This special issue addresses the construction of ethnic identity among international transracial adoptees, which typically involve the placement of Black, Asian, Hispanic, or Multiracial children with White parents. International transracial adoptees, similar to immigrants, navigate a cultural and ethnic context other than their birth culture. However, they are unique in that they navigate these experiences within families who don’t share their cultural, ethnic, and racial background. Critical questions emerge about the construction and development of their ethnic identity. These questions include the role that transracial adoptive parents play in providing cultural socialization (exposure to children’s birth culture); the impact of culture camps designed to provide cultural socialization in the context of peers; the intersection of adoptive identity and ethnic identity and youth adjustment; whether relations between ethnic identity and adjustment are linear or curvilinear; the role of bicultural identity integration as a link between ethnic identity and pscyhosocial adjustment; and ethnic identity processes among internationally transracially adopted young adults who mentor younger adoptees from similar cultures. These questions are addressed in this special issue in a collection of studies that examine ethnic identity among diverse international transracial adoptees, at different ages, adopted into two countries and using differing sample sizes and methodologies. International transracial adoptive families represent a microcosm of the growing international, transracial, and transethnic social transactions taking place in this diverse world. The collective findings in this special issue about the multidimensionality of ethnic identity and its intersectionality with other identities across developmental eras not only enhance knowledge about identity development among international transracial adoptees, but also expand understanding about identity development in general. This is the 150th volume in this Jossey-Bass series New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development. Its mission is to provide scientific and scholarly presentations on cutting edge issues and concepts in this subject area. Each volume focuses on a specific new direction or research topic and is edited by experts from that field.

Adoptive Families in a Diverse Society brings together twenty-one prominent scholars to explore the experience, practice, and policy of adoption in North America. While much existing literature tends to stress the potential problems inherent in non-biological kinship, the essays in this volume consider adoptive family life in a broad and balanced context. Bringing new perspectives to the topics of kinship, identity, and belonging, this path-breaking book expands more than our understandings of adoptive family life; it urges us to rethink the limits and possibilities of diversity and assimilation in American society.

Ashford, LeCroy, and Lortie's ground-breaking book offers students a balanced, integrated introduction to human behavior in the social environment. Lively and comprehensive, this book succeeds by helping students connect foundation knowledge with practice concerns. Clarified through the introduction of study tables and concept maps (at the end of each discussion behavior in the development chapters), the authors look at biopsychosocial development across the life span using an integrative multidimensional approach, discussing integrative practice, theory, treatment, and services throughout. This multidimensional framework provides a concrete tool for the reader to assess human behavior from a perspective that truly reflects the values and knowledge base of the social work profession. Together, the book's solid coverage of foundation knowledge, integration of the biopsychosocial dimensions for assessing social functioning, its multidimensional framework, and its use of case studies to illuminate the applied aspects of HBSE content--along with the authors' consistent attention to diversity--successfully combine to give readers a meaningful, exciting experience.

In The Stranger Who Bore Me sixty adult adoptees discuss the difficulties they have encountered in a world where biological kinship governs. Each of their stories reveals the personal dilemma created by the societal demand for secrecy and the deep pain and intense joy associated with adoptees making contact with their birth mother. Karen March has created a compelling and informative analysis of this need of some adoptees. Little research has been done on the actual outcome of adoptee-birth parent reunion and most arguments in this controversial area are based on personal anecdotal reports. This book offers the first systematic study of the consequences of reunion. As such it is an invaluable guide for any member of an adoptive triad as well as for professionals and government officials in the field of adoption.

Transnational adoption was once a rarity in the United States, but Americans have been choosing to adopt children from abroad with increasing frequency since the mid-twentieth century. Korean adoptees make up the largest share of international adoptions—25 percent of all children adopted from outside the United States—but they remain understudied among Asian American groups. What kind of identities do adoptees develop as members of American families and in a cultural climate that often views them as foreigners? Choosing Ethnicity, Negotiating Race is the only study of this unique population to collect in-depth interviews with a multigenerational, random sample of adult Korean adoptees. The book examines how Korean adoptees form their social identities and compares them to native-born Asian Americans who are not adopted. How do American stereotypes influence the ways Korean adoptees identify themselves? Does the need to explore a Korean cultural identity—or the absence of this need—shift according to life stage or circumstance? In Choosing Ethnicity, Negotiating Race, sixty-one adult Korean adoptees—representing different genders, social classes, and communities—reflect on early childhood, young adulthood, their current lives, and how they experience others' perceptions of them. The authors find that most adoptees do not identify themselves strongly in ethnic terms, although they will at times identify as Korean or Asian American in order to deflect questions from outsiders about their cultural backgrounds. Indeed, Korean adoptees are far less likely than their non-adopted Asian American peers to explore their ethnic backgrounds by joining ethnic organizations or social networks. Adoptees who do not explore their ethnic identity early in life are less likely ever to do so—citing such causes as general aversion, lack of opportunity, or the personal insignificance of race, ethnicity, and adoption in their lives. Nonetheless, the choice of many adoptees not to identify as Korean or Asian American does not diminish the salience of racial stereotypes in their lives. Korean adoptees must continually navigate society's assumptions about Asian Americans regardless of whether they chose to identify ethnically. Choosing Ethnicity, Negotiating Race is a crucial examination of this little-studied American population and will make informative reading for adoptive families, adoption agencies, and policymakers. The authors demonstrate that while race is a social construct, its influence on daily life is real. This book provides an insightful analysis of how potent this influence can be—for transnational adoptees and all Americans.