Adoption Experiences and and the Narration Tracing Genealogies of Family Adoption Experiences and • Derek Kirton the Tracing and Narration of Family Genealogies Edited by Derek Kirton Printed Edition of the Special Issue Published in Genealogy www.mdpi.com/journal/genealogy Adoption Experiences and the Tracing and Narration of Family Genealogies Adoption Experiences and the Tracing and Narration of Family Genealogies Special Issue Editor Derek Kirton MDPI • Basel • Beijing • Wuhan • Barcelona • Belgrade • Manchester • Tokyo • Cluj • Tianjin Special Issue Editor Derek Kirton University of Kent UK Editorial Office MDPI St. Alban-Anlage 66 4052 Basel, Switzerland This is a reprint of articles from the Special Issue published online in the open access journal Genealogy (ISSN 2313-5778) (available at: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/genealogy/special issues/adoption). For citation purposes, cite each article independently as indicated on the article page online and as indicated below: LastName, A.A.; LastName, B.B.; LastName, C.C. Article Title. Journal Name Year, Article Number, Page Range. ISBN 978-3-03928-718-5 (Hbk) ISBN 978-3-03928-719-2 (PDF) c 2020 by the authors. Articles in this book are Open Access and distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, which allows users to download, copy and build upon published articles, as long as the author and publisher are properly credited, which ensures maximum dissemination and a wider impact of our publications. The book as a whole is distributed by MDPI under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND. Contents About the Special Issue Editor ...................................... vii Preface to ”Adoption Experiences and the Tracing and Narration of Family Genealogies” ... ix Sally Hoyle So Many Lovely Girls Reprinted from: Genealogy 2018, 2, 33, doi:10.3390/genealogy2030033 ................ 1 Marianne Novy Class, Shame, and Identity in Memoirs about Difficult Same-Race Adoptions by Jeremy Harding and Lori Jakiela Reprinted from: Genealogy 2018, 2, 24, doi:10.3390/genealogy2030024 ................ 17 Gary Clapton Close Relations? The Long-Term Outcomes of Adoption Reunions Reprinted from: Genealogy 2018, 2, 41, doi:10.3390/genealogy2040041 ................ 31 Ravinder Barn and Nushra Mansuri “I Always Wanted to Look at Another Human and Say I Can See That Human in Me”: Understanding Genealogical Bewilderment in the Context of Racialised Intercountry Adoptees Reprinted from: Genealogy 2019, 3, 71, doi:10.3390/genealogy3040071 ................ 45 Rosemarie Pena ˜ From Both Sides of the Atlantic: Black German Adoptee Searches in William Gage’s Geborener Deutscher (Born German) Reprinted from: Genealogy 2018, 2, 40, doi:10.3390/genealogy2040040 ................ 63 Sandra Patton-Imani Legitimacy and the Transfer of Children: Adoption, Belonging, and Online Genealogy Reprinted from: Genealogy 2018, 2, 37, doi:10.3390/genealogy2040037 ................ 73 Sarah Richards “I’m More Than Just Adopted”: Stories of Genealogy in Intercountry Adoptive Families Reprinted from: Genealogy 2018, 2, 25, doi:10.3390/genealogy2030025 ................ 93 Sally Sales Damaged Attachments & Family Dislocations: The Operations of Class in Adoptive Family Life Reprinted from: Genealogy 2018, 2, 55, doi:10.3390/genealogy2040055 ................111 Fiona Tasker, Alessio Gubello, Victoria Clarke, Naomi Moller, Michal Nahman and Rachel Willcox Receiving, or ‘Adopting’, Donated Embryos to Have Children: Parents Narrate and Draw Kinship Boundaries Reprinted from: Genealogy 2018, 2, 35, doi:10.3390/genealogy2030035 ................125 v About the Special Issue Editor Derek Kirton is a reader in social policy and social work at the University of Kent. His research interests, though ranging fairly widely across the field of child welfare, are mostly focused on adoption, foster care, and children in state care. In relation to adoption, he has contributed primarily to the literature on transracial adoption, where he has written a book ‘Race’, Ethnicity and Adoption (Open University Press, 2000), a shorter monograph, and numerous journal articles and book chapters. Some of these publications have addressed issues related to genealogy. Dr. Kirton has also conducted, with colleagues, related research involving adults formerly in care (their reasons for seeking access to care records, searching, reunions, and identity concerns through the life course). Other research and scholarly interests include the wider politics of child welfare and the place of foster care in provision for those in public care. Here, the particular focus has been on the changing nature of foster care and its ‘professionalization’, a term capturing moves toward regarding foster care as a job and/or