These excerpts from interviews with a South African first mother and a Finnish adoptive mother I met during the course of my research illuminate the contradictions inherent in transnational adoption and some of the basic issues addressed in this book. Contrary to popular belief, most adopted children are not orphans but have living mothers (or other kin) in the country of origin (Briggs and Marre 2009, 12; Cantwell 2014, 75; Fonseca 2004, 178; Hoelgaard 1998, 230; Johnson 2012). The emotional landscape of transnational adoption thus encompasses not only joy and happiness, but also sadness, grief and feelings of loss. Given the acknowledged importance of going beyond the principles of methodological nationalism that approach ‘the study of social and historical processes as if they were contained within the borders of individual nation-states’ (Glick Schiller and Salazar 2013, 186), this book examines both ends of the adoption chain, with a special focus on the family of origin. In so doing it draws on and extends previous studies, which in addition to focusing on the adopting family (Brian 2012; Choy 2013; Gailey 2010; Jacobson 2008; Seligmann 2013; Stryker 2010; Wegar 2006) have started to consider the perspectives of the countries of origin at least to some extent, and lately also more comprehensively (Briggs 2012; Dorow 2006a; Dubinsky 2010; Gibbons and Rotabi 2012; Howell 2006; Johnson 2004; Leinaweaver 2008; Marre and Briggs 2009; Volkman 2005), as well as investigating adult adoptees’ linkages to the country of origin (Hübinette 2006; Kim 2010) and their journeys back and reunions with kin (Prébin 2013; Yngvesson 2010). First mothers of transnationally adopted children have rarely occupied centre stage in the studies (but see Bos 2007). The book at hand is dedicated to giving space to first mothers, their struggles and concerns.We had been trying for so many years. […] Getting a child brought tears to my eyes. […] Attachment to these children, my husband says this as well, attachment comes within 24 hours. […] Very strong feelings of attachment. […] It’s like getting a lapful of gold. […] [We want to give this child] optimal opportunities. […] everything that he could possibly need. (Anna, adoptive mother)So I had to give up the baby. […] I couldn’t bear thinking that I’m bringing this baby to life and then she’s going to be miserable and I wasn’t going to give her nothing but misery. But so but I could give her life and then give it to somebody who’ll give her such a wonderful life, education, everything. […] It’s still hurting so much. I don’t know what time I’ll ever forget it. I just wondered, will my baby one day ask, mom where were you when I started to walk, mom where were you when I started teething (cries). (Simphiwe, first mother)
The interview excerpts also reveal the hidden inequalities between the two mothers, exemplified in the ability to give ‘everything’ as opposed to just ‘misery’. One of the arguments put forward is that adoption is not only about family formation and kinship, it is also about global inequality and social suffering. As both Andrew Sayer (2005, 1) and Göran Therborn (2013, 1) point out, inequality is multidimensional: it is not just about a lack of money and material deprivation, it also influences the chances of living a fulfilling life and forming valued relationships. In the case of transnational adoption, at stake is the ability to be a mother. Furthermore, the receiving and giving of children are linked phenomena. The adoptive family only comes into existence because of the inability of another mother elsewhere to keep her child. Thus, the formation of one family is dependent on the disaggregation of another. As Michael Burawoy (2009, 49–52) suggests, one way of approaching this kind of interdependence is through the method of connected comparison, which involves connecting the cases in point causally and explicating how both shape and are shaped by larger social structures. Gillian Hart’s (2006, 996) concept of relational comparison likewise highlights the connections and mutual constitution of phenomena via the tracing of transnational connections that reveal the taken-for-granted nature of categories. This book, first of all, addresses questions related to the dynamics giving rise to both the adoption and the relinquishment of children, and their interrelations. Second, it juxtaposes the narratives of adoptive and first mothers to show both in a new light, formed in relation to each other. Finally, it illustrates how the practices of transnational adoption as exemplified in these narratives may not only reproduce but also change the structures that gave rise to them. Although firmly grounded in fieldwork among Finnish adoptive parents and South African first mothers, the arguments extend beyond these two countries and shed light on the relations between the Global North and the Global South more generally. In using transnational adoption as a window on the violence and injustice of the global order, and identifying forms of suffering and their causes, the book also makes a contribution to critical social science (Sayer 2011, 216–245).
