Transinternational Adoption
The readings today brought much insight to the ideas of transinternational adoption and how it has evolved throughout history. At the beginning of transinternational adoption, adoptive parents were advised to treat the child like their own and that there was no need to incorporate their children’s heritage into their parenting. However now those adoptees are grown up, and they are expressing how they wished their home country’s heritage was present when they were growing up. The adoptees’ should been taught about their birth country’s culture because it incorporates them finding their identity in the world.
In the Pertman reading the piece of information that struck me the most was the horror stories about wrongful adoption cases and how “in some countries, institutionalized children also have been sexually abused, beaten, shaken, and routinely handled so roughly that they sustain internal damage of every physical and psychological sort” (77). My reaction was disgust about these conditions and thinking how hard it would be for adoptive parents adopt a child with these deep psychological problems from being mistreated. Adoption, itself is a difficult process but to add in these problems makes it very hard for both parties.
An interesting point Nelson made up was some couples decide to adopt foreign babies as a cultural commodity. They “voce an interest in cultural enrichment they feel will result from adoption” and foreign adoption is perceived as a “bonus.” I never thought about this point and do not know if I believe it is valid. Usually when the child is adopted, he or she is too young to remember anything about their birth country of the culture of it. It would be the duty of the adoptive parents to bring the culture to their children’s lives. However if the parents do this then they bring the culture into their own lives as well.
During the Pertman reading I thought of a question regarding a decline in transinternation adoption. Do you think there is merit in calling adoption “culture genocide?” Why or why not?
Sarah B.
Pertman, Adam. Adoption Nation: How the Adoption Revolution Is Transforming Our Families- - and America. Boston, MA: Harvard Common, 2011. Print.
Kim P. Nelson. “Shopping for Children: In the International Marketplace” in Jane Jeong Trenka, Julia Chinyere Oparah, and Sun Young Sin, eds. Outsiders within: Writing on Transracial Adoption. Cambridge: South End Press, 2006: 89-114.
Graded Reply #4
ReplyDeleteSarah, I really enjoyed your post and am glad your expressed your opinion on the way some children are treated in foster care. Children and mistreated all over the world, and not just in foster cares, some by their own parents. I also liked how you brought up the topic of how some adoptive parents will "adopt foreign babies as a cultural commodity". I think I can help shine some more light on this issue though. Yes it is true that most children do not remember anything of their birth culture because of how old they were when they were adopted, but I beleive that this is viewed as a cultural commodotiy because parents choose to engage in the culture of their adopted child.
The parent chooses prior to adoption, maybe sometimes afterwards, to engage in the culture of their adopted child thus making it a cultural commodity. Dr. Keller made a great point in the 1:00 class that parents can simply "enrich" themselves in another culture without having to adopt. I believe the point that Pertman is trying to make is, people often think that the only way to "culturally diversify" themselves in by going through the transracial adoption process thus forcing themselves to experience that culture.
I hope this helps,
Brandon Kasper