Weaving a Family: Untangling Race and Adoption

by Barbara Katz Rothman

A man, a woman, and their biological children, all of the same race, the mythical "nuclear family" has been the bedrock of American cultural, religious, social, and economic life since the Revolutionary War, and even with all the changes we have absorbed in the last sixty years, it essentially remains so. Current trends in adoption, however, have begun to shift the dominant paradigm of the family in ways never before imagined. Professional estimates show that in the United States today, seven million families have been formed by adoption, and 700,000 of them are interracial. These still-growing numbers have begun to radically change the face of the traditional American family.Barbara Katz Rothman, a noted sociologist who has explored motherhood in four previous books and has more recently explored the social implications of the human genome project, now turns her eye toward race and family. Weaving together the sociological, the historical, and the personal, Barbara Katz Rothman looks at the contemporary American family through the lens of race, race through the lens of adoption, and all-family, race, and adoption-within the context of the changing meanings of motherhood. She asks urgent and provocative questions about children as commodities, about "trophy" children, about the impact of genetics, and about how these adopted children will find their racial, ethnic, or cultural identities Drawing on her own experience as the white mother of a black child, on historical research on white people raising black children from slavery to contemporary times, and pulling together work on race, adoption, and consumption, Rothman offers us new insights for understanding the way that race and family are shaped in America today. This book is compelling reading, not only for those interested in family and society, but for anyone grappling with the myriad issues that surround raising a child of a different race.

Genres: Adoption, Parenting, Family, Race, Nonfiction

288 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[Laurie Neighbors · Rating 3 out of 5]

I always appreciate Rothman's writing on mothering, adoption, and race. She is earnest, thoughtful, and grounded in both social science and personal experience.

In particular here, I appreciated that she exemplified a moral approach to the adoption of a black child by white parents. So much of the rhetoric around white/black adoptions is not thoughtful. Rothman particularly underscores, for instance, that the acceptable premise for a white person or couple adopting a black child is that there is not black person or couple available to adopt that child. She notes that the inherent flaws in the institution of adoption make this a frequent possibility -- and that those flaws should be addressed. In the meantime, however, babies need loving parents.

On the other hand, she can be a bit rosy and idealistic about adoption, about families with adopted and biological siblings, and about the perspectives of adoptees. Granted, she is very much protecting her daughter's interests when she writes about their relationship (which I appreciate) but she might have brought in a variety of voices of black individuals adopted into white families. Sometimes, the book felt a bit like it was "selling" moral inter-racial adoption.

Note with regard to other reviews -- Rothman is not providing a guidebook for white parents wishing to adopt black children. She is a sociologist. But the book is written in a casual, accessible vernacular. If you are considering adopting a child of any race (including your own), I'd recommend it.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some reviews of this book by prospective adoptive parents remark that it wasn't helpful in terms of their upcoming adoption...wow. For me, this was a challenging, eye-opening, mind-expanding read. It is absolutely, at times, a scholarly discourse on consumerism, race, identity, and culture...but it also is intensely personal and even funny. I loved reading it, even though it was uncomfortable to search my own soul and ask the provocative questions Barbara Katz Rothman raises. I plan to buy a copy and read it many times.

[Aaron · Rating 4 out of 5]

6/26 - On the whole it was a pretty good book which gave me lots to think about and made a good attempt and touching on a lot of the issues surrounding this topic. But I am left, having finished it, thinking that it's more of a starter book because it leaves SO much undiscussed, and so much just glossed over or mentioned; issues that need to be discussed much more. Also the author keeps trying to say she's writing as a sociologist, but the book is really way too personal, even with her caveats in place. Also, she doesn't give enough of a rounded look at some issues, declaring that there is just one way that it is without enough discussion of other points of view.

