Contextualising intercountry adoption and sociological insights for contemporary research

Adoption policies and practices enable the movement of children across cultures across time. Simon and Alstein argue that intercountry adoption has evolved into ‘a story of global relations, where Non White, free-for-adoption Third World children are adopted by White families living in the West’ (Reference Simon and Altstein2000: 6). Shiu (Reference Shiu2001) attributes the concomitant legal, national and social institutionalisation of modern adoption practice to the establishment of the Holt International Adoption Agency in Korea and Operation Babylift in 1975.

The Korean (1950–1953) and the Vietnam (1954–1975) Wars were crucial to the establishment of practices that expatriate children for adoption. These two ‘founding’ episodes involved the ‘airlifting’ of children for adoption by predominantly white parents to western nations such as the United States, Canada and Australia (Brookfield, Reference Brookfield2009). While typically framed as acts of rescue with ensuing policies favouring the needs of prospective parents (Fronek, Reference Fronek, Spark and Cuthbert2009; Fronek and Cuthbert, Reference Fronek and Cuthbert2012a; Fronek and Cuthbert, Reference Fronek and Cuthbert2012b), a number of adult adoptee scholars criticise adoption as a form of ‘cultural imperialism’ and ‘kidnapping’ (Hübinette, Reference Hübinette, Trenka, Oparah and Shin2006; Kim, Reference Kim, Trenka, Oparah and Shin2006; Berquist, Reference Berquist2009), fuelled by concerns that inadequate processes existed for accurately determining orphan status (Emerson, Reference Emerson1975; Zigler, Reference Zigler1976; Herrman and Kasper, Reference Herrman and Kasper1992). Subsequent policies and practices, rather than confirm ‘orphan’ status have expanded its definition to include children who have families and often parents and instead focuses on the facilitation of intercountry adoption (Pfund, Reference Pfund1994, Reference Pfund1997).

During the past twenty years, the top sending countries of children for adoption are the developing or economically disadvantaged countries in Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe and South America, while receiving countries are wealthy developed Western nations (Lovelock, Reference Lovelock2000; Volkman, Reference Volkman2005; Howell, Reference Howell2006; Selman, Reference Selman2009). Though adoption patterns appear neatly divided between affluent and poorer nations, this is not always the case. Popular sending countries such as South Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan are no longer considered ‘Third World’. Nor are the global movements of children a one-way flow from the non-west to western nations. Engels et al. (Reference Engel, Phillips and Dellacava2007: 267) report that several hundred US children are adopted overseas annually. These children, mostly African American or bi-racial, are sent to receiving nations such as Canada, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, The Netherlands and Belgium. These adoptions address gaps in inadequate social service systems where ethnic and racial minority groups are overrepresented (Stokes and Schmidt, Reference Stokes and Schmidt2011) and court ordered adoption from care has emerged. Celebrity adopters who circumvent legislative and policy safeguards overshadow ‘ordinary’ middle-class prospective parents (Root, Reference Root2007; Mezmur, Reference Mezmur2009; Willing, Reference Willing, Spark and Cuthbert2009) and the disempowered families of the children they adopt. Contested and often illegal transfers of children from conflict or natural disasters zones such as in Haiti or Darfur continue (Berquist, Reference Berquist2009; Balsari et al., Reference Balsari, Lemery, Williams and Nelson2010; Dambach and Baglietto, Reference Dambach and Baglietto2010; Fronek and Cuthbert, Reference Fronek and Cuthbert2012a). Situations of imminent danger or even significant poverty do not justify the permanent removal of children for adoption and the severing of ties from their families and communities. It is therefore important to understand the societal and cultural dynamics that underlie these practices.

