Defining Modern Kinship, Adoption, and Reproductive Practices
Transnational Adoption and Kinship Terms
Transnational Adoption
Transnational and domestic adoption are methods for creating the most intimate forms of relatedness, yet this process is explicitly framed and structured by global relationships, particularly the political and economic relations between countries and regions. Occasionally called prohijamiento (making into one’s child). This child care arrangement involves a couple adopting a child of a different nationality across borders. It must meet the legal requirements of both the adoptee’s and the adopters’ countries of residence.
Child Circulation
Contrasted with adoption, which is a legal, documented procedure. Child circulation involves two families being brought into, or articulated more deeply into, kinship with one another. This term often refers to informal arrangements in which indigenous Andean children are sent by their parents to live in other households.
Kinning
Kinning describes how a sense of belonging to the family is transmitted to an incorporated child. It is the process of transubstantiation by which a fetus or newborn child (or previously unattached person) is brought into a significant and permanent relationship with a group of people that is expressed in a kin idiom.
Stages of Adoption
Pre-Pregnancy Stage
Begins when a couple decides they want to have a child.
Pregnancy Stage
Begins when a couple is approved by authorities to adopt a child.
Birth Stage
Begins when a child is allocated to a couple and follows through to the child’s arrival and initial period after arrival.
“Planting the Child”
The process by which a child is symbolically planted into its new community and kinship network by distancing it from its biological origins through immersion in its new culture. This is done to incorporate a new social identity (causing transubstantiation), e.g., dressing them in Norwegian clothes or picturing them doing Norwegian things.
Bunad
The Norwegian national costume worn on Norwegian holidays and special occasions.
Return Visits
Visits to the adoptee’s country of origin. This is primarily to help the adoptee acknowledge the dual source of their identity and also confirm them as a kinned Norwegian (or whatever kin they were adopted to) person.
Motherland Tours
Overseas Korean Foundation (OKF)
A division of South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (as discussed in Kim’s article) that staged a ‘wedding ceremony’ in which adoptees became reacquainted with South Korean culture. The OKF directs Motherland Tours and immerses visiting adoptees intensely in Korean culture while they visit. The wedding has both political dimensions (boosting the Korean economy via returning people and investment, and boosting Korea’s global image) and affective dimensions (for the individual to feel authentically South Korean).
“Wedding Adoptees”
Global Family
Global Migration and Reproductive Inequality
Marriage Migrants
“Clash of Dreams”
Double Marriage Squeeze
Half of the double squeeze refers to the low ratio of men to women in Vietnam that resulted from the high mortality rate of men during the Vietnam War and the migration of men to other countries. The other half refers to the low ratio of women to men in the Vietnamese diaspora.
One Child Policy
Stratified Reproduction
Refers to when physical and reproductive tasks are accomplished differentially according to inequalities based on hierarchies of class, race, ethnicity, gender, place in a global economy, and migration status, structured by social, economic, and political forces. Colen discusses this in relation to reproductive labor in the US, often allotted to West Indian women due to that particular labor being linked to them.
“Children Are My Riches”
Legal and Social Concepts
Briggs Initiative
Por Residencia
Por Amor
Means “for love.” Refers to Brennan’s article, noting that sex workers hardly ever marry sex tourists.
Gamete Donation
Reproductive Technologies and Kinship Language
Donor Anonymity
Semen Banking
Artificial Insemination
Technosemen
Refers to the new and improved semen that semen banks advertise to clients as pathogen-free, highly fertile, and uncontaminated.
Anthropomorphizing Semen
“That Blood Thing”
Alternative Family Structures and Surrogacy
Chosen Families
A family that is socially constructed by gay and lesbian individuals that includes people specifically chosen due to their love and commitment in friendship, despite the stigmatization faced by the choosing individual. Chosen families are in contrast to biological families, which one has no choice in choosing.
Gestational Surrogacy
Traditional Surrogacy
Uniform Parentage Act
Key Legal Precedents in Defining Parenthood
Curiale v. Reagan
A legal case in which the non-biological lesbian mother, Curiale, was arguing for her co-parenting rights to a child born to them via artificial insemination of Reagan. Because Curiale was not the biological mother, the court was unable to acknowledge her as a de facto parent, and thus she had no basis to maintain co-parent rights to the child. This case highlights the difficulty courts face in determining whether a woman who is not a genetic, birth, or adoptive mother can be granted legitimate mother status.
Nancy S. v. Michelle G.
Involved visitation rights to their two children, of whom Nancy was the biological mother (via artificial insemination). When the couple broke up, Michelle had to convince the court that she was a legitimate mother. She based her claims on her being a de facto parent (granted), claiming in loco parentis in regards to the children (not granted), the children recognizing her as mother (social mother), and her being the functional definition of a parent.
De Facto Parent
A person who daily assumes the role of parent, seeking to fulfill both the child’s physical and psychological need for affection and care.
Further Concepts in Kinship and Social Studies
Legal Cases
K.C. v. L.W.
Johnson v. Calvert
Maschetta v. Maschetta
Buzzanca v. Buzzanca
Religious and Social Terms
Mamzer
Heroine Mothers
Maybe Baby Group
Nahmani Case
PUAH
Maschigichot
Ben Niddah
Anthropological and Regional Terms
Shining Path
Acompanar
Propina
Superarse
IDEIF
Carino
Pertencer