Introductory Essay

Abstract

Suppose you want to writeOf a woman braidingAnother woman's hair-Straight down, or with beads and shellsIn three-strand plaits or corn-rowsYouhad better know the thicknessThe length the patternWhy she decides to braid her hairHow it is done to herWhat country it happens inWhat else happens in that countryYou have to know these things-Adrienne Rich, "North American Time"Although Adrienne Rich tells us we “have to know these things,” we are often willingly blind to the rich stories of those with whom we are most intimate. You may braid someone's hair without knowing very much about her. You may even write about it, though the writing would rapidly become very dull. In this issue of Law & Society Review, the authors examine how legal regimes facilitate knowing (and ignoring) stories when making families. For people seeking to adopt a child in western national states, the law has sometimes made it easy not to know about who bore a child, why she is available for adoption, and why a family might have raised her one way rather than another—braiding her hair in cornrows or in plaits. Also, in intercountry adoption, children often arrive with no history available, a condition legal adoption allows and often facilitates. We need not know “what else happens in that country.” Recent scholarship notes the historical and cultural specificity of the practice of ignoring. Adoptees, mothers who have placed their children for adoption, and adoptive parents have all claimed a right to know their own or their child's history, sometimes for different reasons. Scholars have followed, explaining that creating an “as if” family, in which all of this knowledge is foreclosed, does not fit with the experience of families. Articles in this issue address three interlocking themes that question the practice of not knowing: the commodification of children and family in a market economy, contests over the framework of choice in the making of a family, and the identity of children.

Adoption After Cancer: Adoption Agency Attitudes and Perspectives on the Potential to Parent Post-Cancer

“…The inherent structure of the adoption process facilitates this complication. Adoption in the US operates with the same free-market ethos as other commodity exchanges, with adoption placements not subject to a tight regulatory system; consequently, the exchange of children operates through a mixture of official law and its interpretation, discussion, and rights claims [7, 13]. An individual with a clean medical history competing against a cancer survivor to adopt a child would arguably receive preferential treatment, based both on the aforementioned “best interests of the child” standard as well as the relative freedom adoption agencies have in choosing adoptive parents.…”

“…The dominant legal mode for the transfer of children in the US is plenary adoption, in which children are fully transferred from one set of parents to another [7]. Since abandoning a child is considered a crime in most legal systems (although some jurisdictions permit a form of legal abandonment in which the mother remains anonymous), adoption was created as a formal process to allow parents to legally absolve themselves of responsibility for their child, transferring this responsibility instead to a willing individual or family [11].…”

“…Other states’ legislation attaches parental rights to birth certificates and does not allow two parents of the same sex on birth certificates, thus impeding adoption by gay and lesbian couples in an indirect way [7]. At the international level, discrimination based on lifestyle and partnership preferences is prevalent and variable.…”

«Si yo cerrara los ojos, sería una niña española, catalana... de aquí». Representaciones, identidades y filiaciones en la adopción internacional en Cataluña

“…Si recordamos la reflexión de Sterett (2002) cuando plantea la estrecha relación existente entre el tratamiento que las naciones hacen del tema de la raza en la adopción y en la ciudadanía, ya que «la familia es el escenario más íntimo de producción de ciudadanos», es posible aseverar que para que las personas adoptadas en el extranjero puedan desarrollarse como miembros plenos de esta sociedad, será necesario trabajar los estereotipos y prejuicios que la población local maneja acerca de las poblaciones de los países del llamado «Tercer Mundo» de donde son originarios. Mientras la sociedad local mire a todos aquellos a quienes considera «de fuera» a través de los prejuicios y estereotipos existentes hoy, los menores y jóvenes adoptados en el extranjero, portadores de fenotipos diferenciales «racializados», no serán incluidos como ciudadanos con plenos derechos, al igual que cualquier otra persona que comparta con ellos esta característica.…”

Family change and the state of family sociology

“…Recent analyses have focused on how ARTs influence the legal status of parent-child relationships. Among the important legal issues to emerge from non-biological parenting are the commodification of human relationships, the expansion of a contested domain for reproductive choices and the challenges of identity for children born in these new family settings (Sterett, 2002). Shanley (2001) identified many of the legal and ethical dimensions of families created by ARTs and called for more progressive family law.…”