“Making families”: parenting and belonging in transnational adoption in Flanders

Abstract

The goal of this PhD project is to address major gaps in the present research by providing a theoretical and empirically-informed account of the narratives and performances of transnational adoptive parents. By exploring how adoptive parents both normalize and problematize the perceived differences of their children and families, and by examining what work is done and which imaginations are drawn upon in relation to that difference, it aims to gain insight into how racial, cultural and genetic diversity is metabolized within the so-called private realm of the family. Based within a feminist and constructivist anthropological epistemology, this thesis explores the identity work that parents conduct both for themselves, and on behalf of their children, and examines the citizenship potential of adoptive parents’ parenting work.

Ideals, negotiations and gender roles in gay and lesbian co-parenting arrangements

“…This is not particular to co-parents as reflexivity and accountability are increasingly expected from would-be parents, in particular from those who wish to adopt or conceive a child through medical assistance. Prospective parents need to demonstrate their capacities to be 'responsible reproducers' and to behave as 'actual mothers and fathers' even before becoming parents (Faircloth and Gürtin 2017;De Graeve 2012). Authors have also shown that gay and lesbian individuals are more inclined to reflect upon and query their parental practices, not only because 'the reproductive process requires couples to make explicit their choices about the family they seek to become' (Nordqvist 2012, 646) but also as they especially tried to perform 'good parenthood' in environments where gay and lesbian parenting might still be regarded with suspicion (Donovan and Wilson 2008;Dunne 2000;Mamo 2007).…”

The child who was left behind: ‘Dynamic temporality’ and interpretations of history in transnational adoption

“…In a related study on the ‘culture work’ (2012: 194) of Belgian parents of children adopted from Ethiopia in the late 1990s and early 2000s, anthropologist Katrien De Graeve argues that:… the adoptive child’s Ethiopian ethnic identity is often taken for granted and seems inextricably bound up with the color of its skin. … [E]ven if adopted children live in Belgium and within the family for several years, their parents still tend to … see their children’s Ethiopian ethnic identity as bestowed upon them at birth, not even hyphenated with Belgian ethnicity, but completely Ethiopian.…”

“…… [E]ven if adopted children live in Belgium and within the family for several years, their parents still tend to … see their children’s Ethiopian ethnic identity as bestowed upon them at birth, not even hyphenated with Belgian ethnicity, but completely Ethiopian. (2012: 205)…”

“…Like the mothers interviewed by Jacobson, the culture work of Belgian adoptive parents was considered crucial to their child’s identity construction and for empowering the child, but differed from the work of the China-adoptive mothers in that the Belgian adopters focused particularly on the need to provide their children with ‘a positive image of [their] birth country’ in the context of negative prejudices associated with Ethiopian poverty (2012: 200). De Graeve sums up the Belgian parents’ Ethiopian culture work as ‘like balancing on a tight-rope, as they do not want to burden their child with a negative image of its place of birth, while the disastrous condition of the birth country figures prominently in the justification of its transfer away from that place’ (2012: 186).…”