The Role of Heritage Camps in Identity Development Among Korean Transnational Adoptees: A Relational Dialectics Approach

Abstract

This study contributes to the literature on transracial adoptions in two important ways: (1) it compares how parents and transnational adoptees negotiate racial and family identities through the use of heritage camps and (2) it informs that comparison with insights garnered from the theory of relational dialectics. The results, which are based on interviews with Korean-born children and Caucasian-American parents (matched parent-child pairs), suggest that parents utilized camps to both downplay their children's racial differences and give credence to their children's "unique" lives. Adoptees, in contrast, were not concerned with downplaying race; instead, they reported that although camps were fun, they did not impact their sense of identity significantly because they did not do enough to address the racial challenges they faced. These results suggest a potential disjuncture between parental purposes for utilizing heritage camps and the actual experiences of adoptees while at these camps. Moreover, they suggest that additional empirical attention should be paid to adoption policies and practices that explicitly address the racial and ethnic needs of transnational adoptees.

Introducing Remote Enculturation: Learning Your Heritage Culture From Afar

“…Another set of remote enculturation strategies involves facilitating direct, but relatively brief and intermittent, contact between the adopted child and others from the birth culture through culture camps and heritage trips to the birth country . Culture camps bring together adoptees from the same birth country to learn cultural values and customs, promote ethnic pride, and meet others with similar adoption experiences . In contrast, heritage trips involve travel to the birth country, alone or in a group, to experience the culture firsthand .…”

Ethnic Exploration and Consciousness of Difference: Chinese Adoptees in Early Adolescence

“…Often such questions are intrusive and insensitive, such as when a child is asked whether "that is your real father" or whether "that is your real sister" and serve as cues to children adopted from China that their cultural and kinship ties are somehow different from those of other Americans. The issues are not unique to Chinese adoptees, as recent research on Korean adoptees has shown (Randolph & Holtzman, 2010).…”

Race and White Transracially Adoptive Mothers

“…Parents view camps as racial/cultural socialization opportunities and as a way to normalize their family racial makeup for their children (Randolph & Holtzman, 2010;CrolleySimic & Vonk, 2008;Scroggs & Heitfield, 2001). Important to point out is that adoptees have expressed that they need more than culture camps (McGinnis et al, 2009) and that camps are inadequate at addressing racial differences and prejudices (Randolph & Holtzman, 2010).…”