‘Real’ Families

Myers, Kit

doi:10.1080/17405904.2013.852983

Cited by 17 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 26 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Adoptee-authored research identifies how the traditional focus on "love" as the mechanism that creates adoptive families is a form of symbolic violence (Myers 2014) that further reifies biological, heteronormative families as "real". Specifically, Kit Myers (2014) details how, in attempting to make transracial and/or transnational adoptions legible through "linear narratives of completeness and finality for the adoptive family" (p. 176), adoptees' past and future identities are rendered irrelevant.…”

Section: Rewriting Narratives Of Familymentioning

confidence: 99%

Critical Adoptee Standpoint: Transnational, Transracial Adoptees as Knowledge Producers

Laybourn

2024

Genealogy

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Drawing on Asian adoptee-authored research, this article conceptualizes a critical adoptee standpoint. It underscores the significance of adoptees as knowledge producers and offers new insights into family dynamics, racialization processes, and adoptee personhood. Through three conceptual themes derived from adoptee-authored research, it illuminates the intersectional power dynamics shaping adoptees’ lived experiences and challenges traditional adoption narratives. This approach repositions adoptees as agentic subjects who have cultivated a group consciousness that transcends traditional boundaries of belonging. While focused on Asian adoptees, the essay ultimately calls for broader recognition of adoptees’ contributions to adoption discourse and a more comprehensive understanding of a critical adoptee standpoint in both academic and advocacy settings and among the broader adoptee population.

show abstract

Section: Rewriting Narratives Of Familymentioning

confidence: 99%

Critical Adoptee Standpoint: Transnational, Transracial Adoptees as Knowledge Producers

Laybourn

2024

Genealogy

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In addition, birth parents are either explicitly or implicitly marked as other, judged as lesser, relegated to an adoptee's "resolved" past, or otherwise reduced in significance through labeling such as "other mother," "biological mother," or "first mother." These statements create a comparison between the adoptive family and nation and those from which the child came, qualifying the fitness of parenthood for both parties and positing the nation and family of origin as temporally and spatially past, and as inherently lesser (Myers, 2014). China, who would come from an orphanage, and who would never have known "another mother" and would be "theirs without question" (331-332).…”

Section: Thementioning

confidence: 99%