To: Dr. McGinnis
From: Hannah Brinson
Subject: Oppression
Oppression dealt within Children
The topic I chose to use for my project is the way that adopted children feel powerless in the situation that they are in, because they can’t do anything about it. I chose to do this topic because many people overlook the fact that adopted children can’t help the way they live, or have a say so on what happens with their lives. This topic interests me, because seeing adopted children not have a family or have their real family with them really hurts my heart. I believe this issue is important because many people are clueless about adopted children and the struggles they go through day by day. This topic fits under my group's umbrella topic “ Oppression of Adopted Children”, because a part of oppression is powerlessness, which is feeling like you can’t do anything about a situation, because adopted children feel like they have little to no power in their lives. They can’t control what family adopts them, or that their real family puts them up for adoption. The topic of powerlessness of adopted children fits with the course theme “confronting oppression” because the adopted children face oppression every day.
Problems to be investigated:
When are children going to have a say in what goes on in their lives?
Are we setting up these children to have a successful future?
Are we providing enough support for the children that lack the one thing they need the most...freedom of speech?
When can these children decide what home they do and don’t want?
Do these children feel as if they’d get treated differently if they never got put up for adoption?
The key issues I want to cover are how differently these kids get treated because of them being adopted, and how useless they can tend to feel.
Methods of research:
The methods I plan on using are found on Google scholar, and I am going to watch some videos on Youtube.com to make further observations.
Ainsworth, Janet E. “In a Different Register: The Pragmatics of Powerlessness in Police Interrogation.” <i>The Yale Law Journal</i>, vol. 103, no. 2, 1993, pp. 259–322. <i>JSTOR</i>, www.jstor.org/stable/797097. Accessed 31 Aug. 2021
.François Quesque, Alexandre Foncelle, Elodie Barat, Eric Chabanat, Yves Rossetti & Jean-Baptiste Van der Henst (2021) Sympathy for the underdog: people are inclined to adopt the emotional perspective of powerless (versus powerful) others, Cognition and Emotion, 35:5, 902-917, DOI: 10.1080/02699931.2021.1902282
Farr, R.H., Crain, E.E., Oakley, M.K. et al. Microaggressions, Feelings of Difference, and Resilience Among Adopted Children with Sexual Minority Parents. J Youth Adolescence 45, 85–104 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-015-0353-6
Stephens, S., & Stephens, S. (1996). Children and the politics of culture. Princeton University Press.
Nancy Rosenhaus, Adoptions with Love blog (2019) https://adoptionswithlove.org/birth-parents/adopted-child-problems
Gupta, Anna , Featherstone, Brid, On hope,loss, anger, and the spaces in between.Reflections on living with/in adoption and the role of social workerhttps://eds.a.ebscohost.com/eds/detail/detail?vid=1&sid=fbf4ecc4-f2e7-4b20-a993-6cc1e3d00821%40sessionmgr4007&bdata=JkF1dGhUeXBlPWlwLHNoaWImc2l0ZT1lZHMtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl#AN=141095496&db=c9h
.Romero, Elmer. After Adoption: Postadoption Assistance, Parenting, Impacts and Information Access. Nova Science Publishers, Inc, 2016. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,shib&db=nlebk&AN=1286268&site=eds-live&scope=site.
Diamond, Gary, and Eva Arbel. Adoption: The Search for a New Parenthood. Nova Science Publishers, Inc, 2014. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,shib&db=nlebk&AN=797420&site=eds-live&scope=site.
Healey, Justin. Adoption Issues. The Spinney Press, 2011. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,shib&db=nlebk&AN=364904&site=eds-live&scope=site.
Rafael A. Javier, et al. Handbook of Adoption : Implications for Researchers, Practitioners, and Families. SAGE Publications, Inc, 2007. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,shib&db=nlebk&AN=321340&site=eds-live&scope=site.
Estye Fenton. The End of International Adoption? : An Unraveling Reproductive Market and the Politics of Healthy Babies. Rutgers University Press, 2019. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,shib&db=nlebk&AN=2275690&site=eds-live&scope=site.
Deborah D. Gray. Attaching in Adoption : Practical Tools for Today’s Parents. Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2012. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,shib&db=nlebk&AN=433196&site=eds-live&scope=site.
Field Research Idea:
For my field research I am going to read all of my articles, pick the best ones, and watch youtube videos about my topic to get information and observations. I will take my time reading them to get the observations I need.
