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.
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