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 Beyond Good Intentions: A Mother Reflects On Raising Internationally Adopted Children :: 1597430005
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Author: Guest
As a "well intentioned" mother of three internationally adopted teenagers, this book honestly articulates difficult racial issues our children face. Our children do not automticaly inherit our white identity and associated privileges - and they know it!
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Author: Guest
Cheri Register is the mother of two adult daughters who were adopted as infants from Korea in the 1980s and the author of several books. Her latest offering, Beyond Good Intentions: A Mother Reflects on Raising International Adopted Children (Register 2005), consists of eleven of her own short personal essays on transnational adoptive parenting. Issues such as how to approach the topic of birth parents, the effects of racism and ways to foster multiculturalism are tackled with great passion.
Part memoir and part lecture, the promotional website states it "is a coffee table book of a different sort: a diary-sized volume to keep handy and read as you sip your coffee". But who is it that you are you having coffee with? Register is clearly well educated, an articulate but accessible writer, and of a cosmopolitan, middle-class disposition. She is also well traveled, including time spent working in Scandinavia, and visiting Korea on "homeland" trips and visiting international adoption conferences. Another feature of her background that is worth noting is that she is Caucasian, and it is a predominantly White, middle-class audience that her book aims to reach. Adoptive parents of non-white backgrounds may find this book far less useful, and at times, loaded with assumptions that they cannot connect with.
Register does offer a rare insight into one self-described "well-meaning" mother's process of trying to sign post and recognize unintentional derogatory and offensive behavior by her and other adoptive parents. Her style is bold although at times this works against her. The assertiveness she applies risks suggesting that racist, ignorant and offensive behaviour by adoptive parents is almost inevitable. Thus, readers take caution and see this book as a series of "worst case scenarios". The author suggests much the same by stressing that she relies on generalizations.
Beyond Good Intentions is a book of modest size and scope and should be regarded as such. For example, while each of the issues/topics that Register raises deserves careful reflection, it is also important to acknowledge that all of the situations and attitudes she has summarized and parodied can also change over time. Another specific feature of her book is that the United States, where Register lives and draws her fire from, has many particularities that do not always easily translate to other countries. There are also questions of cross-cultural collaborations, shifting cultural identities and new forms of global interconnectivity that she does not address but certainly warrant further consideration.
While readers might be enlightened by Register's own memoirs, her advice might also leave some feeling deeply uncomfortable. For me, the main strength of this book is that it offers a fascinating opportunity for adoption researchers, critical race and post-colonial scholars to explore one adoptive parent's construction of critical consciousness as it occurs "from above". Her own struggles to make sense of her status of economic and "race" privilege heavily underscore her highly subjective essays. The most riveting examples of this can be found in the chapter Believing Race Doesn't Matter where she begins to work through the complexities of her own ability to be able to be "colour-blind", which stands in contrast to her non-white children who find they are subject to racial labels once they reach school age.
For those interested in the destructive connections made between race and culture in society, the chapter `Appropriating Our Children's Heritage' might stand out as one of the weakest parts of the book. Register's approach is ironically, far too stereotypical in its treatment of cultural identities. She writes, `You engage with the culture as the person you are, with your own ethnicity, your own citizenship' (p. 175). Her views on questions of authenticity and ethnicity are oddly in tune with 19th and 20th discourses of racism (who can/should be doing what). Her own intentionally punishing attitude towards adoptive parents, who I believe can develop meaningful connections to a range of cultures and often with the support of members of the communities concerned, is at times at risk of being dogmatic and overly dismissive.
`Believing Adoption Saves Souls' presents another less convincing appeal for tolerance and acceptance for diversity. Judeo-Christian beliefs are misrepresented by Register as if they are an exclusive feature of the West. Brief reference is made to a "Korean-Christian-Confucian" (p. 154), but her overlooking of the important role that Christianity plays in Filipino and Taiwanese societies, for example, distracts us from the fact that faith cannot be neatly assigned to East/West binaries.
However, the relevance of most of the issues/topics that Register raises, at least for families that are inter-ethnic and multi "racial", are supported by the significant consideration they are given in independent adoption e-groups, conference presentations, adoptee testimonies such as Jane Trenka's (2003) Language of Blood. They are also commonly raised in a growing body of academic literature (such as Hubinette 2003; Lee 2003; Willing Williams 2004).
Her recognition of adult adoptee testimonies, organisations and research efforts is an admirable step towards adoptive parents acknowledging that there are new voices of different but equal wisdom and experience who contribute to our understanding of transnational adoption. Disappointingly, the main way Register engages with the opinions, research and experiences of adoptees is by asking readers to accept her own regular but brief accounts and interpretations of them. Sadly, she does not feature a bibliography so that readers could follow up and explore such works in more depth for themselves.
In summary, the question of whether Register succeeds in discussing each issue/topic of her book in a way that is balanced and thorough is perhaps not as important as the fact that she has decided to address them in the first place. I see this book as another important step towards adoptive parents realizing that they do need to be highly empathetic and resourceful in order to assist their children work through potential issues of identity. Register is also opening up the possibility for more ordinary and loving adoptive parents' to further realize that they have will have their own issues of identity to work through and that this is normal.
I envisage that adoptive parents who list Beyond Good Intentions as a reading for their educational seminars, book clubs or e-group discussions will find it sparks some lively discussions. Register is an obviously loving adoptive mother who wrote a book to introduce, "Oh my, that really happens?" or "Oh wow, I'll try not do/repeat that" scenarios. The actions adoptive parents can then take to negotiate or avoid bad scenarios should however, also be left open to being influenced from a range of perspectives emerging within the community, and across generations and cultures. Register has begun to go beyond her own good intentions, and if you are an adoptive parents this could be one of the many ways to now go beyond your own.
Review Supplied by Indigo Willing - PhD Candidate studying Transnational Adoption, Former Rockefeller Fellow in Project Diaspora at UMASS, Boston and Founder of Adopted Vietnamese International in Australia. Transnationally adopted from Saigon to Sydney in 1972.
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Author: Guest
Cheri Register has written a very honest and thought-provoking book, dismantling a lot of the common misconceptions and stereotypes about international adoption. She has the courage to highlight even the difficult issues involved, and shows that even the best intentions might have harmful consequences. Her point of view as an adoptive parent of adult children, gives her message credibility and weight, while her frequent references to adult adoptees' perspective, proves that she is willing to look at adoption also from the angle of those whose lives are the most affected by international adoption.
I would like to see this book being mandatory reading for all prospective adoptive parents, and even more, I hope this group would be able to read and take in the message without feeling defensive.
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Author: Guest
As I look back on our journey, raising two children born to us and six intercountry adopted children, I can see myself in various of Cheri's chapters. The clarity she provides, when coupled with the words of our adult adoptees, is something every adoptive parent needs. This book should be required reading.
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Author: Guest
This book offers a refreshing view of raising internationally adopted children. Register provides an honest account of her own parenting and sound advice for parents of young children. The book has many pearls of wisdom especially when it comes to race and culture, but is limited mainly to the author's experience of raising children from Korea. Parents of children from much different countries and cultures may have a slightly different experience, but there is still enough valuable information that I cannot recommend this book enough.
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