05353oam 2200613 450 991049586260332120200908224022.00-585-13494-4(CKB)111004366709712(MH)003910730-2(SSID)ssj0000187697(PQKBManifestationID)12023603(PQKBTitleCode)TC0000187697(PQKBWorkID)10141545(PQKB)10902022(EXLCZ)9911100436670971219921023d1994 ub 0engurun#---auu|utxtrdacontentcrdamediacrrdacarrierKinship with strangers adoption and interpretations of kinship in American culture /Judith S. ModellBerkeley :University of California Press,[1994]1 online resource (xv, 280 pages)Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph0-520-08118-8 Includes bibliographical references (pages 261-274) and index.1. American Adoption: A Kinship with Strangers -- pt. 1. The Setting: American Adoption Policy. 2. In the Best Interests: The Background of American Adoption Policy. 3. This Child Is Mine: The Mechanisms for Delegating Parenthood -- pt. 2. The Experience of Adoptive Kinship. 4. The White Flag of Surrender: Birthparent Experiences of Adoption. 5. Everyone Else Just Has Babies: Becoming an Adoptive Parent. 6. The Chosen Child: Growing Up Adopted -- pt. 3. The Revision of Adoptive Kinship. 7. Just My Truth: The Adoptee Search for a Birth Family. 8. Lost to Adoption: The Birthparent Search for a Relinquished Child. 9. A Child of One's Own: Being an Adoptive Parent -- pt. 4. Conclusion. 10. A New Kind of Kinship: The Implications of Change in American Adoption.Adoption challenges our understanding of the core symbols of kinship in American culture - birth, biology, and blood. Judith Modell examines these symbols and the way they affect people who experience the "fictive" kinship of adoption. Her findings are timely and profoundly moving; as presented here, they contribute valuable insights to the current debates about removing the veil of secrecy from adoption records and about giving more decision-making power to the participant in an adoptive relationship. Modell draws extensively on interviews with birthparents, adoptive parents, and adoptees, some of whom are active in the movement to reform American adoption. The proposed reform - the opening of records, the acknowledgment of a biological and a legal parent, the blending of families that are related only through a child - challenges accepted meanings of "mother" and "father," "parent" and "child," "ancestry" and "identity" in this country.But Modell shows that uncertainties have long surrounded these familiar concepts and that adoption has always upset our conventional cultural interpretations of "being related." Kinship with Strangers explores for the first time the profound impact of this need to interpret and reinterpret kinship on the part of those who experience adoption. As the members of the adoption triad tell their stories, certain motifs appear that organize each person's experience of adoptive kinship and at the same time offer a profound critique of American adoption policies. "Surrender" is the dominant motif for birthparents, while "love at first sight" captures an adoptive parent's sense of parenthood. For the adoptee, "telling" is central - the moment when one learns one is not "like everyone else." Modell's book not only presents the personal side of an increasingly urgent and public debate but also demonstrates the persistence of these debates.From nineteenth-century movements on the part of adoptees, birthparents, and adoptive parents, there have been efforts to modify this institution that so deeply alters individual lives. The last chapter on recent upheavals in American adoption places Kinship with Strangers at the heart of a discussion that has moved out of the privacy of families, agencies, and even legislatures and onto the front pages of newspapers. With a perspective drawn from the anthropological analysis of kinship, this insightful analysis reveals how complex, and perplexing, the discussion actually is.AdoptionUnited StatesKinshipUnited StatesSocial Welfare & Social WorkHILCCSocial SciencesHILCCSocial Welfare & Social Work - GeneralHILCCUnited StatesSocial life and customsElectronic booksAdoptionKinshipSocial Welfare & Social WorkSocial SciencesSocial Welfare & Social Work - General362.7/34/0973Schachter Judith1941-1151052DLCDLCDLCBOOK9910495862603321Kinship with strangers2865295UNINAThis Record contains information from the Harvard Library Bibliographic Dataset, which is provided by the Harvard Library under its Bibliographic Dataset Use Terms and includes data made available by, among others the Library of Congress