Browsing by Subject "adoption"
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Item Adoption and American Empire: Migration, Race-making, and the Child, 1845-1988(2017-02) Condit-Shrestha, KellyIn the United States, between 1854 and 1929, more than 150,000 working class youth were transported by “orphan trains” from their urban eastern city homes to live with families in the (primarily) rural American West. Since 1953, more than 150,000 adopted Korean children have migrated into U.S. families. Both during and in-between these orphan trains and Korean adoptions, Americans have also experimented with such child placement practices linked to nineteenth century black codes and boarding schools, twentieth century child welfare movements (at home and abroad), and postwar international adoptions. As patterns of mobility and migration have changed alongside technology and transportation modernization, imperial expansion, and the growth and consolidation of nation-states, child placement practices have also changed. Reflecting the specificity of each time and place, adoption and child placement discourse has historically been rife with tensions between sentiment and economics, exploitation and humanitarianism. While adoption implies the permanent transfer of a child away from the biological parent(s) to another person, the reasons, motivations, social practices, as well as the legal and cultural parameters of adoption have changed dramatically and unevenly in the modern era of nation-states. My dissertation utilizes “child placement” as its central frame of analysis to more accurately document the wide array of practices in U.S history that have historically involved the separation of children from their birth parents, to live under the authority of other adults. Adoption and American Empire examines the relationship between migration, race-making, and child placement as central and strategic components in America’s consolidation as a nation-state and expansion as a global empire, between 1845 and 1988. In three parts that transverse the historical periods of U.S. Reconstruction, the Progressive Era, interwar years, and post-World War II, I document continuity and transformation between older forms of child placement undertaken for child labor needs (such as with African American children during Reconstruction) and modern forms of adoption for humanitarian or sentimental reasons (including refugee and “orphan” children from West Germany). By linking these histories, I demonstrate that child placement is always inextricably tied to United States’ practices and discourses of empire and race. Few scholars have explored the linkages between these different forms of child placement. By employing the methods of social and cultural history, as well as multiple scales of analysis (comparative, regional, national, transnational) across an expansive archive of source material (state, immigration, and U.S. military government law, regional and national newspapers, the ethnic press, government reports, the U.S. congressional record, and archival documents), I illuminate the historic continuities and structures of power embedded in these seemingly disconnected practices. Ultimately, my dissertation contends that Americans’ practices of child placement and adoption have served as powerful tools of U.S. empire, employed widely when their implementation would assist the nation’s larger geopolitical and economic objectives. Always undergirded by nationalist racial logics, the children themselves would be increasingly valued as they came to encompass both the real and symbolic vision of how the United States imagined itself, or wished to be imagined, by its global peers.Item Adoption and Emerging Adult-Mother Relationship Quality: Is There an Association?(2015-07) Walkner-Spaan, AmyEmerging adulthood is a developmental period in which family relationships are important, yet research provides evidence that adoptive families have lower relationship quality compared to their nonadoptive counterparts. Despite some support for a relationship between adoption and adoptee-adoptive mother relationships during emerging adulthood, no systematic investigation has occurred. Utilizing self-report and observational data from the Sibling Interaction and Behavior Study, two studies employed hierarchical regression analyses to extend knowledge of the relationship between adoption and adoptee-adoptive mother relationships during emerging adulthood. Study 1 investigated the association between adoptee-reported adoption-related variables and the self-reported and observed relationships adoptees have with their adoptive mothers during emerging adulthood. Emerging adult adoptees who felt more positively about adoption had higher closeness and relationship quality and lower conflict with adoptive mothers. Additionally, transracial emerging adult adoptees were found to have lower conflict and higher relationship quality with adoptive mothers compared to inracial adoptees. Study 2 investigated the association between adoptive mother-reported adoption-related variables and the self-reported and observed relationships adoptive mothers have with their adopted children during emerging adulthood. Findings suggest that adoptive mothers' attitudes about adoption and adoption type (inracial vs. transracial) had little association with the relationships they had with their emerging adult adoptees.Item Attachment Relationships and Adoption Outcome(St. Paul, MN: University of Minnesota Extension Service, Children, Youth and Family Consortium, 2009-08) Michaels, CariResearch has demonstrated the powerful influence of the attachment relationship between parents and their children. How does the nature of this relationship affect children who have experienced trauma in the past or newly developing parent-child relationship with adoptive parents? How does it affect the parent’s experience of parenting? This review summarizes recent research that examines these questions and reveals implications for practice and policy.Item Guest Shawyn Lee: It's More Than That(2020-04-15) Pedersen, Paula; Lieberman, HannahA personal journey through adoption guides Shawyn Lee's scholarship and teaching. The research and story of Shawyn Lee, assistant professor of Social Work, merges– removing myths surrounding adoption. Enjoy, and as always, be sure to hit subscribe for more stories that celebrate the human experience in higher education.Item A Randomized-Controlled Trial of Mindfulness and Executive Function Trainings to Promote Self-Regulation in Internationally Adopted Children(2015-08) Lawler, JamieWhile children adopted internationally show remarkable recovery once placed in families, as a group these children continue to show delays in certain aspects of development years after adoption. In particular, the area that seems to show the most lasting, and sometimes profound deficits is children’s self-regulation. The current study uses a randomized, controlled trial to evaluate the effects of mindfulness-based and executive function trainings on internationally adopted (IA) children’s self-regulation, including inhibitory control, attention, and emotion regulation. Seventy-two IA children ages 6-10 were randomized into Mindfulness training (MT), Executive Function training (EF), or no intervention (NI) groups. The MT and EF groups attended 12 one-hour group sessions. Children in both intervention groups showed fewer hyperactivity and attention problems and showed better emotion regulation in the classroom, as rated by teachers blind to group status. The EF training was more successful in improving inhibitory control, while the MT group may have improved in delay of gratification. Both interventions improved selective attention in children with poor baseline regulatory functioning. Parent-reported behavior did not significantly change in any domain. Contrary to expectations, the mindfulness intervention did not improve perspective taking skills or prosocial behavior. Implications and future directions are discussed.Item Study of Young Children Who are Wards of the State of Minnesota as of October 14, 1996.(Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare, School of Social Work, University of Minnesota., 1997) Wattenberg, Esther; Kim, Hyungmo