Cecilia Lindgren

Ideals of parenting and childhood in the contact zone of intercountry adoption: Assessment of second-time adoption applicants in Sweden

Intercountry adoption is a global phenomenon, a contact zone in which notions of ‘good parents’ and ‘the child’s best interest’ are negotiated. This article explores what norms of parenthood and childhood Sweden, as a receiving country, communicates in the global flow of children and ideas. Adoption assessment reports are examined, with a focus on how adoption applicants are portrayed and how ‘good parents’ are thereby constructed. The analysis demonstrates how certain qualities, for example, being loving, self-sacrificing and child-centred, are ascribed to applicants, and how the presentation of ‘good parents’ also defines a proper childhood.

Here and now – there and then: Narrative time and space in intercountry adoptees’ stories about background, origin and roots:

Intercountry adoption policy emphasizes openness in relation to adoptees’ background. However, because intercountry adoption is a complex web of relations including individuals, institutions and countries, it is impossible to foresee what background, origin and roots will mean to the adopted individual. The present article examines what meanings adoptees themselves ascribe to background, origin and roots. A total of 22 internationally adopted men and women participated in focus group conversations. The participants were invited to discuss their diverse experiences and opinions on these matters and their stories were analyzed from a narrative perspective. The analysis focuses on how time and space were made significant in narratives about background, origin and roots. Two contrasting stories – the here-and-now narrative and the there-and-then narrative – are discerned, but further analysis of the narrative space and time dimensions shows a much more complex pattern beyond these extremes. Adoptee narratives characterized by an open time dimension deal with what could have happened, alternative lives, and the analysis shows how these alternative lives are storied and valued. Furthermore, when adoptees tell their stories about background and roots, ‘there’, that is the birth country, is ascribed different meanings. The analysis shows that the categorization of space as wide or narrow, in the sense of collective or personal, respectively, is useful in understanding the different approaches to background and roots. Based on the present results, we suggest that social workers may wish to organize their counseling along the time and space dimensions of adoptees’ narratives.

Time for good parenthood : a study of intercountry adoption assessment

The aim of this study is to explore how parents’ opinions and actions related to time are presented in intercountry adoption assessment reports concerning applicants who have been granted consent to adopt. As these reports establish what is required for someone to be categorised as a suitable parent, they construct and display the moral order of parenthood. An analysis of statements about time, as it relates to parental leave, working hours, preschool hours, family activities, leisure time and hobbies, illustrates how meanings of good parenthood are discursively produced. Good parents make time for, and spend time with, their children. They invest in togetherness by exchanging time of lesser value for time of greater value. This officially sanctioned understanding of good parenthood corresponds with the cultural norm of involved, devoted and child-centred parents, and reinforces the romanticised image of quality time and togetherness in the lives of nuclear families.