Annotated Bibliography:
Rosenhaus, Nancy. "3 Common Adopted Child Problems." Adoptions With Love. 12 Aug. 2020. Web. 07 Sept. 2021.
Summary: In this article, the author really focuses on how research proves how adopted children have more feelings of depression, anxiety, and distrust when they are placed in new families. Adopted children have a sense of wanting to belong in a family, and some often have a hard time finding their identity with a family that is not biologically theirs. They also struggle with adoption when not every family that adopts is welcoming and loving. This article shares how children can develop feelings of depression, anxiety, and distrust when going through the adoption process.
Assess: This article was very useful for me, because it covers many ways adopted kids feel useless and powerless. This article explained that sometimes a real family is all a kid needs to feel loved and like they have a purpose, but once they get put up for adoption and have to go with a new family they don’t feel that purpose anymore. Reading this article made me wonder how differently adopted kids' lives could have been if they weren’t put up for adoption. The information I got off of this article was very reliable and was not two sided.
Reflect: This article is a good source to use in my project, because the information provided in it fits the topic of my project perfectly and gives some really good information to use. My topic is how adopted kids feel powerless, and this article explained just that and more. This article went into detail about how kids feel loss and don’t feel a purpose once they've been put up for adoption.
Gupta, Anna, and Brid Featherstone. “On Hope, Loss, Anger, and the Spaces in between: Reflections on Living with/in Adoption and the Role of the Social Worker.” Child & Family Social Work, vol. 25, no. 1, Feb. 2020, pp. 165–172. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1111/cfs.12674.
Summary: In this article it explains a lot about just adoption itself. It explains how the adoption rate numbers since 2010 have steadily increased. This goes to show, many kids are being put up for adoption and more kids are feeling like they have little to no power at all and have no rights for anything. The passage then starts talking about how adopted kids can tend to feel useless and no good. This article also talks about the role of social workers with adoption and how that pulls into their life.
Assess: This article was useful for me because it explains what the topic of my project is, and gives very good information. I especially liked this article because it covered just adoption itself as a topic, how adoption makes people feel, and how adoption pulls into the role of social workers, which is very interesting. Reading this article helped me better understand my topic and gave great information for my observations.
Reflect: This article is a good source to use with my project because it gives good reliable information. The site isn’t biased, and makes sure to cover a lot about adoption. I learned some things from this article that I never knew about before. This is a good site because you can tell the information is true and has a good explanation.
Diamond, Gary, and Eva Arbel. Adoption: The Search for a New Parenthood. Nova Science Publishers, Inc, 2014. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,shib&db=nlebk&AN=797420&site=eds-live&scope=site.
Summary: This book gave very good information about my topic, and really focused on how adoption makes kids feel useless. It explains how kids feel very useless having to start over with a new family once they get adopted, having to meet a new family, having to grow up with a new family. It explains how that could make both the family and adopted kid struggle and not get along because they tend to feel no power having to go through so much.
Assess: This book was a good source to be in my project because it covers my topic perfectly and gives good information about my topic. The book is reliable and is not biased. It really covers how adoption makes kids feel useless more than my other sources do.
Reflect: This book went into complete detail about the powerlessness adopted children feel and explained what makes them feel that way and how challenging it really is. This article caught my eye more than the others because the whole thing covered exactly what my topic was, not just parts of it. It gave really true factual information.
Healey, Justin. Adoption Issues. The Spinney Press, 2011. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,shib&db=nlebk&AN=364904&site=eds-live&scope=site.
Summary: This story started off mainly just talking about adoption itself, and what adoption is. Then, it started talking about the grief kids feel when they get put up for adoption, and how it changes their lives forever. No kid ever wants to go through this and they hate to feel powerless. Every kid wants to be heard and feel like they matter but sometimes all they feel is useless, and that's what this article really dug deep into and explained.
Assess: The information given from this story, was reliable and very true information. It made sure to cover just what I wanted to know, how adopted kids feel powerless. This story focused on how adopted kids feel useless and no good unlike most of the other stories I read. This gave me good information for my project.
Reflect: My topic is how adoption makes kids feel powerless and this story really covered that and gave good factual information. It wasn't two sided and stuck on the same topic the whole time( which is powerlessness of adopted children). This is a good one to use in my project because it ties into my topic perfectly.