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Intercountry Adoption and the Inappropriate/d Other: Refusing the Disappearance of Birth Families

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 April 2012

Damien W. Riggs
Damien W. Riggs*
Affiliation:
School of Social and Policy Studies, Flinders University E-mail: damien.riggs@flinders.edu.au
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Abstract

Dominant social norms relating to families shape the lives of all people. This can have negative effects upon non-traditional families. This is especially the case in terms of adoption, where a focus solely on the adoptive family can often result in the ‘disappearance’ of the birth family. This paper explores the location of birth families in relation to adoptive families by examining a sample of children's storybooks aimed at adoptive children living with lesbian or gay parents as but one example of how policy makers may come to identify dominant cultural norms that circulate about birth families in the context of intercountry adoption. A number of key tropes are identified across these books, namely the ghostly presence of birth families, and the representation of birth parents as deviant (thus warranting the removal of their children).

Keywords

Intercountry adoptiongay and lesbian parentingbirth familieschildren's literature
Type
Themed Section on Waiting for a Better World: Critical and Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Intercountry Adoption
Information
Social Policy and Society , Volume 11 , Issue 3 , July 2012 , pp. 455 - 464
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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