Roots, origins and backgrounds: An analysis of their meanings in the creation of adoptive families in Sweden

Family memory trips – children's and parents’ planning of adoption return trips

“…Powers, 2017). In line with current recommendations aimed at adoptive parents, the parents in this study explain that they want their child to have a positive connection to her/his birth country (Lind, 2011;Lindgren & Zetterqvist Nelson, 2014). In this sense, by initiating and planning the adoption return trip, parents not only assume the role of mediators of memories from the adoptive trip, but they also serve as facilitators to create new memories of the birth country (cf.…”

‘As Swedish as Anybody Else’ or ‘Swedish, but Also Something Else’?

“…In Sweden, too, the cultural and national backgrounds of adoptees were ascribed increasing importance in the 1980s (Lind, 2012). However, whereas adoption debates in the UK and the US were highly politicised and concerned with the question of whether transracial adoptions should be carried out at all, the adoption discourse in Sweden soon ceased to be preoccupied with the legitimacy of transnational adoption and became more focused on the question of how the origins and backgrounds of adoptees could be given due regard once the child had arrived in Sweden (Lind, 2012).…”

“…When they were not with their white adoptive parents, non-white adoptees were assumed to be immigrants and, like other immigrants to Sweden, were subjected to xenophobia and racial discrimination (Lind, 2012). Accordingly, the message to adoptive parents was changed so that they were now urged to acknowledge their child's status as an immigrant and to show respect for his or her foreign background.…”

“…It does so by relating the accounts of young adult transnational adoptees in focus group discussions (FGDs) to the results of my previous study analysing the recommendations of the Swedish Council for Intercountry Adoptions (NIA) between 1972 and 2004 (Lind, 2012), and to a wider social discourse on adoption and Swedishness. Both studies are part of a wider research project funded by the Swedish Research Council.…”

“…Accordingly, the message to adoptive parents was changed so that they were now urged to acknowledge their child's status as an immigrant and to show respect for his or her foreign background. Adoptive parents who aimed to 'Swedishise' their child as quickly as possible -or to 'paint their kid yellow and blue' (the colours of the Swedish flag), as adoption researcher Marianne Cederblad sarcastically put it -were now frowned upon (Lind, 2012). When interviewed for the monthly NIA newsletter, the commissioner of the government-appointed 1982 enquiry on discrimination stated: "There is always something in the ethnic identity of the adopted childsometimes a great deal -that is not 'Swedish' and you cannot make that disappear."…”