The Political Economy of Paid Foster Care Work

FOSTERING FEELINGS: THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PAID FOSTER CARE WORK IN US-GUATEMALAN TRANSNATIONAL ADOPTION By Shelley G. Harshe Submitted to the Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences of American University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy In Anthropology Chair: Dolores Koenig, Ph.D. Brett Williams, Ph.D. Eileen Findlay, Ph.D. Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences Date 2012 American University Washington, D.C. 20016 © COPYRIGHT by Shelley G. Harshe 2012 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED For mom FOSTERING FEELINGS: THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PAID FOSTER CARE WORK IN US-GUATEMALAN TRANSNATIONAL ADOPTION BY Shelley G. Harshe ABSTRACT Adopting children from other countries has become an increasingly prevalent way to create and expand families in the United States. A surge in transnational adoption began at the end of World War II as a humanitarian response to orphaned children. By 2006, Guatemala had become second only to China in the number of children adopted from abroad but, per capita, was the largest source of children adopted to the US. One of the factors that contributed to prospective adoptive parents’ decision to adopt from Guatemala was the use of private foster care. In Guatemala, foster mothers, usually working class women, provided babies and young children with temporary homes before the children were moved to permanent homes, typically in developed countries with relatively affluent parents. Adoption agencies in the United States advertised their services noting that this private foster system provided a developmentally healthier and more loving environment for children than traditional institutional care facilities like orphanages. Yet, transnational adoption was also part of a market in which money was exchanged for services. Foster mothers were part of this private-sector market and received monetary compensation for their services. Based on interviews with Guatemalan foster mothers, fostering was a special type of job; it was paid maternal care work that involved both economic and deeply affective relationships. Since the women fostered children within a context in which cultural notions such as “care” and “work,” and “kinship” and “economy” are understood as separate categories, their paid foster mothering was an ambiguous position because it could be understood both as a caring, kin-like relationship and as economic work. This dissertation ii examines the meanings that Guatemalan foster mothers gave to the particular bundle of commodified labor and affective caring involved in their paid care work within the context of transnational adoption. The intention of this project is to understand how the women experienced their care work, that is, what the women thought and felt about fostering children in their homes. Such an understanding must include how the larger political economic context in which fostering occurred informed and shaped the women’s experiences. iii PREFACE All translations of direct quotes from the Spanish language included in this dissertation, whether from written sources or interviews, are my own. For the interviews with Guatemalan foster mothers, I conducted and transcribed the interviews in Spanish. To safeguard anonymity, I used pseudonyms for the foster mothers as well as for all people to whom they referred in their narratives. I then used the Spanish transcriptions for my analysis of the women’s narratives, only translating into English those segments of the interviews cited herein. Although fluent in Spanish, throughout the process, I consulted with native Spanish speakers when necessary and appropriate. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank everyone in Guatemala who took time out of their busy lives to speak with me about transnational adoption, especially the women who shared with me their memories about fostering children. Without their generosity, this project on foster care work would not have been possible. Listening to their experiences has changed the way I view the world and, for that, I am forever grateful. Muchísimas gracias por todo. I would also like to thank the owner of the hotel in Antigua for her insight and friendship, and for providing me a home away from home. In the United States, I was taken aback by how interested other people were in the topic of transnational adoption and, as our conversations continued, how interested they became in the role of Guatemalan foster mothers. Each of these conversations—whether at work, at coffee shops, or on the metro—encouraged me to continue writing and helped me think through my ideas. Thank you all. I feel fortunate to have had such a wonderful dissertation committee. I would like to thank Dolores Koenig, Brett Williams, and Eileen Findlay for their support and encouragement throughout the project. I especially want to thank Dolores for teaching me how to write about methodology, for keeping me on track, and for carefully, and critically, readings drafts of my chapters. And, of course, I couldn’t have completed this project without loving and supportive and, most importantly, patient, friends and family. I thank Ellen Feder for believing in my project even before I did, and for reminding me—on a daily basis—that I had it in me to do this all along. I thank Andrea Tschemplik for much appreciated comic relief, and for the many thoughtful conversations she elicited from me that helped me out of many a mental rut. I thank Penelope Hucker for lots of rejuvenating brunch breaks and for persistently reminding me of the v importance of taking care of one’s self. I thank Mimi Fittig for cooking me many delicious meals and providing moments of much needed respite during the writing process. Last, but certainly not least, I would like to thank my mother, Rita Harshe, for teaching me the meaning of loving care and the value of hard work. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT .................................................................................................................................... ii PREFACE ...................................................................................................................................... iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .............................................................................................................. v LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS .......................................................................................................... x LIST OF ACRONYMS ................................................................................................................. xi CHAPTER 1 AFFECTING ECONOMIC RELATIONS: PAID FOSTER CARE WORK IN TRANSNATIONAL ADOPTION ................................................................... 1 The Political Economy of Kinship .......................................................................... 3 Adoption, Market, and Commodification ............................................................. 10 Care, Work, and Care Work ................................................................................. 16 Emotive Language and Habitus ............................................................................ 30 The Liminality, Ambiguity, and Ambivalence of Care Work .............................. 36 Paid Foster Care Work in US-Guatemala Transnational Adoption ...................... 43 CHAPTER 2 US-GUATEMALAN TRANSNATIONAL ADOPTIONS: CONTEXT AND METHODOLOGY .............................................................................. 48 A Brief History of Race, Exploitation, and Violence in Guatemala ..................... 50 Class, Gender, and Social Services in Guatemala ................................................ 55 A History of US-Guatemalan Transnational Adoptions and its Abuses ............... 61 The Guatemalan Transnational Adoption System ................................................ 69 Adoptive Parents from the United States .............................................................. 73 Guatemalan Children and Their Biological Parents ............................................. 75 Private-sector Foster Mothers in Guatemala ......................................................... 77 Data Collection and Foster Mothers of the Current Study ................................... 82 Methods for Data Analysis ................................................................................... 87 vii CHAPTER 3 LIKE A MOTHER TO HER CHILDREN: THE BOTHNESS OF FOSTERING..................................................................................................................... 92 As if They Were Like Which Mothers? ................................................................ 94 Like a Mother to Her Child ................................................................................... 97 Only “Like” a Mother to Her Child .................................................................... 100 The Emotional Closeness of Sleeping Apart ...................................................... 104 The Bothness of Saying Goodbye ....................................................................... 110 CHAPTER 4 BETTER, BEST, AND BETTER BEST: THE FOSTER MOTHERS IN RELATION TO THE BIOLOGICAL MOTHERS AND ADOPTIVE PARENTS .................................................................................................. 118 Socioeconomically and Affectively “Better Off There than Here” .................... 119 Foster Mothers’ Evaluation of the Biological Mothers as Less like Mothers ..............................................................................................................

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