Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

ADOPTION AND FEMINISM

2009; Routledge; Volume: 24; Issue: 62 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/08164640903289302

1465-3303

Denise Cuthbert, Kate Murphy, Marian Quartly,

Children's Rights and Participation

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. This epithet is the motto of the pro-birth mothers and anti-adoption support and lobby group Exiled Mothers, and is posted on their website. 2. The Inquiry into the Adoption of Children from Overseas noted that Australia currently had one of the lowest rates of adoption in the Western world. Numbers of adoptions stood at about 500 annually in the first years of the twenty-first century, representing a dramatic decline from the peak of nearly 10,000 a year in the early 1970s. Reasons given included the combination of a decline in the numbers of infants available for adoption since the early 1970s owing to the advent of the contraceptive pill and a federally funded supporting mothers’ pension; changing community attitudes to single parenthood and children born outside conventional marriage; and changes in community attitudes and in policy, law and practice in welfare administration which actively discouraged people from adoption (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare 2005 Australian Institute of Health and Welfare . 2005 . AIHW submission to the Inquiry into the Adoption of Children from Overseas. 9 September. Submission 135 to the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Family and Human Services Inquiry into Overseas Adoption in Australia . Available from : http://www.aph.gov.au/house/committee/fhs/adoption/subs/sub135.pdf [Google Scholar]). 3. In March 2008, Queensland Premier Anna Bligh announced an inquiry and community consultation process on the subject of adoption law reform, entitled ‘Balancing Privacy and Access’. For the consultation process and the final report of the inquiry, see Department of Child Safety, Government of Queensland (2008 Department of Child Safety, Government of Queensland . 2008 . Balancing privacy and access: Community consultation . Available from : http://www.childsafety.qld.gov.au/legislation/adoption/review.html [ cited 30 July 2009 ]. [Google Scholar]), available from http://www.childsafety.qld.gov.au/consultations/balancing-privacy-access.html [cited 30 July 2009]. The inquiry led to the Adoption Bill 2009 Adoption Bill 2009 . Qld. Available from : http://www.legislation.qld.gov.au/Bills/53PDF/2009/AdoptionB09.pdf [Google Scholar]—see http://www.childsafety.qld.gov.au/legislation/adoption/review.html [cited 30 July 2009]. Passage of this bill through parliament was stalled when an election was called early in 2009, but at present (July 2009), the bill is again scheduled for passage through parliament. 4. Terminology in adoption discourse is problematic. In order to avoid the terms ‘natural’ mothers or ‘relinquishing’ mothers (both of which are problematic, implying respectively that adoptive mothers are ‘unnatural’ and that the process of having a child adopted out was willingly entered into by the mothers giving birth to these babies), we have chosen the term ‘birth’ mothers as the least problematic term. For a note on the politics of terminology from a birth mother's point of view, see Christine Cole's ‘Language’ in her Releasing the Past: Mothers’ Stories of their Stolen Babies (2008, 248). 5. The term is Michael Warner's (1991 Warner, Michael. 1991. Fear of a queer planet. Social Text, 29: 3–17. [Google Scholar]). It is also deployed by Park (2006 Park, Shelley M. 2006. Adoptive maternal bodies: A queer paradigm for rethinking mothering?. Hypatia, 21(1): 201–26. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). 6. The first modern adoption legislation was enacted in the State of Massachusetts in 1851. 7. For ‘scientific and modern’ adoption, see Herman (2001 Herman, Ellen. 2001. Families made by science: Arnold Gessell and the technologies of modern child adoption. Isis, 92(4): 684–715. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], 2002 Herman Ellen . 2002 . The paradoxical rationalization of modern adoption . Journal of Social History 36 ( 2 ): 339 – 85 .[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], 2008 Herman Ellen . 