Sociological insights can assist in understanding the changing role of intercountry adoptions and the underlying rationales. It has been argued that we have reached a stage of late, ‘liquid’ or advanced modernity (Giddens, Reference Giddens1991; Beck, Reference Beck2000; Bauman, Reference Bauman2001) that is shaped by the rise of individualisation and de-traditionalism. As a result, western notions of ‘the family’ are also undergoing changes with non-nuclear family formations increasingly visible (Giddens, Reference Giddens1992; Beck-Gernsheim, Reference Beck-Gernsheim2002). Emerging globalising processes propel unprecedented cross-border flows of people, goods and ideas resulting in increasingly flexible, hybrid or diverse notions of identity and belonging, including in the family (Glick Schiller et al., Reference Glick Schiller, Basch and Blanc Szanton1992; Basch et al., Reference Basch, Glick Schiller and Szanton Blanc2000; Vertovec, Reference Vertovec2001). Sociological insights into such changes contribute to new attitudes towards parenthood and ‘the family’, including ‘post-familiar’ and ‘re-invented’ families (Beck-Gernsheim, Reference Beck-Gernsheim1998; Beck-Gernsheim, Reference Beck-Gernsheim2002), such as those created by ART (Baker, Reference Baker2008), and new attitudes towards those headed by ‘same-sex’ (Duffey, Reference Duffey2007) and ‘mixed-race’ couples (Luke and Luke, Reference Luke, Luke, Ang, Chalmers and Thomas2000; Parker and Song, Reference Parker and Song2002). Other developments include the emergence of transnational families (Bryceson and Vuorela, Reference Bryceson and Vuorela2002; Skrbiš, Reference Skrbiš2008), headed by parents who perform ‘long distance intimacy’ while living abroad separated from their children (Hochschild, Reference Hochschild, Ehrenreich and Hochschild2002; Parreñas, Reference Parreñas2005; Zhou, Reference Zhou1998).

Though intercountry adoption offers fertile ground for the ‘sociological imagination’ (Mills, Reference Mills1959) and a rich field of inquiry for sociologists concerned with identity, race and culture, migration and transnationalism, comparatively little sociological attention has been paid to how key social changes manifest or are reflected in intercountry adoption (Riley, Reference Riley1997: 88). Less work has been done on intercountry adoption from within a policy framework. As a consequence, this review discusses the available literature in the terms of that literature itself, which focuses – almost exclusively – on the adoption triad, with the majority of research focused on the experience of adoptive parents, and then, in descending order, on adoptees and birth families. We comment as we move through this review on structural, social and cultural influences, and on the gaps in research on policy.

Overview of the field

Intercountry adoption has generated a sociological ripple rather than wave of interest. US sociological research has an overwhelming presence in the field. Research on adoptive parents and adoptees was located with a marked paucity of research on birth families. Wegar (Reference Wegar1997: viii), a Finnish-born adoptee and sociologist, claimed astonishment at the lack of interest by sociologists in adoption. Fisher later confirmed that most research had been conducted from other disciplinary perspectives. He argued that sociologists ‘have done relatively little to inform the public regarding adoption in a way that might address . . . the effects of stigma that may still be attached to adoption’ (Reference Fisher2003: 358). The problem, in his view, was that adoption is a social practice that constructs ‘non-traditional’ families who tend to be positioned as ‘second best’ compared to families whose members are biologically related (in the west), suggesting that the status of non-nuclear family forms remain tenuous (Istar Lev, Reference Istar Lev, Anzaldua and Keating2002).

While aiming to provide a sociological account of macro-issues in US adoption, Engels et al. (Reference Engel, Phillips and Dellacava2007: 257) found that:

Engels et al. (Reference Engel, Phillips and Dellacava2007: 257) reported that this neglect explained why social work studies and media reports were mostly used to provide a macro picture of US historical trends in intercountry adoption. The implication being, vital understandings of the influence of culture and society on international adoption, a phenomenon intimately concerned with such matters, are missing and represent a failure to inform national and international policies. The work of Engels et al. (Reference Engel, Phillips and Dellacava2007) provides a general picture of the uneven power dynamics between the US and sending nations that is ‘useful for policy makers, practitioners and others concerned with the occurrence of international adoption and its potential consequences’ (Reference Engel, Phillips and Dellacava2007: 257).

Adoptive parents

It has been suggested that social trends such as infertility and the rise of individualisation have led to perceptions of parenthood as lifestyle choices rather than economic or social necessities. These views shift the purpose of international adoption, whom it serves and the rationales that circulate within societies to justify it, from traditional notions of rescue and altruism to meeting the desire of those in privileged societies to parent children. Such trends are confirmed in Högbacka's (Reference Högbacka2008b) recent study where she proposes that there are three populations who turn to adoption: couples experiencing difficulties conceiving, single parents and those with biological children who are typically altruistic. Of the latter group, Högbacka (Reference Högbacka2008b: 318) claims some find adoption ‘opened up new dimensions’ to their lives, and that they ‘felt good about having adopted’ when so many children needed families. She also suggests that parenthood is seen as a life goal and path to self-development. This reflects sociological understandings on post-traditional families and intimacy in late modernity (Giddens, Reference Giddens1992; Beck-Gernsheim, Reference Beck-Gernsheim2002; Bauman, Reference Bauman2003) and the impact that ‘reflexive modernity’ has on adoption (Pringle, Reference Pringle2004). As Anagnost (Reference Anagnost2000: 392) explains, the ‘position of parent for white middle-class subjects has increasingly become marked as a measure of value, self-worth and citizenship’ that, in turn, effects infertile couples who adopt transnationally to resolve this tension. These observations also apply to same-sex couples (Riggs, Reference Riggs2006; Ross et al., Reference Ross, Epstein, Goldfinger and Steele2008).

