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  • Available Research-Based Talks and Facilitated Discussions

    Unpackings of advantages inherent in my own racial (i.e., White), national (i.e., born and raised in my nation of birth), and familial privileges (i.e., biogenetic ties to my natal and extended family) ignited what is now a decade-plus program of community-engaged research.  Based on this research, I have developed and delivered several Research-Based Talks and Facilitated Discussions for a variety of audiences. As my research continues, my insights only deepen. I continue to share these with variant audiences.  Please contact me if your group is interested in hosting me to present any one of these. These talks are grounded in data-based research and my reflexivity as an insider. My goal is to foster positive adoptive familial and adoptee identity development in the face of sociocultural discourses of biological normativity, nationalism, and white supremacy dominant in today's U.S. family ideology.

    Available Research-Based Talks and Facilitated Discussions 

    --How do I respond to THOSE kind of questions? Presentation of programmatic research findings about Chinese adoptive parental responses to comments or questions about their adoptive family. Focuses on parental responses which help build adoptive familial and adoptee identities. Facilitated discussion afterwards in which participants can respond to the findings and voice their experiences in a supportive context. 

    --Will the REAL mom please stand up?: Exploring polymaternalism and adoptive motherhood:  You’ve heard it at the park, “Do you know her real mom?” Or perhaps even from your tween or teen resisting your authority, “But you can’t make me. You’re not my real mom.” Such comments reflect the underlying cultural assumption that children only have one real mother. In many forms of motherhood today (such as step motherhood and lesbian co-motherhood), the child has two (or more) mothers. Adoptive motherhood is no exception; adoption presents the child with both a birth and adoptive mother. Despite these multiple forms of polymaternalism (having more than one mother), the notion that children only have one real mother remains. Confounding this, the assumption that a child’s real mother is the biological mother is equally pervasive in contemporary society. Authentic motherhood is typically viewed as stemming from a particular set of biological processes (e.g., pregnancy and birthing), which are believed to induce an irreplaceable, biologically-based, mother-child bond. U.S. culture continues to remind us: real mother = biological mother. We first interrogate the threats to the “realness” of our adoptive motherhood. Then, we consider the polymaternalism of adoptive motherhood, asking ourselves to consider the ways we positively (and negatively) cope with sitting outside the culturally idealized monomaternal motherhood form. We conclude by considering the extent to which we recognize our polymaternal motherhood on the behalf of our children (i.e., recognizing the reality that indeed our children truly have two mothers and are connected to two women).  

    --What makes a family? Love or Biology?: Dueling discourses in foster parents’ stories:  This research-based talk and facilitated discussion is based on analyses of 100 online foster adoption narratives examining how foster adoptive parents construct the meaning of “family”. Parental narratives manifested struggles between biogenetic and non-biogenetic meanings of “family,” identified in the study as the discourse of biological normativity (DBN) and discourse of constitutive kinning (DCK). The DBN reinscribes the dominant cultural and foster care system preference for biogenetically-connected families. The DCK resists the DBN, maintaining that enacted behaviors and shared affections constitute legitimate families, rather than the default of shared genetics. Analyses revealed a high degree of polemic interplay, meaning that both discourses competed to be centered rather than marginalized through a variety of discursive practices. Study results will be summarized, opening up the floor for a discussion of their meanings and implications by parents 

    --Available as Facilitator for Adopted: The Movie by Barb Lee

    --Available as Moderator and Discussion Facilitator for Adult Adoptee Panels

    --Available as Panelist for Transracial, International Adoptive Parent Panels

    --Available as Moderator and Discussion Facilitator for  Adoptive Parent Panels

     

     

This portfolio last updated: 28-Jul-2022 8:50 AM