Description
Book SynopsisThis book explores a deeply personal aspect of globalization: the adoption of Asian children by white Americans. It is based on dozens of interviews with adoptive mothers and adoption social workers, nearly two hundred letters and essays written by Korean birth mothers who put their children up for adoption, and field work at an adoption agency in South Korea. It also includes analyses and explanations of U.S. and South Korean governments' social characteristics and policies regarding adoptions and how relations between nations have affected international adoption. The book focuses on whether the commonly held notion that adoptions are to serve children's welfare and their best interests has tended to render gendered aspects of international adoptions invisible. Factors such as gender inequality, social control of women's reproductive power, patriarchic family structure, and social beliefs concerning womanhood and motherhood that affect international adoptions are revealed in this book
Trade ReviewAn interesting look at transnational, transracial adoption in Korea, the Motherland, the place it all began. -- Barbara Katz Rothman, City University of New York, author of "Weaving a Family: Untangling Race and Adoption"
Table of ContentsIntroduction: Mothers and Motherhoods in International Adoptions 1. Historical and Social Contexts of the Institutionalization of Korea-to-US Adoption: A Global Feminist Sociological Imagination Approach 2. Birth Mothers in Korea 3. Foster Mothers in Korea 4. Adoptive Mothers in the United States 5. Adoptive and Birth Mothers’ Adoption Storytelling Conclusion: Unequal Motherhoods in International Adoptions
