What is it about?
Transnational adoption requires adoptive parents to negotiate complexities concerning difference and belonging within the family. This is not always easy when it comes to different racial, ethnic, cultural and class-based backgrounds to the children they adopt. How is belonging and identity negotiated? The paper discusses how adoptive parents negotiate these issues and concludes that issues of race are marginalised.
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Why is it important?
Race is not always considered important in intercountry adoption but we know from adoptees that it is very important to them. Adoptive parents negotiate many complex issues when it comes to identity and belonging. This research helps make sense of the experiences of this group of adoptive parents
Perspectives
We are very grateful to the participants in this research who shared their experiences to add to the body of knowledge in intercountry adoptions.
Dr Patricia Fronek
Griffith University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Constructing Identities and Issues of Race in Transnational Adoption: The Experiences of Adoptive Parents, The British Journal of Social Work, October 2012, Oxford University Press (OUP),
DOI: 10.1093/bjsw/bcs171.
You can read the full text:
Resources
Controversy and its implications for the practice of contemporary social work in intercountry adoptions: A Korean-Australian case study
Fronek, P., & Tilse, C. (2010). Controversy and its implications for the practice of contemporary social work in intercountry adoptions: A Korean-Australian case study. Australian Social Work, 63(4), 445-458. DOI: 10.1080/0312407X.2010.512957
Review of sociological literature on intercountry adoptions
Willing, I., Fronek, P., & Cuthbert, D. (2012). Review of Sociological Literature on Intercountry Adoption. Social Policy and Society, 11(3), 465-479. doi:10.1017/S1474746412000140.
Contributors
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