The analysis sheds light on how certain themes have sparked greater sociological interest than others. An overwhelming number of the identified studies on adoptive parents focused on consumption and cultural practices, or what Jacobson (Reference Jacobson2008), a white adoptive parent, calls ‘culture keeping’, the recognition of adoptees’ birth heritage. Culture keeping’ includes the emerging consumption of ethnic goods and foods by adoptive families, and the maintenance of ties with adoptees’ birth countries through activities such as Motherland Tours, practices supported by most national and international adoption policies. Fonseca (Reference Fonseca2006: 2) urged in her research on Brazilian adoptions that such practices be viewed as ‘a transnational issue’ par excellence due to their involvement in ‘the transference of people, goods and ideas across national borders’. Chen (Reference Chen2003: 11), in her Canadian research, also emphasised the ‘transnational flows of population, discourse, commodities and power [and that] Intercountry adoption is one discursive site of those connections’.

Some sociologists warn that ‘culture keeping’ practices are superficial and merely symbolic. Dorow (Reference Dorow2006b: 229) describes how adoptive parents of Chinese children embraced such transnational activities. She rejects the idea that families’ constructions of ‘Chineseness’ and multicultural identities are unfolding in a ‘borderless’ world of ‘global’ belongings. In her view, the ‘celebration of pluralism’ that underpins the ‘envisioning a glorified global family of “different but the same”’ (Reference Dorow2006b: 87) masks the deeper complexities of identity and power-relationships in transracial and cross-cultural adoptive families.

Interestingly, most of the literature that focuses on ‘culture keeping’ has explored the lives of parents who have adopted from China (Miller-Loessi and Kilic, Reference Miller-Loessi and Kilic2001; Dorow, Reference Dorow and Cook2002; Falvey, Reference Falvey2008; Louie, Reference Louie2009). The prevalence of this cohort of adoptive parents is related to China's status as one of the top sending countries of children. Despite the popularity of adoptions from countries in Eastern Europe, issues of racial sameness between adopters and adoptees may mean that culture is not as salient a feature of their lives compared to intercountry and transracial adoptive families (Paulson and Merighi, Reference Paulson and Merighi2009). Falvey notes that adopters of Russian children often present a more ‘silent portrait’ of their family. Whiteness is seen as normative and white adoptees, in contrast to Chinese ones, are not perceived to have an ‘innate need . . . to maintain connections with their heritage’ (2008: 281). Accordingly, recent research specifically explored how racial matters shape white adoptive parents’ approaches to adoption (Moosnick, Reference Moosnick2004; Hubinette and Tigervall, Reference Hübinette and Tigervall2009).

A smaller number of studies focus more specifically on constructions of parenthood (Anagnost, Reference Anagnost2000; Pringle, Reference Pringle2004), in particular, ‘good mothers’ (Herrman and Kasper, Reference Herrman and Kasper1992; Cuthbert et al., Reference Cuthbert, Murphy and Quartly2009) and the relationship that feminists have with adoption (Moosnick, Reference Moosnick2004; Dorow, Reference Dorow2006a; Ishizawa et al., Reference Ishizawa, Kenney, Kubo and Stevens2006). These studies demonstrate that parenthood is highly gendered. Women are primarily responsible for child-rearing decisions and mothers who have biological ties with their children are given a higher status than others. While affluent feminists find grounds to advance women's rights and the rights of other socially infertile groups to parent and construct families outside ‘traditional’ contexts of procreation through adoption, the means of establishing such rights by adopting sits uncomfortably with the subaltern positioning of ‘birth mothers’ who are unable (and unassisted) to keep their children (Dubinsky, Reference Dubinsky2007; Sotiropoulos, Reference Sotiropoulos2008; Cuthbert et al., Reference Cuthbert, Murphy and Quartly2009). The rendering invisible of less-resourced adoption actors is embedded in this seemingly unresolvable tension, and their invisibility is a feature of much of the literature reviewed.

