Kinship with strangers : adoption and interpretations of kinship in American culture / / Judith S. Modell

• Autore: Schachter Judith <1941->
• Pubblicazione: Berkeley : , : University of California Press, , [1994]
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (xv, 280 pages)
• Disciplina: 362.7/34/0973
• Soggetto topico: Adoption - United States; Kinship - United States; Social Welfare & Social Work; Social Sciences; Social Welfare & Social Work - General
• Soggetto geografico: United States Social life and customs
• Soggetto genere / forma: Electronic books
• Note generali: Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph
• Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references (pages 261-274) and index.
• Nota di contenuto: 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.
• Sommario/riassunto: 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.
• Titolo autorizzato: Kinship with strangers
• ISBN: 0-585-13494-4
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Record Nr.: 9910495862603321
• Lo trovi qui: Univ. Federico II