In "Somebody's Children," Laura Briggs examines the social and
cultural forces--poverty, racism, economic inequality, and
political violence--that have shaped transracial and transnational
adoption in the United States during the second half of the
twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first.
Focusing particularly on the experiences of those who have lost
their children to adoption, Briggs analyzes the circumstances under
which African American and Native mothers in the United States and
indigenous and poor women in Latin America have felt pressed to
give up their children for adoption or have lost them
involuntarily.
The dramatic expansion of transracial and transnational adoption
since the 1950s, Briggs argues, was the result of specific and
profound political and social changes, including the large-scale
removal of Native children from their parents, the condemnation of
single African American mothers in the context of the civil rights
struggle, and the largely invented "crack babies" scare that
inaugurated the dramatic withdrawal of benefits to poor mothers in
the United States. In Guatemala, El Salvador, and Argentina,
governments disappeared children during the Cold War and then
imposed neoliberal economic regimes with U.S. support, making the
circulation of children across national borders easy and often
profitable. Concluding with an assessment of present-day
controversies surrounding gay and lesbian adoptions and the
struggles of immigrants fearful of losing their children to foster
care, Briggs challenges celebratory or otherwise simplistic
accounts of transracial and transnational adoption by revealing
some of their unacknowledged causes and costs.
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