Selling Transracial Adoption
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Selling Transracial Adoption Elizabeth Raleigh Selling Transracial Adoption Families, Markets, and the Color Line TEMPLE UNIVerSITY PreSS Philadelphia • Rome • Tokyo TeMPLE UNIVerSITY PreSS Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19122 www.temple.edu/tempress Copyright © 2018 by Temple University—Of The Commonwealth System of Higher Education All rights reserved Published 2018 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Raleigh, Elizabeth Yoon Hwa, 1977– author. Title: Selling transracial adoption : families, markets, and the color line / Elizabeth Yoon Hwa Raleigh. Description: Philadelphia : Temple University Press, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017021821| ISBN 9781439914779 (hardback) | ISBN 9781439914786 (paper) | ISBN 9781439914793 (e-book) Subjects: LCSH: Interracial adoption. | Social service. | Families. | BISAC: SOCIAL SCIENCE / Social Work. | SOCIAL SCIENCE / Ethnic Studies / General. | FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS / Adoption & Fostering. Classification: LCC HV875 .R25 2017 | DDC 362.734—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017021821 The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992 Printed in the United States of America 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 To my mother, Laura Mackie (1946–2013) Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 1 Staying Afloat in a Perfect Storm 36 2 Uneasy Consumers: The Emotion Work of Marketing Adoption 64 3 Transracial Adoption as a Market Calculation 94 4 “And You Get to Black”: Racial Hierarchies and the Black–Non-Black Divide 128 5 Selling Transracial Adoption: Social Workers’ Ideals and Market Concessions 163 Conclusion: The Consequences of Selling Transracial Adoption and the Implications for Adoptive Families 190 Notes 203 References 215 Index 229 Acknowledgments irst, I thank the adoption social workers, lawyers, and counselors who participated in this study. While I may be at times critical of adoption Fpractice, after every interview I was always heartened by my participants’ thoughtfulness and dedication to child welfare. I am grateful to them for their work and for generously sharing their time and candid insights on race, family, and private adoption. This book would not have come to fruition without the support of several people and institutions. I thank Sara Cohen and the team at Temple Univer- sity Press for their skillful guidance. Sara Dorow, a pioneer in adoption research, and an anonymous reviewer both offered valuable feedback and advice. My colleagues and students at Carleton College welcomed me into their community and continue to invigorate and challenge me as a teacher and scholar. A special thank-you goes to the students in my sociology of as- sisted reproductive technology and adoption class, who help me see the material in new ways. In particular, I thank Emily Scotto for her feedback on the manuscript. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s Career Enhancement Fellowship provided a lifeline of financial support that allotted me the time to finish the project. Several mentors generously gave of themselves to guide me through the research process. Thanks go to my former advisors Grace Kao, Charles Bosk, Barbara Katz Rothman, and Kristen Harknett for believing in the project even before it was a dissertation. Richard Lee was kind enough to step in and serve as an official mentor and brave four days of Florida heat and humidity in late August. Over the years, Scott Wong has offered sage advice and key x Acknowledgments introductions. And Lynn Davidman introduced me to sociology and offered me my first academic job as a research assistant my sophomore year of college. Without the intellectual engagement of fellow adoptee scholars, my work would not be as good and not nearly as meaningful. I thank Joyce Maguire Pavao, Kim Park Nelson, and Amanda Baden for being trailblazers and Kimberly McKee, JaeRan Kim, Shannon Gibney, Sara Docan-Morgan, and Jennifer Kwon Dobbs for their commitment to adoption studies. I count myself lucky to have good friends who are engaged and thought- ful adoptive parents. All have enriched my life and my work. I have known Rachel Gilbert since we were mistaken for each other in grade school, and she and her husband, Geoff, are like family to me. Matt and Joni Karl are cherished friends, and they have my utmost respect and gratitude. Martha Crawford read an early draft of the book, and she assured me I was on a good track. And Frank Ligtvoet and the rest of the inaugural All Together Now adoption group were open-minded listeners and advocates. Long gone are the days of college, but I am fortunate that my friendships with Aubrey Ludwig Ellman, Jenny Kane, Adele Campbell-Nelson, and Karla Sigler have persisted despite my flaky and intermittent communica- tion. And to friends in