Blue-Ribbon Babies and Labors of Love: Race, Class, and Gender in U.S. Adoption Practice (Louann Atkins Temple Women & Culture) PDF
Preview Blue-Ribbon Babies and Labors of Love: Race, Class, and Gender in U.S. Adoption Practice (Louann Atkins Temple Women & Culture)
Blue-RiBBon BaBies and laBoRs of love Book Twenty-two Louann Atkins Temple Women & Culture Series Books about women and families, and their changing roles in society Blue-RiBBon BaBies and laBoRs of love Race, Class, and Gender in U.S. Adoption Practice christine ward gailey university of texas press Austin The Louann Atkins Temple Women & Culture Series is supported by Allison, Doug, Taylor, and Andy Bacon; Margaret, Lawrence, Will, John, and Annie Temple; Larry Temple; the Temple-Inland Foundation; and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Copyright © 2010 by the University of Texas Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First edition, 2010 Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to: Permissions University of Texas Press P.O. Box 7819 Austin, TX 78713-7819 www.utexas.edu/utpress/about/bpermission.html ♾ The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of ansi/niso Z39.48-1992 (r1997) (Permanence of Paper). Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gailey, Christine Ward, 1950– Blue-ribbon babies and labors of love : race, class, and gender in U.S. adoption practice / Christine Ward Gailey. p. cm. — (Louann Atkins Temple women & culture series ; bk. 22) Includes bibliographical references and index. isBn 978-0-292-72127-2 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Adoption—United States. 2. Interethnic adoption—United States. 3. Intercountry adoption—United States. 4. Families—United States. 5. Kinship—United States. I. Title. hv875.55.g35 2010 362.73408′0973—dc22 2009031875 For Sarah, who followed the Drinking Gourd with transcendent courage THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK Contents acknowledgments ix 1. profiling adoption in the united states today 1 2. “kids need families to turn out right” 18 Public Agency Adopters 3. transracial adoption in practice 31 4. making kinship in the wake of history 56 Older Child Adoption 5. the gloBal search for “Blue-riBBon BaBies” 79 International Adoption 6. inclusive, exclusive, and contractual families 117 What Adoption Can Tell Us about Kinship Today notes 153 references 157 index 181 THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK aCknowledgments A project of this duration and com- plexity involves so many people who enabled, enriched, encouraged, and otherwise helped me in the process. I owe much to Jennifer Wells, adoption advocate and family counselor, who guided my first research into adoption and with whom I spent many a fruitful hour discussing the politics and dy- namics of adoption. Rosemary Broadbent offered her insights and experience in looking at the adoption process itself. Rachel Port got involved in the adoption research from the outset, and we became friends as well as fellow travelers: I am grateful to her for our dozens of kitchen table talks and so much more. I thank the many participants in the research project, who have been more than generous with their time and experiences. Some of the inter- views were painful, others thrilling, many poignant, all of which helped me reexperience the intensity that sometimes accompanies research. I hope that these adopters and their families find the results useful, even at points where they might disagree with my interpretation of the narratives. Colleagues in the Association of Black Anthropologists gave me counsel and insight into child rearing in a racist society and the kinship dynamics of race identity in adolescence. The framing of the chapter on transracial adop- tion owes much to Lynn Bolles, Cheryl Mwaria, and Angela Gilliam, as well as Jennifer and Tim Welles, Ida Susser, Karen Brodkin, Ethan Nasreddin- Longo, and Enoch Page. Mary Anglin helped me realize the significance of the research on parenting older girls for feminist theorization of gendered violence. Heléna Ragoné pushed the argument regarding infertility and ide- ologies of adoptive motherhood in ways that were very productive. Ida Susser heard many of the arguments in the formative stages and helped me concen- trate on the most salient issues; I deeply appreciate her editorial suggestions. My conversations with Lisa Edelsward on similarities and differences be- tween adoption in the United States and Canada and about recent research
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