6/24 - I'm about 80% through, but feel like I need to re-read it already. There is some discussion of very dense issues in here -- About interracial parenting of course, but also about mothering (her word) in general and race in general. And she discusses some topics that I was aware of but are still very new to me, like whiteness and its history in America and other places. In some ways, I wish the book were longer, with more investigations of some of these topics that it seems like she just glosses over. Even discussion (untangling) of interracial parenting, which seems to be the main stated goal of the book seems to not get a full enough investigation.

Just last night I read the part J.E. had told me about earlier, where she's in a subway and sees some cops arresting a struggling black kid, and all of these black women bear witness in a circle around the cops to show they are watching and Barbara wants to join them, but isn't sure she can and she steps forward, then back ... and how the part of her identity that is the mother of a black child is invisible... it's hard to wrap my head around some of these things.

[Andi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rothman is a professor of sociology at Barach College, SUNY. She's written several other books on motherhood, giving birth, race, and gender. In Weaving a Family Rothman talks about her own experience as a white mother of three children; two white whom she gave birth to and one black and adopted. she moves back and forth between telling her own family's story and discussing the wider social, economic and cultural implications of mixed race families. There is a very illuminating interview with Ms. Rothman at Literary Mama which gives a good overview of the book and lays out her opinions on many issues. She says in the book she is "tracing the tensions between the intimate, personal lives we lead and the social contexts in which we lead them." I highly recommend this book.

[Jennifer Swem · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. Having read a number of books on adoption, and transracial adoption specifically, I felt that this book had the right combination of research and general life experience. I tend to dislike adoption books that rely too heavily on emotions to make a point, but also am turned off by the dryness of purely sociological and statistical books. The author is both sociologist and mother of an adopted daughter. As the white mother of both white and black daughters I mostly enjoyed her insights about her daughter's (and her own) discovery of race and growing together as a family in the process of navigating a very race-conscious society. This is currently my favorite adoption book and one that I recommend the most to families considering international and trans-racial adoption.

[MC · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the combination this book provided of personal memoir and sociology... or, as it's apparently termed, 'autoethnography.' She claims in the preface "this is a book about sociology and motherhood and race and adoption, my attempt to weave it all together." I think she does so in an interesting way. For me, the early chapters where she 'defines her terms' and really gets into the nitty gritty academic theories of motherhood, etc., were interesting but far less compelling than the later chapters where she deals with the concepts of culture, identity, entitlement, and how race interacts with those. For my enjoyment of the book, I'd probably lean more toward 3 or 3.5 stars, for the unique perspective - both academic and personal - that it provides, I'm giving it 4.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rothman is a sociologist with an adopted daughter and as such she has a very interesting perspective on multiracial families and transracial adoption. She tackles the big issues, not offering answers, but giving the reader a sense of the complexity involved. I was very interested to know that she was also a big part of the natural childbirth movement and has written a couple of other books that look interesting to me.

[Thorn MotherIssues · Rating 5 out of 5]

First book read on Kindle for iPad, and I enjoyed both the reading experience and (definitely!) the book. I wish there could have been more and it would have gone deeper, but as an overview of issues related to adoption of black children by white adults (all straight-seeming, as far as I could recall) it was great.

[Vanessa Hatcher · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was written by an anthropologist, and that is pretty much how it read with a little personal side notes. It was much like reading a text book. I learned some interesting things about the history of race, but not much that I felt helped me in our upcoming adoption.

[Annie Brady · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good insights. Lots of interesting ideas to think about and mull over. Unfortunately, the author writes like a sociologist- ugh. But it was worth the effort to slog through her definitions and descriptions to finally read a book on interracial adoption that contains new ideas.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although this book was interesting enough, it didn't give me practical advice to do what she recommended in the book about having her daughter stay connected in the black community. I found it much closer to a textbook than a helpful book for adoptive parents.

[Jamie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is not especially original but there are some glimmers that make it worth reading. I found a couple of the chapters to be tangential and not especially interesting.

[Libby · Rating 4 out of 5]

read to pg 127