Discursive struggles in “real” families: Korean adoptees, adoptive parents, and birth family reunions

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara Docan‐Morgan
Keyword(s):  
Adoptive Parents ◽  
Korean Adoptees ◽  
Birth Family

scholarly journals Korean adoptees as parents: Intergenerationality of ethnic, racial, and adoption socialization

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiang Zhou ◽  
JaeRan Kim ◽  
Heewon Lee ◽  
Richard M. Lee
Keyword(s):  
Family Involvement ◽  
Adoptive Parents ◽  
Growing Up ◽  
Transnational Adoption ◽  
Adult Adoptees ◽  
Korean Adoptees ◽  
Racial Experiences ◽  
Birth Family ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Intergenerational Patterns

Objective: Utilizing a socialization framework, the study aims to understand the intergenerational patterns of ethnic, racial, and adoption socialization practices. Background: Understanding the impact of ethnicity, race, and adoption is a lifelong process for transracially, transnationally adopted individuals. Few studies, however, have explored how adult adoptees socialize their children on ethnicity, race, and adoption and to what extent this socialization is informed by their own transracial, transnational adoption experiences. Method: Based on 51 interviews, we investigated adopted Korean Americans’ reappraisal of their ethnic, racial, and adoption socialization experiences growing up transracially and transnationally, as well as their current ethnic, racial, and adoption socialization practices with their children. Results: Despite the generally limited ethnic, racial, and adoption socialization from White adoptive parents, we found via thematic analysis that Korean adoptee parents utilized strategies such as reculturation with their children, birth family involvement, and emphasis in multiculturalism in response to the needs for ethnic, racial, and adoption socialization in the next generation. Conclusion: These themes reflect the unique intergenerational transmission of ethnic heritage, racial experiences, and adoption history based on having grown up in transracial and transnational families of their own.Implications: Findings can inform evidence-based practice in working with adopted individuals and their families, particularly in addressing ethnic, racial, and adoption socialization practices.

Birth Family Contact Experiences Among Lesbian, Gay, and Heterosexual Adoptive Parents With School-Age Children

2017 ◽  
Vol 67 (1) ◽  
pp. 132-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel H. Farr ◽  
Yelena Ravvina ◽  
Harold D. Grotevant
Keyword(s):  
Adoptive Parents ◽  
School Age Children ◽  
School Age ◽  
Birth Family ◽  
Family Contact

scholarly journals Post-adoption Contact and Relationships with Birth Family Members

2021 ◽  
pp. 151-197
Author(s):  
Harriet Ward ◽  
Lynne Moggach ◽  
Susan Tregeagle ◽  
Helen Trivedi
Keyword(s):  
Online Survey ◽  
Family Members ◽  
Adoptive Parents ◽  
Adult Adoptees ◽  
Adoptive Families ◽  
Birth Parents ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Birth Family ◽  
Children's Identity

AbstractThe chapter draws on data collected through responses to an online survey concerning 93 adoptees (44% of the cohort), completed on average 18 years after placement, and interviews focusing on 24 adult adoptees. Face-to-face post-adoption contact was a legal requirement. After placement with adoptive families, 93% of adoptees had contact with birth family members; at follow-up, 56% still saw at least one member of their birth family; 69% of both adoptees and adoptive parents thought contact was ultimately beneficial. There was minimal evidence of contact with birth parents destabilising placements. However, it introduced a ‘painful transparency’ for all parties and could be problematic. Over time, contact supported children’s identity needs by incorporating knowledge of their antecedents and could mitigate their difficulties with attachment, separation and loss. It forced all parties to engage with one another and helped adoptees achieve closure.

scholarly journals “I’m More Than Just Adopted”: Stories of Genealogy in Intercountry Adoptive Families

Genealogy ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 25
Author(s):  
Sarah Richards
Keyword(s):  
Hague Convention ◽  
Adoptive Parents ◽  
Adopted Children ◽  
Intercountry Adoption ◽  
Adoptive Families ◽  
Family Work ◽  
Birth Country ◽  
Parents And Children ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Birth Family

In contrast to the historical ‘blank slate’ approach to adoption, current policy places significant emphasis on providing children with knowledge; family history; biological connections; stories, a genealogy upon which to establish an authentic identity. The imperative for this complex, and often incomplete, genealogy is also explicit within the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption established in 1993 to ensure that intercountry adopted children will be provided with a genealogical ‘heritage’. Yet, despite the recurring dominance of this approach, ‘heritage’ remains an ambiguous dictum which holds the expectation that adopted children should have access to any available birth/first family information and acquire cultural competence about an often distant and removed birth country. Providing such heritage becomes the responsibility of intercountry adoptive parents. It is therefore unsurprising that this role has become part of how intercountry adoptive parents perform and display their parenting and family practices before and after adoption (Richards 2014a; 2018). Such family work is explicit in the stories that parents and children coconstruct about birth family, abandonment, China, and the rights of adopted children to belong first and foremost to a birth country. Using qualitative data provided by a social worker, eleven girls aged between five and twelve, and their parents, this article explores the role and changing significance of narratives as familial strategies for delivering such heritage obligations. Outlined in this discussion is the compulsion to provide a genealogical heritage by adoptive parents which can ultimately be resisted by their daughters as they seek alternative and changing narratives through which to construct their belongings and identities.

