Adoption

A prism reflecting cultural assumptions about reproduction, identity, gender, and race, adoption as a practice of family-making prompts us to examine assumptions about what is normal and good, who is related, and how we should create—and not create—children.  To unpack and address ethical concerns about adoption—including whether and to what extent adoption is morally permissible—requires investigating three aspects of adoption together:  the interests and needs of children; the social and material conditions under which adoption becomes a possible—or even, necessary—practice in contexts both domestic and international; and the multiple ways adoption is valued and denigrated as a mode of family-making.  When analyzed in relation to one another, these issues set the stage for problematizing a view the truth of which to many seems simply obvious:  adoption, as a form of family-making for adults, is an option of last resort when sexual reproduction—and for those who can afford it, assisted reproductive technologies—have failed to deliver a child of ‘one’s own’.

Teichman notes in her study of illegitimacy that “the point of the legitimate/illegitimate distinction is not to cause suffering; rather, it has to do with certain widespread human aims connected with the regulation of sexual activities and of population” (4). She also writes that, until relatively recently, “the shame of being an unmarried mother was the worst possible shame a woman could suffer” (119). Hence the secrecy, silences, and lies that used to be so common around the issue of an illegitimate birth and adoption.

This study compared the behaviours of previously institutionalised Romanian foster children (ages 6–12) with normative data for non-referred children. We hypothesised that foster children would have higher scores (more unfavourable outcomes) on the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) and Teacher Report Form (TRF) (all syndromes) than norms. Results were mixed, showing that (a) boys and girls have Attention Problems with the TRF, but not the CBCL; (b) girls have fewer Internalising Problems than norms (CBCL and TRF); and (c) boys have more problems than norms for Attention, Inattention, Hyperactivity, Aggressive, Externalising, and Total Problems with the TRF; and more problems than norms on Social, Rule-Breaking, Externalising, and Total Problems with the CBCL, but fewer problems for Attention. In addition, many differences between Romanian foster children and norms were insignificant. Sampling issues and norms, reporting differences between foster parents and teachers, individual differences, as well as the better than expected results for foster children when compared to norms may stem from a variety of
causes that are discussed in this report.

In 2013, Tony Abbott, as Leader of the Opposition, made a speech on the occasion of the National Apology for Forced Adoptions. In 2014, he has announced that he intends to make intercountry adoption, 'cheaper, faster and easier'. Can we trust a man who can change his opinions so radically in such a short time?

In the process of writing my memoir about living with my adoptive parents, I have had to reconstruct their lives through the objects and things that they left behind. Our communication as a family—I was an only child—was fractured, difficult, sometimes non-existent. They kept secrets and spoke little about certain key aspects of their lives so that I knew little about them; this became clear after the death of my adoptive mother in 2001, when I discovered letters, documents, and objects/things that not only filled in gaps about their lives, but also told new stories. The photograph has been referred to as a ‘melancholy object’ by both Barthes and Sontag and there is a photo of my parents in the 1950s laughing together on their motor boat for which this description resonates. It is both my favourite image of them and an impossible contradiction, as I knew them only long after that time, when things had become more difficult, the boat had gone, and with it, seemingly, the laughter. Various other things that are now in my care trigger memories of my parents: a ragdoll made by my mother; a disintegrating fox fur stole and a photo of my maternal adoptive grandmother wearing it; a repaired miniature ceramic mug with the words ‘good luck’ painted on the side. This paper will discuss the writing of memoir using objects and things with reference to my own experience and the memoirs of others.
[Please note: this paper omits some images of slides for personal and family reasons]

The article attempts to answer the oft-asked question of where my daughter—an African American girl with two white, middle-class gay dads—“comes from,” by tracing power constellations that make our family possible. Through critical autoethnography, it interweaves narrative about the evolving relationship we share with her birth family with analysis of intersecting, conflicting histories of U.S. transracial adoption, same-sex family recognition, shrinking public support systems for and growing criminalization of low-income women and families of color, gendered dynamics in parenting, and the shift toward foster-adoption permanency. Utilizing queer, feminist, and critical race theories of kinship, I advocate for “queer transracial family” as a form of differential becoming that is attentive to complex power relations. Queer transracial family as a critical practice seeks to enact a blended, open vision for belonging that contests colorblindness, homonormativity, and the consumerist, privatized family.

