Birthmarks: Transracial Adoption in Contemporary America

Chapter 3: Searching: “I Have a Family with No Blood”

T H R E E Searching “I Have a Family with No Blood” Shelley: I know my father was Black and my mother was White—Italian. Great mix, huh? Um . . . my mother was 17 when she had me. Uh . . . her mother had died when my mother was 15 of, I guess, cancer. When she died my father . . . who would have been my grandfather . . . my mother’s father . . . I guess my mother had a lot of broth­ ers and sisters and he couldn’t take care of them so my mother was put into foster care and she was kind of a run­ away. Uh . . . I’m trying to think. Um . . . . Um . . . my mother kept me for six months. And I don’t know if I was taken away or . . . I don’t know. I don’t know. But . . . I was put into foster care. From what I hear she came and she visited me. Uh . . . put into foster care. I know a year later she had another son. I think she might have gotten married. She might have gotten married. Uh . . . pretty much all I know. She was a runaway. Shelley was searching for her birth mother. She wanted to know more about her genealogy, about pertinent facts like her medical history. She had had some medical problems, and explained, “You need . . . you need to know. I think it’s important.” She wanted to see who she looked like. But her frustration with the child welfare system was mounting: Shelley: Um . . . this lady . . . like . . . Every time I go to do something I get a letter back. . . . Your files aren’t here. Your files aren’t here. Your files aren’t here.| 99 | Searching As Shelley’s story indicates, adoptees’ origin narratives are mediated in multiple ways by social institutions and public policies. What she knew about the circumstances of her birth was narrated to her parents by the social worker who had facilitated her adoption; it was an institutionally authorized story. Her adoptive parents were only given the information the agency and social worker deemed appropriate. Even as an adult, she had had to do battle with the policies and practices of the adoption agency that regulated the information about her origins to which she was allowed access. Shelley was at least the second generation of her birth family to spend time in foster care. Her birth mother was placed in foster care because her single father had been unable to care for all his children, which suggests that this was probably a family with limited income. Shelley’s mother was particularly vulnerable to the scrutiny of the social welfare system when she, a White teenager and a ward of the state, gave birth to Shelley, a bira­ cial baby, in 1975. Shelley was probably correct in guessing that she was removed from her teenaged birth mother. She only knew part of her story: “And I don’t know if I was taken away or . . . I don’t know. I don’t know. But . . . I was put into foster care.” What was the role of race in Shelley’s removal from her birth mother? What was the role of age? How did class shape this situation? Shelley’s story makes evident the role of the social welfare system in determining who she was to become, through the regulation of her birth mother’s reproductive behavior. In popular media narratives about adoption, a person’s origins are often simply equated with birth parents. The “search” narrative has be­ come a standard story on television talk shows, sitcoms, dramas, and made­for­TV movies.1 On television, adoptees struggle with a sense of mystery or confusion about their identity, family, and history, eventually finding their “real” selves when reunited with their birth mothers. Any­ one familiar with daytime television talk shows or made­for­television movies could recite the typical search narrative. It is often scripted as an adoptee’s identity quest—a search for the “true” self through access to forbidden knowledge, to a previously unknown origin narrative, to a family history, to a genetic and/or medical history, and foremost, to the birth parents. Typically, the message of media representations of search narratives is that biology determines “true” identity (Wegar 1997).| 100 | Searching Why have adoption and search narratives become so popular in the contemporary public discourse? Why do adoptees’ identity quests carry such currency in media representations...