Negotiating Identity and Pragmatism: Parental Treatment of International Adoptees' Birth Culture Names

Suter, Elizabeth A.

doi:10.1080/15267431.2012.686940

Cited by 31 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…To date, the only published study focusing solely on these internal boundary management strategies is Suter's (2012) examination of how U.S. adoptive parents of Chinese or Vietnamese children make decisions about whether to incorporate their children's birth culture names into their children's names after adoption. Building on Suter's (2012) research on internal boundary management strategies, the current study examines discussing, narrating, and ritualizing, as these three are most likely to take place during initial reunions.…”

Section: Korean Adoptee Reunionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“They Were Strangers Who Loved Me”: Discussions, Narratives, and Rituals During Korean Adoptees’ Initial Reunions with Birth Families

Docan-Morgan

2014

Journal of Family Communication

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Section: Korean Adoptee Reunionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“They Were Strangers Who Loved Me”: Discussions, Narratives, and Rituals During Korean Adoptees’ Initial Reunions with Birth Families

Docan-Morgan

2014

Journal of Family Communication

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“…Even in the absence of a biological link, however, the power of patronymic conventions is revealed by the fact that children adopted by heterosexual couples are usually given the father's last name (Suter, 2012). Despite the lack of biological linkages, or perhaps because of them, decisions to share a single last name may reflect desire to be seen by others as a normal or typical family.…”

Section: Last Names Of Childrenmentioning

confidence: 97%

What Shall We Call Ourselves? Last Names Among Lesbian, Gay, and Heterosexual Couples and Their Adopted Children

Patterson

Farr

2016

Journal of GLBT Family Studies

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Choices of last names for both adults and children are important family decisions that are often made upon marriage or upon the birth of a child. The gendered nature of such choices among heterosexual populations is well known, but they have not been widely studied among lesbian or gay populations. We studied selection of last names among 106 adoptive families-27 headed by lesbian couples, 29 headed by gay couples, and 50 headed by heterosexual couples-all of whom had adopted children at birth or in the first weeks of life. Whether in selection of last names for adults or for children, we found that heterosexual adoptive couples were more likely than lesbian and gay adoptive couples to follow patronymic conventions. Thus, heterosexual parents and their children were most likely to have identical last names. For lesbian and gay couples, in contrast, the most common scenario was for both adults to retain last names given to them at birth and hyphenate them to create last names for their children. Parents in lesbian and gay couples offered more detailed explanations of their choices than did those in heterosexual couples. Explanations offered by heterosexual parents were most likely to refer to tradition, but those given by same-sex parents were more likely to mention egalitarian or practical considerations. Overall, we found that same-sex and other-sex couples took very different approaches to the problem of naming themselves and their children.

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“…Contemporary research on international and domestic adoption has focused on racial/ethnic identity development (Lee, 2003;Reynolds et al, 2016), racial and ethnic socialization patterns (Barn, 2013;Johnston et al, 2007;Langrehr, 2014;Montgomery & Powell, 2018;Pinderhughes et al, 2015a;Scott et al, 2019), psychological adjustment of the family (Goldberg & Smith, 2013;Wilkinson, 1995), adoption microaggressions (Baden, 2016;Sue et al, 2007), and naming and birth name reclamation practices (Reynolds et al, 2019;Reynolds et al, 2020;Suter, 2012). However, the majority of the extant transracial international adoption research has focused on Korean adoptee or adoptive mother perspectives.…”

Section: Research On Chinese Adoptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

In Their Own Voices: Identity and Racial Socialization Experiences of Young Adult Chinese Adoptees

Reynolds

Elimelech

Miller

et al. 2020

Review of General Psychology

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This qualitative study explored the experiences of transracial Chinese adoptees who were born in China, separated from their biological families, raised in the United States by White families, and given an Anglicized name at the time of their adoption. This study focused on participant experiences as they navigated being raised in the United States as transracial Chinese adoptees, their feelings related to their Chinese names, thoughts about China and birth family search, and experiences of ethnic and racial socialization within their adoptive families. Data were collected from in-depth, semi-structured interviews via Skype that integrated a constructivist–interpretivist and critical epistemological paradigm and coded using grounded-theory methods. Participants ( N = 8) were transracial Chinese adoptees with ages ranging from 18 to 25 years ( M = 21.5 years) who were between 6 and 17 months ( M = 10.6 months) at the time of adoption. Results from the interviews revealed eight axial categories and three overarching selective categories related to their experience as transracial Chinese adoptees: (a) experiences of race and adoption, (b) factors influencing racial–ethnic socialization, and (c) recommendations for adoptive parents. Limitations of the study, future areas of research, and clinical and practice implications are discussed.

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Negotiating Identity and Pragmatism: Parental Treatment of International Adoptees' Birth Culture Names

Cited by 31 publications

References 36 publications

“They Were Strangers Who Loved Me”: Discussions, Narratives, and Rituals During Korean Adoptees’ Initial Reunions with Birth Families

“They Were Strangers Who Loved Me”: Discussions, Narratives, and Rituals During Korean Adoptees’ Initial Reunions with Birth Families

What Shall We Call Ourselves? Last Names Among Lesbian, Gay, and Heterosexual Couples and Their Adopted Children

In Their Own Voices: Identity and Racial Socialization Experiences of Young Adult Chinese Adoptees

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