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5.0 out of 5 stars
Outstanding, Needed, and Valuable!, April 2, 2009
This review is from: Adopting Maternity: White Women Who Adopt Transracially or Transnationally (Hardcover)
This book is excellent. I love its novelty; I love its setup; I love its feminist mission. bell hooks has written often that too few academics want to juggle race, class, and gender issues at the same time (but she's also been rightfully critiqued by Michael Dyson for too often acting like she is the only one who can and does perform that act). This book juggles those three balls well and I hope the author's tenure board recognizes that impressive act when the time comes to evaluate her.
The author's purpose is to compare what white mothers of transracial adoptees say about themselves as compared to what feminist writers have stated or supposed about them. She asks the interviewees a series of questions about how they are similar or different from mothers who bear their children.
Like many sociologists, she uses a control group. So white mothers with white children come up here. Really, this book could be seen as a contribution to whiteness studies. The author found that though adopted, many white relatives and total strangers will tell adoptive mothers how much their kids look like them. The book said that it takes so long to get a white adoptee that many white parents end up with raising only children, unlike those who are willing to adopt transracially. The work said that agencies often encourage white women to give up children for adoption. But this book makes me wonder, "What about the white pregnant woman who hasn't told anybody that the father of her expectant child isn't white like her? Do adoption agencies punish those women when the truth comes out?"
The author seems to have a problem with technology and I couldn't share her concerns. She suggests that women are going through unnecessary and dangerous practices to get pregnant. But personally, I have never heard of a doctor taking a woman by the collar and demanding that she try those procedures. As far as I know, those women come begging to doctors to make them fertile. Feminists talk about promoting women's agency and then sometimes want to backslide on that when it's convenient. The author condemns mothers who are constantly contacting medical experts, usually men, rather than trusting their maternal instinct. Okay, I can see the patriarchy in that, but I think a lot of us have been encouraged to seek experts rather than just use intuition. Intuition can be wrong, and you wouldn't want your child to pay her or his life for your incorrect intuition.
Perhaps, sociologists and cultural critics are different, but legal scholars are always warning, "Whatever you do, don't play the oppression sweepstakes!" They go out of their way to tell people "never say Group X has it worse than Group Y!" However, this may be a dangerous tactic too. This book is so great because it shows the MANY ways in which Asian children are treated better than Black ones. To many people, Asian children can be "Americanized," but Black ones will always be otherized. (This is so different from scholars, especially legal ones, who maintain that Asians are usually deemed "perpetual foreigners.") Almond-shaped eyes are deemed cute, but non-straight African hair is deemed disgusting. The author points to relatives who have said, "If your child were white, we would keep it, but a Black child needs to be given up!" Most importantly, white women sometimes stated that their church communities would be the ones who wouldn't want them to adopt Black children. So much for religious people being equals who love all of God's children! The author never makes the connection, but when relatives say, "How dare you bring a Black child into our family and lower the family's status!", it was very similar to scholars who have described the act of bringing home a Black romantic partner, and families who protest miscegenation.
This book focuses upon white, Asian, Black, and partially Black children. The most populous minority group, Latinos, are left out. Many may find this problematic. Still, the author spoke of relatives who said, "We could accept a Latino adoptee, but not a Black one!" One mother said her biological mother would lie that the adopted child was Latino, rather than admit he was Black and white." To legal scholars, I would ask, "Why turn a blind eye to something that exists and is an injustice!?"
As a person who feels that racial issues are salient in this country, it was difficult to read of adoptive mothers and children fighting to put "the R word" to the side. One mother's response to schoolchildren calling her Korean son "Chinese boy" was to say, "Well, another kid gets called Four Eyes, so don't worry about it." Well, people with glasses can eventually wear contacts. People with eye problems can sometimes have them corrected by surgery. An Asian person will always be Asian. One mother felt bad when her Black child said he disliked his Black skin. In response, she said, "Well, whites get tans. If Black skin were bad, then why do we people want it so much? So don't worry." Well, whites have privilege in that tans can be obtained and then thrown away. Tanned white skin doesn't look like Black skin. Many people who visit tanning salons would be mortified if others accused them of trying to "look Black." So the equation just doesn't fly. The author was trying to measure if having children of a different race creates anti-racist activists and sadly her conclusion is not Utopian.
The author stated that Black adoptees brought up discrimination much more than Asians, but later she discovered that Asians were reluctant to tell those stories to their adoptive parents. Some say Confucian principles say anything bad that happens to you is your own fault, but these children were born, but not raised in Confucian societies. I think a whole dissertation could be written on why one group of color speaks out on race and another doesn't. The fact that this could happen when both groups have white parents is quite significant.
I enjoyed this book and wish its author the best. I doubt potential parents read enough critical theory and feminist writing to understand it, but that in no means denies what a valuable contribution this book is to so many schools of thought.
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