My perspective could be broadly defined as postcolonial. It may at first sight appear odd to raise a postcolonial argument in the context of certain countries in the Global North, such as Finland that did not have an active role in colonialism. However, even these countries could be understood as having complied with the colonial order and participated in and benefited from the knowledge-construction processes that assigned them a higher place in such hierarchies (Loftsdóttir and Jensen 2012; Vuorela 2009). Postcolonial studies focus on the enduring legacies of colonialism and imperialism, recognising the differential power between the Global North and the Global South and the continuing domination of the South by the North. This includes revealing hidden ethnocentrisms and dominant values, norms and conceptualisations developed from the perspective of the Global North but presented as universal and superior, and imported into the Global South (Bhambra 2014; McEwan 2001; Nieuwenhuys 2013; Rodríguez et al. 2010). An important aspect of this approach is redirecting attention to those who were oppressed by colonial rule and who are still presented as inferior and as having no agency. In the case of transnational adoption, as Perry (1998) and King (2008/2009) argue, this attitude is expressed in the notion of ‘rescuing’ children from ‘inferior’ others to live with ‘superior’ middle-class Western families. Current practices and legal clean-break procedures that erase families of origin (Yngvesson 2002) totally exclude first mothers from the global and multicultural new families formed via transnational adoption.
Working against such Global Northism, I hope to destabilise some of the received certainties and dominant understandings of transnational adoption in which Global North-centric definitions and evaluations are used uncritically. I aim to avoid using terms such as ‘birth mother’, which refers only to women whose children are adopted and not to all women who give birth (see Smolin 2012, 315). Emphasising birthing implies that it is others who will become the parents. This perspective is solely that of the Global North, which also tends to focus on children on their own simply waiting for ‘better’ families rather than being linked to kin networks in their countries of origin (King 2008/2009, 415). Such so-called rescue narratives fail to acknowledge the material contexts in which mothering takes place (Perry 1998, 107). Frequently used terms such as ‘biological mother’ are also problematic in that all mothering is arguably biological, in other words it involves physical and bodily processes (Hrdy 1999, 57). In using the perhaps contested and more unusual term ‘first mother’, I wish to change the reference point and to put these women who have so far been left out at the centre of the book. For similar reasons I prefer to use the term ‘transnational’ adoption instead of ‘inter-country’ or ‘international’ adoption. Transnationalism implies transnational engagements, such as interaction and continuous ties across nations (Vertovec 2007). Invoking the idea of interrelations and enduring contacts instead of clear-cut movement from one country to the next, transnational adoption better focuses attention on the fact that adopted children do not come out of nowhere, and that the two ends are connected. As Barbara Yngvesson (2010, 37) expresses it, one meaning of transnational is precisely the simultaneous ‘making and unmaking not only the child who is adopted but the nations and families that are involved’. I also wish to avoid the trap of seeing and presenting the first mothers of adopted children in the Global South as a homogeneous group of passive victims, against whom researchers and inhabitants of the Global North could be elevated as active agents and ‘saviours’ (see Mohanty 2002).
The concept of ‘de-kinning’ with reference to first mothers, which is used in the title of this book, extends Signe Howell’s (2003, 2006) notion of ‘kinning’ (with reference to adopters). Kinning denotes ‘the process by which a foetus or new-born child (or a previously unconnected person) is brought into a significant and permanent relationship with a group of people that is expressed in a kin idiom’ (Howell 2003, 465), but leaves out the simultaneous twin process of undoing the relationship between the child and its previous parent(s). I am ...