Australia is the only country in which the government has issued a formal apology for the past adoption policies and practices that had led to so many family separations. This apology, which took place in 2013, was a result of the efforts of many people who had experienced adoption separation, who worked tirelessly over several decades, individually and in groups, to educate the Australian community in general and politicians in particular about their issues.

There are high expectations for Mobile Health to transform health into a sustainable and prevention-based system. Unfortunately it has not reached its scale of adoption many had hoped for, due to the existence of adoption barriers. More insight into these barriers fosters adoption of mHealth and the innovation it can bring to worldwide healthcare. This study investigates the main barriers in the adoption of mHealth, their underlying causes and their breakthrough possibilities. All the data are gathered from an international and multi-stakeholder point of view. First of all we tried to identify the main barriers by doing an international literature study. Second of all we asked Dutch mHealth Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) to rank the barriers to importance. These KOLs were from different stakeholder groups; policy-makers, users and developers. At last we asked the KOLs in interviews for underlying causes and breakthrough opportunities of the barriers. Eventually twelve main adoption barriers emerged. According to literature and to the KOLs the most important barriers are “Integration and interoperability” and “Business case”. An underlying cause for the barrier “Integration and interoperability” might be the active closed power system of technology suppliers, which exists in the Netherlands. Furthermore there seems to be a difference in the importance of the barriers “Privacy and security” and “Conservative culture” when perceptions of Dutch KOLS and international literature are compared. Within the stakeholders-groups, the KOLs think differently about the importance of the barriers “Visionless development” and “Competing payment mechanism”. The Dutch healthcare insurers could take a more leading role in the fragmented landscape of mHealth in the Netherlands, by strategically funding new initiatives that use open standards and deliver better value for end-users. Other chances might lie in the international cooperation between countries to overcome certain barriers.

Adoptees are disinherited at the point of adoption. The only other people in our society who are disinherited at the point of adoption are murderers who kill their parents and so are not allowed to profit from their crime. Why are innocent children still in the same legal category?

Una recente indagine sull’incidenza delle adozioni di minori rom nel Tribunale per i Minorenni del Lazio ha rivelato l’esistenza di un accentuato divario tra la percentuale di minori rom segnalati, presi in carico dal Tribunale e dichiarati adottabili e quella dei minori appartenenti alla maggioranza non rom. Alla luce di tale fenomeno, il presente articolo intende contribuire alla riflessione circa il ruolo dell’assistente sociale nei processi di adozione e, più in generale, di integrazione sociale ed economica che riguardano minori, famiglie e gruppi appartenenti a minoranze etniche e culturali. Partendo da un approccio basato sui diritti umani, la figura dell’assistente sociale riflessivo verrà considerata nel suo ruolo di agente di cambiamento sociale, e all’interno di quei processi relazionali e di auto-riflessione che consentono una crescita professionale, personale ed una migliorata conoscenza e comprensione dell’alterità.

While many scholars and activists from various disciplines have reported on various aspects of orphan policy and the international adoption industry, there has been little synthesis of this information and its implications for global child protection. This chapter therefore puts the pieces together to argue that the misidentification of ‘orphans’ as a category for development and humanitarian intervention has subsequently been misappropriated by many Western individuals and charitable organizations. Promoting a discourse of orphan rescue, they foster the growth of an ‘orphan industrial complex.’ In developing countries like Guatemala and Uganda whose children are targeted for ‘rescue,’ the discourse and practice of ‘orphan rescue’ is subsequently jeopardizing child protection and even driving the ‘production’ of orphans as objects for particular kinds of intervention counter to established international standards of child protection.

Conflict in History: The Australian Historical Association 33rd Annual Conference

Stream: Australian Women’s History Network Symposium ‘Paper Work’

Conflict begetting conflict: secrets, trauma, and the writing of memoir

My doctoral research includes writing a memoir about living with my adoptive parents. They survived WWII in England but my father was invalided out of the RAF with psychological and physical injuries. Added to his personality difficulties, the effects of war trauma reverberated through our family life: conflict begetting conflict. I have partly relied on scattered ‘paper-works’—birth certificates, letters, photographs, ration cards, handwritten notes—but it was two letters found after my mother’s death that I wish to focus on in this paper. They revealed aspects of my parents’ selves unknown to me, and highlight the secret-keeping in our family.