Displaying 1 - 10 of 106
ABSTRACT
This article attempts to initiate a critical dialogue on the politics of love and attachment by investigating the way in which the concept of attachment governs the field of transnational adoption. We take our starting point in an analysis of a collection of background articles, teaching materials, and interviews produced by child psychologists as well as instructions to and testimonies from adopters. Reading the material through Sara Ahmed’s notion of affective orientation and Lauren Berlant’s critical deconstruction of love, we argue that the texts popularize…
Abstract
Children from some black and minority ethnic (BME) backgrounds are routinely placed with substitute carers who do not match their cultural, linguistic, religious and ethnic backgrounds. The shortage of foster carers and adopters of specific backgrounds means that the demand in the care population often outweighs the availability of matched placement options. While the shortages of BME foster carers and adopters are widely recognised, there is virtually no research into the barriers faced by specific BME groups, so there are no informed recruitment strategies to increase the pool…
Abstract
The assessment of prospective adoptive parents is a complex task for professional social workers. In this study, we examine the structure and function of professional social workers’ follow-up questions in assessment talk with adoption applicants. The analysis shows that adoption assessment through interviews involved a delicate and complex task that was accomplished by using a particular genre of institutional talk. This both invited the applicants’ extended and ‘open-ended’ responses and steered these responses and their development towards the institutionally relevant topics.…
ABSTRACT
Based on analysis of legal documents on family reunification and educational material concerning transnational adoption in Denmark, this article suggests that the concept of attachment may be conceptualized as a specific operationalization of belonging, and that belonging and biopower may be viewed as intertwined (rather than opposites). The analysis conceptualizes two modes of how belonging is operationalized through attachment. The belonging of families seeking reunification is targeted on a regulatory level via the legal requirement of national attachment. This requirement…
Abstract
Research focused on relationships and contact with birth family for children and young people who were separated from them as infants has rarely acknowledged the emotional and dynamic nature of such interactions. Curiosity has been dominant in adoption research. However, in our longitudinal study of young people who entered care at a young age, a range of other feelings and combination of feelings emerged in the youths’ narratives, including contentment and mixed feelings such as anger, affection, loss, guilt, or worry. Type of placement, that is, whether the young people had been…
Abstract
A growing body of literature has consistently shown how adopted children often have previous history of trauma and neglect, and in turn develop negative representations of the self and others. This study assesses the internal representations of three groups of children, as measured by the Story Stem Assessment Profile (SSAP). These were: (1) a maltreated, late-adopted (MLA) sample (n = 63); (2) a non-maltreated, early-adopted (EA) sample (n = 48); and (3) a non-maltreated community sample (COMM) (n = 80). In addition, it examined whether MLA and EA adopted children’s attachment…
The Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes and certain related matters was established by the Irish Government in February 2015 to provide a full account of what happened to vulnerable women and children in Mother and Baby Homes during the period 1922 to 1998. It submitted its final report to the Minister on 30 October 2020.
View the report and accompanying documents…
Abstract
This article studies how three groups of professional decision-makers – child welfare workers, experts on children and judges – exercise discretion in decisions on adoption from care in the Norwegian child welfare system. The analysis is based on near 500 decision-makers’ responses to a vignette about David, a four-year-old boy whose foster parents want to adopt him. After reading the vignette, decision-makers were asked to choose a measure for David: adoption or continued foster care. They were thereupon asked (1) which specific features of the case were decisive to their…
Abstract
Background
Children adopted from care are more likely to have experienced early adversity, but little is known about the impact of early adversity on later post-traumatic stress (PTS) symptoms.
Objective
To investigate sub-groups of adversity in a sample of adopted children and examine the association with later PTS symptoms.
Participants and setting
A study of British children adopted from care using social worker records (N = 374) and questionnaire-based longitudinal study of n = 58 children over 4-years post adoptive placement…
Abstract
This article charts the UK history of contact in fostering and adoption as it relates to looked after children and their birth relatives. It builds on a recent publication in this journal by one of the authors based on her research on the use of social media by children in care. Here we look at previous practices relating to the question of whether or not contact ought to be ‘allowed’ in which words such as ‘access’ were used, betokening the child as object. We also come up to date with reference to contemporary efforts to recast contact as ‘family time’ that is significant in the…