Seventh Biennial Conference of Alliance for the Study of Adoption and Culture in cooperation with Adoption Initiative
*Formations: Thinking Kinship through Adoption*
Oakland Asian Culture Center and Oakstop
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Notes:
Misdiagnosing adoptees youth with learning disabilities
First mothers signatures are forced on adoption records
We also need to challenge the adoption industries in sending countries
Poverty and lack of resources is the most common reason expectant mothers choose to make an adoption plan
Adoptive parents do not naturalize their children are are being deported as adults
Gatekeepers to original adoption file include, but not limited to adoptive parents, judges, social workers, orphanage owners, legal corporations
School counselors in Virginia are not trained or personally related to adoption, and they are usually the first contact foster youth and adoptees have with counseling professionals.
Common messages given to international adoptees about their countries of origin are that they are dangerous and impoverished
The need for adoption language as a young child
Illegal international adoptions are still happening
Adoption is run on a business model
Trickery, manipulation, and fraud in court deceive first/birth families
Adoption is a colonial practice
Adoption is a construction of cultural genocide of indigenous people
Adoption profits off of mothers in poverty
Children were /are stolen from their daycare and placed in the international adoption industries
Demand for infant adoptions is greater than there are infants available… Supply and Demand
First/ birth mothers healing begins when they know where their child(ren) are and that they are doing well. “I just want to watch her walk by.”- Costa Rican birth mother that lost her child to poverty
Kinship- Deconstructing the competitiveness of parenting and ownership of children. I have four mothers. Which one is your real mother? Again, I have four mothers. European/white culture?
How am I representing myself today and archiving it?
The Adoptee Diary 