Korean adoptees as parents: Intergenerationality of ethnic, racial, and adoption socialization

Abstract

Objective: Utilizing a socialization framework, the study aims to understand the intergenerational patterns of ethnic, racial, and adoption socialization practices. Background: Understanding the impact of ethnicity, race, and adoption is a lifelong process for transracially, transnationally adopted individuals. Few studies, however, have explored how adult adoptees socialize their children on ethnicity, race, and adoption and to what extent this socialization is informed by their own transracial, transnational adoption experiences. Method: Based on 51 interviews, we investigated adopted Korean Americans’ reappraisal of their ethnic, racial, and adoption socialization experiences growing up transracially and transnationally, as well as their current ethnic, racial, and adoption socialization practices with their children. Results: Despite the generally limited ethnic, racial, and adoption socialization from White adoptive parents, we found via thematic analysis that Korean adoptee parents utilized strategies such as reculturation with their children, birth family involvement, and emphasis in multiculturalism in response to the needs for ethnic, racial, and adoption socialization in the next generation. Conclusion: These themes reflect the unique intergenerational transmission of ethnic heritage, racial experiences, and adoption history based on having grown up in transracial and transnational families of their own.Implications: Findings can inform evidence-based practice in working with adopted individuals and their families, particularly in addressing ethnic, racial, and adoption socialization practices.

Adoptees facing adolescence: What accounts for their psychological well‐being?

“…Fathers seem to help their children to create a picture of their own future, develop future‐oriented attitudes, set and seek personal goals, and look with trust their future projects and opportunities. The focus on the future perspective is an innovative feature of this contribution: adoption as a life‐long process can influence all the members of the adoptive family during the various transitions inherent in family life, especially during adolescence, young adulthood, and adulthood, when identity issues and personal goals related to marriage and a new family became salient for the individual (Cigoli & Scabini, 2006; Greco et al, 2015; Zhou et al, 2020). Future studies should more thoroughly explore the role of openness in communication regarding adoption, especially with fathers, and test whether the association between parent‐child openness and adoptees' well‐being may be mediated by differential identity processes.…”

Comparison of adoptees’ and nonadoptees’ experience of parenthood and mediating role of dyadic coping

“…The almost systematic absence of a control group was an important bias that hindered the generalization of some results. Finally, the issue of transmission to children has also been studied in 51 transracial adoptees from South Korea (Zhou et al, 2020). Three different forms of transmission have been identified by these authors.…”

Hidden among the hidden: Transracially adopted Korean American adults raising multiracial children.

“…This study is a secondary analysis of interviews collected for a larger study of transracially adopted Korean American adults ( N = 51) who are parents of children ages 3–18 (Zhou, Kim, Lee, & Lee, in press). While the goal of the original study was to examine the intergenerational transmission of cultural and adoption socialization practices among Korean adoptee parents, the current study focuses specifically on the cultural socialization beliefs, messages, and practices of Korean adoptees who are parents of Asian-White multiracial children.…”