LEADER 05353oam 2200613 450 001 9910495862603321 005 20200908224022.0 010 $a0-585-13494-4 035 $a(CKB)111004366709712 035 $a(MH)003910730-2 035 $a(SSID)ssj0000187697 035 $a(PQKBManifestationID)12023603 035 $a(PQKBTitleCode)TC0000187697 035 $a(PQKBWorkID)10141545 035 $a(PQKB)10902022 035 $a(EXLCZ)99111004366709712 100 $a19921023d1994 ub 0 101 0 $aeng 135 $aurun#---auu|u 181 $ctxt$2rdacontent 182 $cc$2rdamedia 183 $acr$2rdacarrier 200 10$aKinship with strangers $eadoption and interpretations of kinship in American culture /$fJudith S. Modell 210 1$aBerkeley :$cUniversity of California Press,$d[1994] 215 $a1 online resource (xv, 280 pages) 300 $aBibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph 311 0 $a0-520-08118-8 320 $aIncludes bibliographical references (pages 261-274) and index. 327 $a1. 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. 330 $aAdoption 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. 330 $aBut 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. 330 $aFrom 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. 606 $aAdoption$zUnited States 606 $aKinship$zUnited States 606 $aSocial Welfare & Social Work$2HILCC 606 $aSocial Sciences$2HILCC 606 $aSocial Welfare & Social Work - General$2HILCC 607 $aUnited States$xSocial life and customs 608 $aElectronic books 615 0$aAdoption 615 0$aKinship 615 7$aSocial Welfare & Social Work 615 7$aSocial Sciences 615 7$aSocial Welfare & Social Work - General 676 $a362.7/34/0973 700 $aSchachter$b Judith$f1941-$01151052 801 0$bDLC 801 1$bDLC 801 2$bDLC 906 $aBOOK 912 $a9910495862603321 996 $aKinship with strangers$92865295 997 $aUNINA 999 $aThis 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