Blog Post 6 ~ Katie C

Through the readings for today, there were several different things that I picked out of each one that I stood out to me. 

I'll start out by talking about the reading by Kim Park Nelson called "Shopping for Children in the International Marketplace." Just in reading the title, I knew there would be some things that I wouldn't like. The main part that stood out to me was on page 100 when Nelson was talking about costs. She said, "The complicated transnational adoption process encourages the marketplace behavior of parents and the treatment of children like merchandise" (Nelson, 100). I agree that this is certainly true, though I wish it weren't. Nelson also said, "Parents must shop for children to choose their national origin, their race, and their gender. Because the decisions to be made are so large and difficult, the adoption industry is full of companies or individuals offering services to help parents through the process." Sadly, all of this is true. There is so much talk about the cost of adoption and how much that can influence where a family will adopt from. 

On page 81 of Pertman's book, he talks about China's new set of criteria for anyone who wants to adopt. Some of the restrictions he included were that applicants must be married, cannot be older than 50, must have a body mass index of less than 40, must be free of specific health problems, and must have net assets of at least $80,000" (Pertman, 81). I personally think that is very implausible. It is just very interesting to see the different requirements set out by different countries.

One part that I found very interesting in the Pertman reading was when he said, "But a large majority, including those who profess little interest in their genealogies, will say they feel more grounded and secure when their adoptive parents infuse their upbringings with the cultures from which they came, routinely give them information about the backgrounds, and, when physical differences are apparent, expose them to other people who look like them" (Pertman, 66). I think that this is very important to know because it can help perspective adoptive parents in the future. It is just like what we talked about in our debate last week on transracial adoption. We said that as long as the adoptive parents are doing everything they can to learn more about their child's culture, they will be doing the best for their children.

The point that I found interesting in the Nelson reading was her idea that transracial adoption fulfilled a desire of the adoptive parents to "enrich their lives by parenting a child from a foreign culture" (Nelson, 89). She mentions this several times throughout the chapter. I just thought it was interesting to think of it as an enrichment for the parents with nothing in return for the adoptees. 

Overall, I thought that both of these readings were very interesting and informative about transracial adoption and they covered several important points.