More adoptions mean more social questions

With the number of adoptions per year in the U.S. climbing past 100,000, questions about the… With the number of adoptions per year in the U.S. climbing past 100,000, questions about the social issues facing adoptive parents and children have become more important than ever.

Over the weekend, Encountering New Worlds of Adoption: The Second Annual Conference on Adoption and Culture featured three films and three keynote speeches at Pitt to address topics related to the increased popularity of adoption in recent years.

Additionally, 80 speakers from varying occupations, universities and backgrounds gathered at the forum to discuss the various goals of adoption. Many who attended have adoptive parents, have adopted children themselves or have adopted family members.

Pitt English professor Marianne Novy organized and coordinated the conference. Novy, who serves as co-chair of the Alliance for the Study of Adoption, Identity, and Kinship, designed the conference to discuss the new dimensions of adoption on a personal and intellectual level.

The conference explored the interactions between adopted children and parents. Enlisting speakers like novelist Emily Prager, feminist philosopher Susan Bordo and minority law professor Dorothy Roberts, the conference covered a host of interlocking issues.

The speakers explored the adoptive child’s life in society. They also discussed topics covering trans-racial adoption, international adoption, openness between adopted children and their birth parents, issues concerning adult adoptees and adoptee contact with countries of origin.

According to Novy, most knowledge of adoption comes mainly from television, but she hopes the conference raised awareness about the true nature of adoption and the issues associated with it.

The conference aimed to raise the knowledge and understanding of adoption and the issues related to it that aren’t normally discussed.

The first keynote speaker of the conference, author Emily Prager, spoke of the difficulties that come along with raising a daughter of a different race and culture. As a parent of an adopted daughter from China, she spoke from personal experience.

Prager said the confusion associated with adoption is that everyone can get by with little education on the subject.

Prager suggested that parents of adopted children should try to embrace their child’s birth culture as opposed to cutting all ties with it, adding that in her daughter’s case, it helped her understand who she is and where she came from.