginning in the 1950s, Henry Holt institutionalized his child rescue mission rooted in notions of Christian salvation and the perceived best interests of children devastated by war and related catastrophe. These salvation narratives, combined with Holt's charisma, patriotism, and New World optimism, led him to found an agency and establish the formal networks that would enable the transfer of children from Korea to the US (13). KAA was made popular at a time in which the stigma of unwed motherhood, and the lack of reproductive services constituted an adoption mandate. …

Counseling Transracial Adoptees

This paper addresses issues counselors must face when working with adopted clients whose racial/ethnic identity is distinct from their adopted family members. The history of such transracial adoption is summarized and a review of recent empirical studies on the psychological functioning of transracial adoptees is discussed. Finally, practical advice to counselors working with this population is provided.