2008 . Kinship by design: A history of adoption in the modern United States . Chicago and London : University of Chicago Press .[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). On the ‘science’ of family life, motherhood and child rearing, see Apple (2006 Apple, Rima D. 2006. Perfect motherhood: Science and childrearing in America, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. [Google Scholar]). 8. See also New Zealand Law Commission (2000, 17ff.) and Modell (1994 Modell, Judith S. 1994. Kinship with strangers: Adoption and interpretations of kinship in American culture, Berkeley: University of California Press. [Google Scholar], 1–13). For the Australian context, see Marshall and McDonald (2001 Audrey, Marshall and Margaret, McDonald. 2001. The many-sided triangle: Adoption in Australia, Carlton: Melbourne University Press. [Google Scholar]). 9. The first of these national Conferences on Adoption was convened in Sydney from 15 to 20 February 1976 (Picton 1976 Picton , C 1976 . Proceedings of the First Australian Conference on Adoption . University of New South Wales, 15–20 February . Clayton : Committee of the First Australian Conference on Adoption . [Google Scholar]). Proceedings from the subsequent conferences were produced by Picton (1978 Picton , C 1978 . Proceedings of the Second Australian Conference on Adoption . May Melbourne, , Melbourne : Committee of the Second Australian Conference on Adoption . [Google Scholar]) and Oxenberry (1982 Oxenberry , R 1982 . Proceedings of the Third Australian Conference on Adoption: Changing Families . Adelaide : Department of Continuing Education, University of Adelaide and the Organising Committee for the Third Australian Conference on Adoption . [Google Scholar]). The year 1976 was notably the same one in which Lee Campbell, a birth mothers’ activist, established her CUB (Concerned United Birthparents) self-help, support and lobby organisation in Boston, which readily generated a wide network of branches across the United States. For details on Concerned United Birthparents and the work of Lee Campbell, see Modell (1994 Modell, Judith S. 1994. Kinship with strangers: Adoption and interpretations of kinship in American culture, Berkeley: University of California Press. [Google Scholar], 172–75). 10. In addition to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission's (HREOC) inquiry report on Indigenous child removal, entitled Bringing them Home (1997), other inquiries include the Australian Senate's Community Affairs Reference Committee's Senate Community Affairs Reference Committee . 2001 . Lost innocents: Righting the record—Report on child migration . Canberra : Parliament House . Available from : http://www.aph.gov.au/Senate/committee/clac_ctte/completed_inquiries/1999-02/child_migrat/report/index.htm [Google Scholar] inquiry into Australians who experienced institutional or out-of-home care as children, the first report of which is entitled Forgotten Australians (August 2004) and the second Protecting Vulnerable Children: A National Challenge (March 2005); and the inquiry of the New South Wales Legislative Council's Standing Committee on Social Issues into adoption practices of the past, Releasing the Past: Adoption Practice 1950–1998. Final Report (December 2000). Revelations about the suffering of children who migrated to Australia under imperial migration schemes include work by Bean and Melville (1989 Bean, Philip and Melville, Joy. 1989. Lost children of the empire, London and Sydney: Unwin Hyman. [Google Scholar]), Gill (1998 Gill, Alan. 1998. Orphans of the Empire: The shocking story of child migration to Australia, Milsons Point, NSW: Random House Australia. [Google Scholar]) and the autobiographical work by David Hill (2007 Hill, David. 2007. The forgotten children: Fairbridge Farm School and its betrayal of Australia's child migrants, Sydney: Random House. [Google Scholar]). Child migration was the subject of an inquiry by the Australian Senate's Community Affairs Reference Committee Senate Community Affairs Reference Committee . 2004 . Forgotten Australians: A report on Australians who experienced institutional or out-of-home care as children . Canberra : Parliament House . [Google Scholar] that reported in 2000 (see Senate Community Affairs Reference Committee 2001 Senate Community Affairs Reference Committee . 