Supporting the Interests of Intercountry Adoptees beyond Childhood: Access to Adoption Information and Identity

2012 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 443-454 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica Walton
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Adoptive Parents ◽  
Best Interests ◽  
Doctoral Research ◽  
Korean Adoptees ◽  
Accessible Information ◽  
Central Argument

Drawing on select examples of adoption policy, this article considers key assumptions in discourse about ‘the best interests of the child’. The central argument is that the life-long impact of adoption needs to be recognised so that the long-term interests of adoptees are met, and not only when they are children. Based on doctoral research into the experiences of adult Korean adoptees in the United States and Australia, this article argues that currently post-adoption services are geared to adoptive parents and the adoptee-as-child and do not adequately address the needs of adoptees beyond childhood. Accurate and accessible information is important for adoptees as they try to understand their past and make sense of their identities.

scholarly journals Introduction: International Issues and Debates Concerning Adoption

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-38
Author(s):  
Harriet Ward ◽  
Lynne Moggach ◽  
Susan Tregeagle ◽  
Helen Trivedi
Keyword(s):  
Adoptive Parents ◽  
Adult Adoptees ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Out Of Home Care ◽  
History Of ◽  
International Issues ◽  
Birth Family ◽  
Aboriginal Children ◽  
Children In Care

AbstractA history of systemic injustices and a lack of transparency have influenced public perceptions of domestic adoption. This book aims to introduce more empirical evidence into the debate by exploring the value of open adoption, as practised in Australia, as a route to permanence for abused and neglected children in out-of-home care who cannot safely return to their birth families. International evidence about the outcomes of adoption and foster care is discussed. The chapter introduces the Barnardos Australia Find-a-Family programme which has been finding adoptive homes since 1986 for non-Aboriginal children in care who are identified as ‘hard to place’. Regular post-adoption face-to-face contact with birth family members is an integral part of the adoption plan. The methodology for evaluating the outcomes for 210 children placed through the programme included case and court file analysis, a follow-up survey and interviews with adoptive parents and adult adoptees.

Communication Privacy Management in Open Adoption Relationships: Negotiating Co-ownership across In-person and Mediated Communication

2021 ◽  
pp. 009365022199847
Author(s):  
Colleen Warner Colaner ◽  
Alyssa L. Bish ◽  
Maria Butauski ◽  
Alexie Hays ◽  
Haley Kranstuber Horstman ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Private Information ◽  
Perceived Risk ◽  
Adoptive Parents ◽  
Privacy Management ◽  
Open Adoption ◽  
Adoptive Families ◽  
Communication Privacy Management ◽  
Birth Family ◽  
Communication Privacy

Open adoption relationships are rife with privacy dilemmas and fuzzy boundaries, which require ongoing coordination of private disclosures as a result. The present study employed communication privacy management (CPM) theory to examine adoptive parents’ ( N = 354) private disclosures with the birth family across in-person and mediated (i.e., texting and social media) contexts. SEM analysis revealed that adoptive families who were more private and were concerned about the birth family sharing private information with others viewed disclosures to the birth family as risky. These privacy concerns related to adoptive parents being more clear with the birth family about preferences for sharing that private information with others. More social media contact between birth and adoptive parents predicted increased perceptions of risk of disclosure to birth parents. Results advance CPM theorizing by underscoring the motivational bases of perceived risk, the importance of anticipated boundary turbulence, and the nuanced privacy management processes within communication modes.

Facebook as Facilitator or Foe

2019 ◽  
pp. 313-340
Author(s):  
Abbie E. Goldberg
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Family Relationships ◽  
Family Members ◽  
Adoptive Parents ◽  
Birth Parents ◽  
Use Of Social Media ◽  
Birth Family

This chapter examines parents’ use of social media, such as Facebook, with respect to the birth family. Some adoptive parents engaged Facebook as a means of establishing or maintaining reciprocal contact with birth parents and other birth family members; thus, it was used to sustain relationships. Others engaged it “passively” (e.g., as a means of finding out details about the birth family). Still others did not desire or pursue such contact, often citing concerns about boundaries. The chapter also addresses parents’ ideas about their children’s future relationships with their birth family—relationships possibly facilitated by social media and maintained without parental oversight or monitoring.

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