Ethics and the Socio-political Context of International Adoption: Speaking from the Eye of the Storm

Abstract

Contemporary discourses surrounding adoption have a normative tone and are critical of the ways in which international adoption is power based and exploitative. These discourses have a significant influence on adoptive parents, structuring their actions and opening the door for scrutiny of individual adopters' motives and ethics. As an internationally adoptive parent, I reflect, in this article, on my experience and use it as a vantage point from which to consider alternative perspectives on the ethical debates in the extant adoption literature. The insights gained from my experience can inform adoption practices and the development of more nuanced, less polarized perspectives on the ethics of international adoption and inspire new avenues of research that explore the ways in which adoptive parents navigate their socio-political contexts in ways that are ethically sensitive and workable for them.

Keywords:

• International Adoption
• Ethics
• Socio-political Context
• Agency
• Discourse
• Autoethnography

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sarah Wall

Sarah Wall is a doctoral candidate in sociology at the University of Alberta. Her research interests include professionalism, organizations and organizational ethics, people's work experiences, and adoption and family. Her dissertation is an ethnographic study of self-employed nurses. She teaches sociology of the family and takes the opportunity in her classes to raise the profile of adoption as a fascinating area of study. She is also interested in qualitative methodology and the advancement of qualitative methods, and has several publications on personal research methods