2001 . Lost innocents: Righting the record—Report on child migration . Canberra : Parliament House . Available from : http://www.aph.gov.au/Senate/committee/clac_ctte/completed_inquiries/1999-02/child_migrat/report/index.htm [Google Scholar]). 11. For example, adoption reform activist Christine Cole mobilised the term ‘Mothers of the While Stolen Generation’ in 1997 in her efforts to secure a parliamentary inquiry into past adoption practices in New South Wales; see Cole (2008 Cole , Christine 2008 . Releasing the past: Mothers’ stories of their stolen babies . Yagoona : New South Wales Committee on Adoption and Permanent Care, and Sasko Veljanov . [Google Scholar]). Reviewers of Alan Gill's Orphans of the Empire made the connection between the story it told and the revelations of the HREOC report into Indigenous child removal; see, for example, ‘Gill has befriended a lost tribe and given them a voice. His … book gives a new edge of meaning to the phrase “stolen children” ’ (Edmund Campion, cited on the back cover of Gill 1998 Gill, Alan. 1998. Orphans of the Empire: The shocking story of child migration to Australia, Milsons Point, NSW: Random House Australia. [Google Scholar]). Many contributors to blogs in the period directly following the apology to the stolen generations in early 2008 drew attention to other groups of ‘removed’ children and identified them as ‘white stolen generations’. See, for example, the following comments which align non-Indigenous adoptees with the black stolen generations: ‘We insult white stolen generation people each and every day […] [T]the number of white children effectively stolen was about the same as black children stolen. No apology for me and my parents, though’ (Edie 2008 EDIE . 2008 . Reply to genuine apology . Daily Telegraph blog site. Available from : http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/maralynparker/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/sorry_speech / [ cited 1 August 2009 ]. [Google Scholar]). Other bloggers align State wards with the black stolen generations, as in this comment by Tracey Lee (2005 Tracey Lee . 2005 . Australian story online guestbook entry. 5 July. Available from : http://www2b.abc.net.au/guestbookcentral/list.asp?numtoview=&GuestbookID=95&start=&sort=&filter1=&filter1val=&filter2=&filter2val=&filter3=&filter3val=&view=&advanced=&Action=&pagestart=113 . [Google Scholar]): ‘I would like to see Australian Story give acknowledgment to Children in institutional care, “the white stolen generation”. Generations have been formed, however not informed on all history.’ Cuthbert and Murphy also examine the political and cultural implications of comparing black and white ‘stolen children’ in Australia (2009). 12. For a useful discussion of US and UK developments, see O'Halloran (2006 O'Halloran, Kerry. 2006. The politics of adoption: International perspectives on law, policy and practice, Dordrecht: Springer. [Google Scholar]). For a discussion focused on the US, see Modell (2002 Modell Judith S. . 2002 . A sealed and secret kinship: The culture of policies and practices in American adoption . New York and London : Berghahn Books . [Google Scholar], 77–78). 13. Australian figures cited in House of Representatives Standing Committee on Family and Human Services (2007, 73; 2005, 93). For US figures, see Moye and Rinker (2002 Moye, Jim and Rinker, Roberta. 2002. It's a hard knock life: Does the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 adequately address problems in the child welfare system?. Harvard Journal on Legislation, 39: 375–94. [Google Scholar], 376). 14. See also Curtis and Denby (2004 Curtis, Carla M and Denby, Ramona W. 2004. Impact of the Adoption and Safe Families Act (1997) on families of color: Workers share their thoughts. Families in Society, 85(1): 71–79. [Google Scholar]). 15. For further discussion of the incarceration of women, including women of colour, in the United States, and the impact of the ASFA, see Smith Smith , Gail T . n.d . The Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997: Its impact on prisoner mothers and their children . Website of Women and Prison: A Site for Resistance . Available from: http://www.womenandprison.org/motherhood/gail-smith.html [Google Scholar] (n.d.). 