Sotiropoulos (Reference Sotiropoulos2008: 78) is a white adoptive parent and observes in her study of open adoptions, where birth parents have contact with adoptive families, how disparities in wealth and power shape adoption: ‘Fuelled largely by Western money and middle-class interests, adoption often pits adoptive parents and birth parents as adversaries and, in turn, commodifies the human beings that forever binds them together’, meaning adoptees (also see Suter and Ballard, Reference Suter and Ballard2009). By highlighting such tensions, the enormous challenge facing policy makers in their efforts to understand the social and cultural complexities of intercountry adoption while ensuring the best interests of children are foregrounded.

Adoptees

Unlike sociological studies on adoptive parents, research on issues of identity and belonging for intercountry adoptees reveals much tenser relationships between birth heritage and the societies in which they were raised. Adoptees feel uncomfortable with notions of altruism that suggest ‘rescue’ (Willing, Reference Willing2004; Trenka et al., Reference Trenka, Oparah and Shin2006; Kim, Reference Kim2009). Hübinette (Reference Hübinette2003: 4) is a Korean adoptee and cultural studies scholar. His work, informed by postcolonial and sociological theory, argues that while the practice of intercountry adoption is more typically perceived by adoptive parents, agencies and other advocates ‘as a progressive and anti-racist act of rescuing non-white children from the miseries of the Third World’, the practice must be seen ‘as a wider set of relations of domination and subordination’ (Reference Hübinette2003: 4).

Another point of difference from studies of adoptive parents is that issues of race are approached more explicitly through explorations of adoptees’ experiences with racism from a non-white perspective. For example, Tuan (Reference Tuan1999) introduced the idea that Asian Americans are imagined and subordinated in the US as ‘forever foreigners’ and ‘honorary whites’. Kim (Reference Kim2009: 877) explained that there is a ‘peculiar overvaluing and fetishizing of transnational and transracial adoptees taking place . . . making possible some lives over others’, in reference to how Asian adoptees, as ‘honorary whites’, are considered more desirable to adopt than African American children. Her proposal finds support in Louie's (Reference Louie2009: 298) study of Chinese adoptions where Chinese adoptees tend to be seen as ‘exceptions from racism rather than a catalyst for anti-racist views amongst the family’.

Subtle and sometimes overt forms of racism that impact on adoptees lives can be internalised, as demonstrated by Shiao and Tuan (Reference Shiao and Tuan2008b) regarding Korean adoptees’ attitudes towards dating other Asians. Their research draws on key sociological literature such as critical race theory (Omi and Winant, Reference Omi and Winant1994) and concepts of masculine hegemonic identities (Connell, Reference Connell1987). They argued that racial discourses are salient in intimacy and dating (2008b: 200) with complications for Korean adoptees raised by white adoptive parents in white social settings. Participants who had been able to do ‘ethnic exploration’ were more likely to have dated Asians than those who had not. However, internalised racism was also a factor, with some stating that whites were more attractive, and that Asian males did not measure up to hegemonic male identities associated with white, heterosexual masculinity.

Many adult-aged adoptees from Asia and other ethnicities deemed the non-white struggle with feeling ‘authentic’ as a result of being racially different from their white parents and culturally different from people who share their ethnicity. As with the adoptive parent research, many of these studies were conducted by researchers who are intercountry adoptees (Williams, Reference Williams2003; Willing, Reference Willing2004; McDermott, Reference McDermott, Trenka, Oparah and Shin2006; VanderMolen, Reference VanderMolen2006; Kim, Reference Kim2007a). In contrast to the critical work by adoptee researchers, adoptive parent researchers tended to argue that adoptees may be ‘empowered’ by embracing their ‘hybrid’ identities (Gray, Reference Gray2007a, Reference Gray, Bergquist, Kim and Feit2007b).

