Unequal Motherhoods and the Adoption of Asian Children

Unequal Motherhoods and the Adoption of Asian Children PDF Author: Jungyun Gill
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1498509630
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 171

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Book Description
This book explores a deeply personal aspect of globalization: the adoption of Asian children by white Americans. It is based on dozens of interviews with adoptive mothers and adoption social workers, nearly two hundred letters and essays written by Korean birth mothers who put their children up for adoption, and field work at an adoption agency in South Korea. It also includes analyses and explanations of U.S. and South Korean governments’ social characteristics and policies regarding adoptions and how relations between nations have affected international adoption. The book focuses on whether the commonly held notion that adoptions are to serve children’s welfare and their best interests has tended to render gendered aspects of international adoptions invisible. Factors such as gender inequality, social control of women’s reproductive power, patriarchic family structure, and social beliefs concerning womanhood and motherhood that affect international adoptions are revealed in this book. The multiple ways in which adoptive, birth, and foster mothers experience gender oppression from their different social positions of class, race, and nationality are explored and the interdependencies and inequalities of the motherhoods of these three groups of women are brought to light.

Unequal Motherhoods and the Adoption of Asian Children

Unequal Motherhoods and the Adoption of Asian Children PDF Author: Jungyun Gill
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1498509630
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 171

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book explores a deeply personal aspect of globalization: the adoption of Asian children by white Americans. It is based on dozens of interviews with adoptive mothers and adoption social workers, nearly two hundred letters and essays written by Korean birth mothers who put their children up for adoption, and field work at an adoption agency in South Korea. It also includes analyses and explanations of U.S. and South Korean governments’ social characteristics and policies regarding adoptions and how relations between nations have affected international adoption. The book focuses on whether the commonly held notion that adoptions are to serve children’s welfare and their best interests has tended to render gendered aspects of international adoptions invisible. Factors such as gender inequality, social control of women’s reproductive power, patriarchic family structure, and social beliefs concerning womanhood and motherhood that affect international adoptions are revealed in this book. The multiple ways in which adoptive, birth, and foster mothers experience gender oppression from their different social positions of class, race, and nationality are explored and the interdependencies and inequalities of the motherhoods of these three groups of women are brought to light.

Social Problems and Social Movements

Social Problems and Social Movements PDF Author: James DeFronzo
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442221550
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 521

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Book Description
Intended as the primary text for a social problems course, DeFronzo and Gill’s Social Problems and Social Movements stresses the need for collective action and social movements to solve social problems. Both instructors and students will find this a useful framework in which to view today’s most pressing social issues. Chapter 1 introduces the topic of social problems. Chapter 2 explains how social movements address social problems and describes sociological explanations for the development of social movements. Chapter 3 describes the power frameworks that participants in social movements must deal with in order to achieve success. Each following chapter presents overviews of social problems and provides examples of how working together can bring about positive change. Social Movements and Special Topics boxes provide information on aspects of specific social problems as well as how people organize and work together to solve them.

Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother

Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother PDF Author: Xinran
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1451610947
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
Originally published in Great Britain in 2010 by Chatto & Windus.

The Journal of Korean Studies, Volume 21, Number 1 (Spring 2016)

The Journal of Korean Studies, Volume 21, Number 1 (Spring 2016) PDF Author: Donald Baker
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442270950
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 293

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Book Description
The University of Washington-Korea Studies Program, in collaboration with Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, is proud to publish the Journal of Korean Studies.

Global Families, Inequality and Transnational Adoption

Global Families, Inequality and Transnational Adoption PDF Author: Riitta Högbacka
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137524766
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
This book looks at the simultaneous processes of making and un-making of families that are part of the adoption practice. Whereas most studies on transnational adoption concentrate on the adoptive family, the author identifies not only the happy occasion when a family gains a child, but also the sorrow and loss of the child to its family of origin. Situating transnational adoption in the context of the Global North-South divide, Hogbacka investigates the devastating effects of unequal life chances and asymmetrical power relations on the adoption process and on the mothers whose children are adopted. Based on unique primary material gathered in in-depth interviews with South African families of origin and Finnish adoptive families, the book investigates the decision-making processes of both sets of parents and the encounters between them. The first mothers' narratives are juxtaposed with those of the adopters and of the adoption social workers who act on the principles of the wider adoption system. Concluding with a critique of the Global Northism that exemplifies current practices, Hogbacka sketches the contours of a more just approach to transnational adoption that would shatter rather than perpetuate inequality. The book can also be read as an expose of the consequences of current inequalities for poor families. Global Families, Inequality and Transnational Adoption will be of interest to students and scholars of adoption studies, family and kinship, sociology, anthropology, social work and development.

The Globalization of Motherhood

The Globalization of Motherhood PDF Author: Wendy Chavkin
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136962891
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
Brings together research from the Global North and the Global South to illuminate how contemporary motherhood is changed by the processes of globalization.