profession, in turn sparking debates about how this trend articulates with parenting vii Preface to ”Adoption Experiences and the Tracing and Narration of Family Genealogies” In its initial formulation, this Genealogy Special Issue “Adoption Experiences and the Tracing and Narration of Family Genealogies” invited contributions from across disciplines to explore connections between adoption and genealogical processes. As the Editor, my hope and expectation was for articles addressing, from different vantage points and theoretical perspectives, the key issues of identity, search, and reunion; openness and closure within adoption; and, in turn, how all these intersect with life course journeys and aspects of social identity. The hopes were amply met with a diverse (methodologically and conceptually) set of contributions, including some that engaged in developing territories such as online genealogical searching and embryo donation. This collection starts with three articles whose common ground (though they involve other dimensions) is a significant focus on reunions. Sally Hoyle’s (following Stanton) autogynography, “So Many Lovely Girls” recounts her experiences as an unmarried mother in the 1960s. Her graphic account of harsh treatment in The Home (for mothers and babies) and the silence she experienced from her family shows how identity as a mother is denied (although this denial is also resisted). This both reflects and reinforces a deep sense of shame, which she says still persists despite her own awareness, a greatly changed social climate, and a successful reunion with her daughter. The article title draws from a comment made by Hoyle’s mother on the occasion of her grand-daughter’s lesbian wedding, providing an important example of new histories being made as described by Clapton (see below). Marianne Novy analyses two adoption search memoirs by well-known writers Jeremy Harding and Lori Jakiela. Crucial observations relating to identity quests are that whereas knowledge may be a necessary element, it is not sufficient and that the search process itself can be an important driver of identity change. Despite their manifest differences, Novy’s account shares several themes with Hoyle’s. The former highlights the significance of shame in adoption histories, while also highlighting its myriad forms. Both emphasize gendered forms of connectedness through generations. Similarly, each lays bare the emotional complexity of search and reunion and, in common with other contributors, the part played by imagination and storying within these processes. Both portray three-dimensional characterization in which sensibilities and interpretive meanings are simultaneously individual and highly social in nature. Novy touches on the significance of place, class, religion, and national identity. Gary Clapton draws on a review of extant literature and original empirical research to explore longer term relationships between adopted people and birth family members following reunions. He rebuts views advanced by some adoption scholars that emphasize the typical limits to such ‘thin’ relationships and hence, at least implicitly, the ‘unsuccessful’ nature of most reunions. Although acknowledging that reunions have varied outcomes, Clapton contends that they are often enduring in relational terms and that many adopted people find (or regain) a place of membership within their birth families. Crucial to this argument is that once (re-)established, these relationships generate their own histories and continuities. Clapton also critiques the dominant framing of adopted people’s relationships within adoptive and birth families in binary terms aimed toward assessing hierarchy between the two. He argues that relationships with birth families are better seen as additional rather than re- or displacing those in adoptive families, and that the very term ‘reunion’ is an unhelpful one ix in its connotations. In the following two articles, issues of search and reunion intersect with those of race and nation. In their submission, “I always wanted to look at another human and say I can see that human in me”, Ravinder Barn and Nushra Mansuri report from the BBC television series Searching for Mum. They provide a qualitative content analysis of the stories of four British adults adopted from India and Sri Lanka, one of whom is adopted by a family of Sri Lankan heritage, and the others White British families. Sants’s concept of ‘genealogical bewilderment’ is used as a theoretical lens. The narratives underscore the significance of searching and genealogical knowledge, often in the context of broadly positive experiences of adoption. Key themes emerge including the articulation of search with concerns for identity and belonging. As with several other contributions,