Studies of adult Korean adoptees (Shiao et al., Reference Shiao, Tuan and Rienzi2004; Shiao and Tuan, Reference Shiao and Tuan2008a, Reference Shiao and Tuan2008b; Randolph and Holtzman, Reference Randolph and Holtzman2010) outnumber all other populations, followed by those on Vietnamese adoptees (Williams, Reference Williams2003; Willing, Reference Willing2004; Cherot, Reference Cherot2009) and some on both populations (Gray, Reference Gray, Bergquist, Kim and Feit2007b; Cherot, Reference Cherot2008; Kim, Reference Kim2009). This is not surprising given that adoptions from Korea from the 1950s and from Vietnam in the 1970s were the ‘founding’ waves of contemporary intercountry adoption and there are ‘several generational cohorts of adoptees living in the United States ranging from infancy to their fifties (Tuan, Reference Tuan2008: 1854). Tuan (Reference Tuan2008) also noted ‘older cohorts were encouraged to deny differences and assimilate . . . [and] Younger cohorts, in contrast, have come of age in a very different social climate characterised by the availability of social and material resources’ (ibid.), changes reflected in wider societal attitudes and social policies over the last fifty years. These resources include accessing ‘heritage camps, motherland tours, and consumer items’ (2008: 1855) made available by adoptive parents as ‘culture keeping’ efforts. However, an interesting disparity in the perceived benefits of these types of activities between adoptive parents and adoptees is identified by Randolf and Holtzman in their study of Korean culture camps.

While the impact that such cultural practices, often supported by policy, have on adoptees remains contested, the rise of Vietnamese adoptee organised community groups is beneficial to their overall sense of identity and belonging (Willing, Reference Willing2004; Cherot, Reference Cherot2008).

There is a much smaller number of sociological studies on adult adoptees from other countries of origin and fewer still reporting on reunions with surviving biological relatives. A rare exploration of transnational practices for adoptees seeking to connect with birth families in Haiti (McDermott, Reference McDermott, Trenka, Oparah and Shin2006) and an auto-ethnographic study by an adoptee from Guatemala (VanderMolen, Reference VanderMolen2006) were identified in the literature search. General analyses of adoptions from Africa, rather than adoptee experiences were located (Root, Reference Root2007; Breuning and Ishiyama, Reference Breuning and Ishiyama2009). There is a comparative study of Korean adoptees with other Korean populations such as non-adopted Korean Americans and Korean international students (Shiao and Tuan, Reference Shiao and Tuan2008a), but less is known about the experiences of adoptees from other countries leaving a significant gap in knowledge.

Another area that remains largely unexamined from sociological perspectives are the experiences of babies and younger children, whom Quiroz (Reference Quiroz2008) calls the ‘diaper diaspora’, with one study on younger Chinese adoptees (Ponte et al., Reference Ponte, Wang and Pen-Shian Fant2010). Standard sociological tools such as surveys and in-depth interviews are inappropriate for use with young populations. However, sociologists can begin to explore the symbolic construction of children in adoption (Dubinsky, Reference Dubinsky2007) and even visual ethnographies of family photo albums and videos. Tools sociologists have used to explore issues of race and identity in mixed-race families (Twine, Reference Twine2006) may be applied to adoption. Many older intercountry adoptees are now biological and/or adoptive parents creating spaces for fresh sociological investigations.

Birth families

The voices of birth families and communities are scarce in sociological inquiry though occasionally heard through the disciplines of law and anthropology (Fonseca, Reference Fonseca and Volkman2005; Johnson, Reference Johnson and Volkman2005; Bos, Reference Bos2007; Smolin, Reference Smolin2007). There are two notable exceptions, the work of Kim (Reference Kim, Berquist, Vonk, Kim and Feit2007b) and Högbacka (Reference Högbacka2008b). Kim explores the increasing visibility of Korean birth mothers, the ‘ghostly double’, representing repressed collective trauma and radical global inequality. The struggle of these women for legitimate motherhood from positions of vulnerability, she argues, has been strengthened by the search of many adoptees to find and reconnect with their families. The Korean birth mother deemed invisible by white western adopters is central to understanding international Korean adoption, now well over fifty years old.

Högbacka (Reference Högbacka2008b) provides a powerful analysis of the collision between the exclusivity of western family formation and the inclusivity of models relevant to the rest of the world, particularly evident where families experience poverty, structural barriers and limited choice. She argues that birth mothers and extended families are made invisible by inequality and the irrevocable and permanent severing of ties enforced by adoption as framed by legislation and international agreements. Negating perceptions of bad mothering, the participants in this study did not want to place their children for adoption, preferring temporary fostering arrangements that were unavailable to them. Persistent themes of wanting better lives for their children masked the absence of alternatives and choice. The notion of intercountry adoption as ‘gifting’ a child is rejected by Höbbacka (Reference Högbacka2008a) as these placements lack bonds, reciprocity and shared relationships. Höbbacka (Reference Högbacka2008a) concludes that open adoption arrangements that encompass two families and co-operative arrangements better preserve identities and address power and resource imbalances between triad members and constitute new family formations that are more relevant to the contemporary adoption phenomenon.