The adoption marketplace: Transracial assortative adoption and the Black/non-Black divide

Whereas the adoption of a child is often framed in terms of a gift exchange, the goal of this dissertation is to identify, describe and analyze the market aspects of adoption. Understanding how adoption acts as a marketplace for kinship is particularly important because it advances our knowledge how markets go beyond economics and are shaped by sociological contexts. The first part of the study examines the ways adoption can be positioned as a segmented market and how prospective adoptive parents respond to these market constraints. Second, by positioning the adoption marketplace as a window into one of the few socially organized and regulated opportunities for crossing racial and ethnic boundaries, I explore how transracial adoption serves as a conduit for reflecting and reshaping the color line. Third, I focus on the inherent overlap between adoption as a child welfare and consumer practice, analyzing how adoption professionals attempt to bridge these seemingly separate spheres. To address these questions I triangulate three sources of data: a quantitative analysis of national adoption patterns from the 2000 Census, semi-structured interviews with 25 adoption professionals, and ethnographic observations from 40 adoption information sessions. The findings presented in this dissertation suggest national transracial adoption patterns are shaped by what I call assortative adoption, a process where parents are stratified by family structure and children are stratified by race. I show how non-traditional same-sex and single adoptive parents are more likely to adopt non-White children. Even though national statistics show that transracial adoption is a widely used pathway towards family formation, there is an overwhelming preference for non-Black minority children. However, my research uncovers an exception to the Black/non-Black divide, illustrating how adoption professionals and prospective parents draw distinctions and gradations between “fully Black” African American children, biracial African American children and foreign-born African children. Having established how market constraints intersect with racial boundaries in the selection process, I show how adoption professionals adapt to this kinship marketplace. Specifically I detail how adoption providers must navigate their dual responsibilities as social worker and small business owners, examining the tension that inevitably emerges between these two roles