Reassembling Motherhood

Reassembling Motherhood PDF Author: Yasmine Ergas
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231538073
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
The word “mother” traditionally meant a woman who bears and nurtures a child. In recent decades, changes in social norms and public policy as well as advances in reproductive technologies and the development of markets for procreation and care have radically expanded definitions of motherhood. But while maternity has become a matter of choice for more women, the freedom to make reproductive decisions is unevenly distributed. Restrictive policies, socioeconomic disadvantages, cultural mores, and discrimination force some women into motherhood and prevent others from caring for their children. Reassembling Motherhood brings together contributors from across the disciplines to consider the transformation of motherhood as both an identity and a role. It examines how the processes of bearing and rearing a child are being restructured as reproductive labor and care work change around the globe. The authors examine issues such as artificial reproductive technologies, surrogacy, fetal ultrasounds, adoption, nonparental care, and the legal status of kinship, showing how complex chains of procreation and childcare have simultaneously generated greater liberty and new forms of constraint. Emphasizing the tension between the liberalization of procreation and care on the one hand, and the limits to their democratization due to race, class, and global inequality on the other, the book highlights debates that have emerged as these multifaceted changes have led to both the fragmentation and reassembling of motherhood.

Culture Keeping

Culture Keeping PDF Author: Heather Jacobson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
Since the early 1990s, close to 250,000 children born abroad have been adopted into the United States. Nearly half of these children have come from China or Russia. Culture Keeping: White Mothers, International Adoption, and the Negotiation of Family Difference offers the first comparative analysis of these two popular adoption programs. Heather Jacobson examines these adoptions by focusing on a relatively new social phenomenon, the practice by international adoptive parents, mothers in particular, of incorporating aspects of their children's cultures of origin into their families' lives. "Culture keeping" is now standard in the adoption world, though few adoptive parents, the majority of whom are white and native-born, have experience with the ethnic practices of their children's homelands prior to adopting. Jacobson follows white adoptive mothers as they navigate culture keeping: from their motivations, to the pressures and constraints they face, to the content of their actual practices concerning names, food, toys, travel, cultural events, and communities of belonging. Through her interviews, she explores how women think about their children, their families, and themselves as mothers as they labor to construct or resist ethnic identities for their children, who may be perceived as birth children (because they are white) or who may be perceived as adopted (because of racial difference). The choices these women make about culture, Jacobson argues, offer a window into dominant ideas of race and the "American Family," and into how social differences are conceived and negotiated in the United States.

Parenting Matters

Parenting Matters PDF Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309388570
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 525

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Book Description
Decades of research have demonstrated that the parent-child dyad and the environment of the familyâ€"which includes all primary caregiversâ€"are at the foundation of children's well- being and healthy development. From birth, children are learning and rely on parents and the other caregivers in their lives to protect and care for them. The impact of parents may never be greater than during the earliest years of life, when a child's brain is rapidly developing and when nearly all of her or his experiences are created and shaped by parents and the family environment. Parents help children build and refine their knowledge and skills, charting a trajectory for their health and well-being during childhood and beyond. The experience of parenting also impacts parents themselves. For instance, parenting can enrich and give focus to parents' lives; generate stress or calm; and create any number of emotions, including feelings of happiness, sadness, fulfillment, and anger. Parenting of young children today takes place in the context of significant ongoing developments. These include: a rapidly growing body of science on early childhood, increases in funding for programs and services for families, changing demographics of the U.S. population, and greater diversity of family structure. Additionally, parenting is increasingly being shaped by technology and increased access to information about parenting. Parenting Matters identifies parenting knowledge, attitudes, and practices associated with positive developmental outcomes in children ages 0-8; universal/preventive and targeted strategies used in a variety of settings that have been effective with parents of young children and that support the identified knowledge, attitudes, and practices; and barriers to and facilitators for parents' use of practices that lead to healthy child outcomes as well as their participation in effective programs and services. This report makes recommendations directed at an array of stakeholders, for promoting the wide-scale adoption of effective programs and services for parents and on areas that warrant further research to inform policy and practice. It is meant to serve as a roadmap for the future of parenting policy, research, and practice in the United States.

White Parents, Black Children

White Parents, Black Children PDF Author: Darron T. Smith
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN: 1442207647
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 177

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Book Description
White Parents, Black Children looks at the difficult issue of race in transracial adoptions—particularly the adoption by white parents of children from different racial and ethnic groups. Despite the long history of troubled and fragile race relations in the United States, some people believe the United States may be entering a post-racial state where race no longer matters, citing evidence like the increasing number of transracial adoptions to make this point. However, White Parents, Black Children argues that racism remains a factor for many children of transracial adoptions. Black children raised in white homes are not exempt from racism, and white parents are often naive about the experiences their children encounter. This book aims to bring to light racial issues that are often difficult for families to talk about, focusing on the racial socialization white parents provide for their transracially adopted children about what it means to be black in contemporary American society. Blending the stories of adoptees and their parents with extensive research, the authors discuss trends in transracial adoptions, challenge the concept of 'colorblind' America, and offer suggestions to help adoptees develop a healthy sense of self.