Northfield—especially the “moms gone mild” and “the group”—I offer thanks for being sounding boards and for enveloping me in a community of supportive friends. As I get older, I know how privileged I am to have my family and how fleeting time can be. My mother, Laura Mackie, was gone too soon, but I know that she would have unwaveringly supported this project, just as she was proud of all my endeavors. I am thankful for her love. I wish my dear father-in-law, Patrick Raleigh, had lived to see this publication, but I am grateful that my wonderful mother-in-law, Marilynn Raleigh, is here to read it. Having her move to Northfield has been such a gift. My dad, David Mackie, has always been an anchor for me, and I love him from the bottom of my heart. My sister, Amy Raccagni, is among the most giving people I have ever met. I thank her for her love and friendship. And I thank my brother, Darren Mackie, for being a loving brother and a devoted uncle. And last, my enduring love goes to my husband, Nikos, and my daugh- ter, Paige. I thank Paige for her generous heart and the joy that she brings me. Being a mother taught me a lot about adoption, and I understand why people are willing to sacrifice so much to have the experience of raising a child. Paige is the personification of love, and I don’t know how I got so lucky to be her mom. And I thank Nikos for believing in me and for his ever- present love and support. He is the 100 percent perfect person for me. Selling Transracial Adoption Introduction bigail Johnson sits in the conference room of Clerestory Adoptions, a private adoption agency offering a multitude of international and A domestic adoption programs.1 The room looks like any generic confer- ence room, with a large oval table and several matching chairs around it. The office is by no means luxurious, but the room is tidy and professional. This could be any corporate office, but instead of forecasts of annual sales and profit margins, the charts on the wall detail a roster of adoption programs offered by Clerestory Adoptions and the number of parents currently en- rolled. As this book shows, the numbers do not look good. I am at the agency to interview Abigail, a relatively young social worker who got her start working in adoption right out of college. She is an earnest person, and her brown eyes are thoughtful when she pauses to answer my questions. As someone whose job it is to run information sessions describing the range of adoption programs her agency offers, Abigail is used to fielding inquiries from anxious prospective clients. But the questions I want to broach differ from those of would-be adoptive parents. Whereas most people seeking out Clerestory Adoptions are looking for a way to expand their families, and therefore want to know pertinent infor- mation like how long the adoption will take and how much it will cost, I am here to interview her about her thoughts and insights about whether and how private adoption operates as a marketplace and her role in it. Although the formal adoption of any child by American parents usually involves the irrevocable transfer of parental rights and responsibilities, private adoptions 2 Introduction via domestic and international placements distinctly differ from public fos- ter care adoptions in that they operate on a fee-for-service model. This fiscal reality puts these adoption workers in the awkward position of having to generate sufficient revenue to cover their operating costs while still focusing on serving children and families. Because adoption operates in a bureaucratized system overseen by a ma- trix of laws regulating the exchange, to locate and legally transfer a child from one family to another, prospective adoptive parents must rely on third- party facilitators. These adoption attorneys, counselors, and social workers are charged with administering the adoption process. In this sense, private adoption workers operate under a model of client services in which the rev- enue that they take in from paying customers forms the foundation of their organization’s long-term solvency. Thus, adoption professionals take on the role as the de facto adoption sellers, who must promote their services to discerning customers. However, these social workers also have to live up to their roles as child welfare professionals, charged with advocating for the best interests of children. This dual mandate can pose a potential conflict of interest, since workers must simultaneously serve both adoptive parents and children, suggesting that workers sometimes have to compromise one prior- ity to meet the other. Although most adoption social workers espouse the view that the child should be the central client, this book shows that when adoption is pitched, the needs of the paying customer (i.e., the prospective adoptive parent) get elevated. If the parents are the clients, this means that the child, at least tem- porarily, becomes the object of exchange.