Displaying 51 - 60 of 733
ABSTRACT
This article attempts to initiate a critical dialogue on the politics of love and attachment by investigating the way in which the concept of attachment governs the field of transnational adoption. We take our starting point in an analysis of a collection of background articles, teaching materials, and interviews produced by child psychologists as well as instructions to and testimonies from adopters. Reading the material through Sara Ahmed’s notion of affective orientation and Lauren Berlant’s critical deconstruction of love, we argue that the texts popularize…
Abstract
Intercountry adoptees face many challenges in developing their identity and achieving a sense of belonging in post-assimilation Australia. This study uses a constructivist approach to analyse narrative interviews with a sample of Taiwanese intercountry adoptees in Australia ranging in age from early to middle adulthood. Social identity theory and postcolonial theory are used to frame thematic findings about the impact of micro, meso and macro influences on identity development and belonging. The article concludes with discussion of the importance of analysing the impact of…
Abstract
Children from some black and minority ethnic (BME) backgrounds are routinely placed with substitute carers who do not match their cultural, linguistic, religious and ethnic backgrounds. The shortage of foster carers and adopters of specific backgrounds means that the demand in the care population often outweighs the availability of matched placement options. While the shortages of BME foster carers and adopters are widely recognised, there is virtually no research into the barriers faced by specific BME groups, so there are no informed recruitment strategies to increase the pool…
This book introduces general topics on human rights and attachment, as well as a country-specific in-depth analysis of the legal and policy imperatives guiding adoptions from care, with a particular interest on the rights of children and their care-taking adults, including their birth parents. The authors argue that the seemingly ‘minor’ issue of adoptions from care provides a unique and topical point to explore how children’s rights are practised and weighed against parents’ rights in present-day societies, and how governments and legal and welfare professionals balance those rights and…
Abstract
The assessment of prospective adoptive parents is a complex task for professional social workers. In this study, we examine the structure and function of professional social workers’ follow-up questions in assessment talk with adoption applicants. The analysis shows that adoption assessment through interviews involved a delicate and complex task that was accomplished by using a particular genre of institutional talk. This both invited the applicants’ extended and ‘open-ended’ responses and steered these responses and their development towards the institutionally relevant topics.…
Abstract
Ethiopia legally banned intercountry adoption in 2018 following reports of corruption, illegal practices, and child trafficking. While the intercountry adoption program is now closed, the enduring legacy of exploitation continues. Through interviews with adoptive parents, this study explores what and how adoption-related exploitation occurred. It also describes a cyclical and iterative process that adoptive parents, impacted by adoption-related exploitation, undertook to understand whether and how referral, concerning, and emergent adoption narratives fit together.
Kenya has embarked on a care reform process that is aimed at promoting family and community-based care options and subsequently reducing reliance on institutions (Children’s homes, Orphanages, baby centers, etc.) This booklet, along with the accompanying animations, emphasizes the importance of family based care for the care of orphaned and vulnerable children (OVC) in Kenya, provides answers to regularly asked questions, and lists current government efforts to support OVC, including the policy and legal…
ABSTRACT
Based on analysis of legal documents on family reunification and educational material concerning transnational adoption in Denmark, this article suggests that the concept of attachment may be conceptualized as a specific operationalization of belonging, and that belonging and biopower may be viewed as intertwined (rather than opposites). The analysis conceptualizes two modes of how belonging is operationalized through attachment. The belonging of families seeking reunification is targeted on a regulatory level via the legal requirement of national attachment. This requirement…
ABSTRACT
This article presents evidence of son preference in the child trafficking market for illegal adoption in China, where son preference is explicitly revealed by choice and quantified by the price premium of a boy. The author identified 1,328 court documents of trafficking transactions of children below the age of four for illegal adoption from 2008 to 2017 in China. 59% of the victims were boys. Nearest-neighbor matching estimators show that under similar conditions, adopted baby boys are about 1.6 times as expensive as girls, which is equivalent to a premium of around 21,000 …
Abstract
Children who have been adopted internationally commonly experience institutional care and other forms of adversity prior to adoption that can alter the functioning of the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis. In particular, internationally adopted children tend to have blunted diurnal declines compared to children raised in their birth families. The Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-Up (ABC) intervention was developed to enhance young children's biological and behavioral regulation by promoting sensitive parenting. The current study used a randomized controlled trial to…