16. For a fuller discussion of this recent politics, see Murphy, Quartly, and Cuthbert (2009). 17. See Furness's ‘Orphan Angels’ website for more on her stance. 18. See Breen (2002 Breen, Clare. 2002. The standard of the best interests of the child: A Western tradition in international and comparative law, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. [Google Scholar]). 19. Some cited authorities do double duty in informing both inquiries; the work of both Judy Cashmore and that of Howard Bath on ‘blood is thicker than water’ biases in child placement policy and permanency planning, respectively, is cited in Overseas Adoption and The Winnable War. 20. See also Harden, Wulczyn, and George (1999 Harden, Allen, Wulczyn, Fred and George, Robert. 1999. Adoption from foster care: The dynamics of the ASFA foster care population, Chicago: Chapin Hall Center for Children, University of Chicago. [Google Scholar]). 21. Bordo needs little introduction to a feminist readership: her work includes Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body (1993) and The Male Body: A New Look at Men in Public and in Private (1999b). Her edited collections include Gender/Body/Knowledge: Feminist Reconstructions of Being and Knowing (with Alison M. Jaggar) (1989 Bordo , Susan , and Alison M Jaggar 1989 . Gender/body/knowledge: Feminist reconstructions of being and knowing . New Brunswick, NJ : Rutgers University Press . [Google Scholar]); and Feminist interpretations of René Descartes (1999a). 22. See Pringle (2004 Pringle, Rosemary. 2004. Adoption in Britain: Reflexive modernity?. Australian Feminist Studies, 19(44): 225–40. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], 229–30); Modell (1994 Modell, Judith S. 1994. Kinship with strangers: Adoption and interpretations of kinship in American culture, Berkeley: University of California Press. [Google Scholar], 169ff.); Wegar (1997 Wegar, Katarina. 1997. In search of bad mothers: Social constructions of birth and adoptive motherhood. Women's Studies International Forum, 20(1): 77–86. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], 77); and Lifton (1998, 191–97). 23. Park (2006 Park, Shelley M. 2006. Adoptive maternal bodies: A queer paradigm for rethinking mothering?. Hypatia, 21(1): 201–26. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) uses a theorised feminist value system that privileges such values as agency and anti-essentialism to re-evaluate the adoptive mother, as distinct from a value system imbued with Christian morality, or ‘women's rights’ feminism, both of which have been used to describe and evaluate types of mothers in adoption discourses in the past. 24. Turski's essay is posted on ‘“birth-” Mothers Exploited by Adoption’, a pro-birth mothers’ and anti-adoption website; see http://www.exiledmothers.com/adoption_facts/Why_Birthmother_Means_Breeder.html [cited 25 September 2007]. 25. The classic feminist dystopia along these lines is Margaret Attwood's The Handmaid's Tale (1986 Attwood, Margaret. 1986. The handmaid's tale, London: Vintage. 1996 [Google Scholar]). 26. For the growing body of feminist work on the gender-neutral parenting movement and fathers’ rights (for which Ted Kramer, to whom Bordo refers twice in this essay, is poster boy), see Fineman (1995 Fineman, Martha. 1995. The neutered mother, the sexual family and other twentieth-century tragedies, London and New York: Routledge. [Google Scholar]); Mason (1998 Mason , Mary Ann . 1998/2002 . The equality trap . New Brunswick, NJ and London : Transaction . [Google Scholar]/2002); and Collier and Sheldon (2006 Collier , Richard , and Sally Sheldon 2006 . Fathers’ rights activism and law reform in comparative perspective . Oxford and Portland, OR : Hart . [Google Scholar]). 27. Predominantly middle-class families are identified as prospective adoptive families in the recent Australian reports. See Quartly, Murphy, and Cuthbert (forthcoming).Also, refer to Bill Clinton's speech announcing the ASFA in 1997 (in Modell 2002 Modell Judith S. . 2002 . A sealed and secret kinship: The culture of policies and practices in American adoption . New York and London : Berghahn Books . [Google Scholar], 77).