Book Review: Beyond Good Intentions

Register, Cheri. Beyond Good Intentions: A Mother Reflects on Raising Internationally Adopted Children. MN: Yeong & Yeong Book Company, 2005 183 pages

Cheri Register is a writer and teacher of creative non-fiction writing. She is an adoptive mother of two daughters from South Korea. She is an author of other books, including Packinghouse Daughter: A Memoir, The Chronic Illness Experience: Embracing the Imperfect Life and “Are Those Kids Yours?”: American Families with Children Adopted from Other Countries.

Beyond Good Intentions is a memoir that explains common intentions of adoptive parents that do not necessarily support the adoptees’ best interest. Register is somewhat critical of transracial and transnational adoption.

I rate this book with a two. I recommend this book to people interested in adopting internationally and adoptive parents who are currently raising transracial adoptees.

CSB/SJU libraries do not own this book. I recommend the purchase of this book.

           

I recommend Cheri Register’s memoir, Beyond Good Intentions: A Mother Reflects on Raising Internationally Adopted Children, because she does a sufficient job informing readers about the pitfalls that adoptive parents of transracial adoptees commonly make. She brings her own personal stories of raising her two adopted children  and provides good suggestions. However, a weakness is that her overall view of transracial adoptive comes across negatively.  Register’s book adds much to the understandings of adoption and ethics.

Register’s main objective of her memoir is to inform readers about the top 10 mistakes that adoptive parents of transracial adoptees slip into, which results in consequences for the children and family. The good intentions gone bad include:

o   Wiping away children’s past

o   Hovering over the “troubled” children

o   Holding the lid on sorrow and anger

o   Parenting on the defensive

o   Believing race doesn’t matter

o   Keeping the children exotic

o   Raising children in isolation

o   Judging the U.S. as superior

o   Believing adoption saves souls

o   Appropriating children’s heritage

Register states that she is not against international adoption, but she is weary of the growing population of international and transracial adoptions (pg. 6). Although Register says that she is weary of adoption, her book appears to shed a negative light on transracial adoption more than it does positively.

A strength of the book is that it identifies common good intentions of adoptive parents that actually turn out harmful to the adoptee and family. Register acknowledges these intentions and then explains how they are harmful. She provides suggestions for adoptive parents to raise transracial adoptees. For example, Register states that some adoptive parents want to wipe away their adopted child’s past because they fear that their child will search for their birth parents. She explains that it is natural for adoptees to be curious about their birth parents and that it is not disloyal and does not diminish the importance of adoptive parents. (pg. 18).  Register does a good job at not only identifying downfalls of how adoptive parents raise their children, but also gives advice to fix these downfalls. Another strength of the book is Register’s experience that she brings to the topic of transracial adoption. This book is not scholarly, but it was not intended to be so because it is a memoir. Register writes about her own personal experiences raising her two adopted daughters, which provides the reader with insight to better understand transracial adoption.

One of the biggest weaknesses of the book is that the author only views transracial adoption in a critical lens. The book focuses on the hardships and risks that adoptive parents face. She fails to address the main pro-transracial adoption argument that it is better for any child to be adopted and loved by a family than to be institutionalized. Register does not include the benefits of transracial adoption. Because of this, the book paints a negative image of adoptive parents. They appear to be selfish in the sense that they are adopting for the benefit of only themselves in order to culturally enrich their family.

Register’s book contributes much to the understanding of adoption. First off, the book challenges views, such as Adam Pertman’s, that adoption is all good and positive. Pertman states in Adoption Nation, “With few exceptions, the ones who are adopted will live better lives than they could have had, institutionalized, in their homelands” (pg. 81).  Contrary to Pertman’s belief, Register is very critical of transracial adoption throughout her book. She suggests that transracial adoption is harmful to the adoptee because the adoptee might view himself/herself as white because he/she grew up in a white family (pg. 79). Register writes, “When he is old enough to envision himself as a being separate from you, he may nevertheless imagine himself in your skin. A peek in the mirror or a glimpse of himself in a family photo can come as a shock” (pg 79). She believes that this results in identity confusion.

Register’s voice about adoption reminds me of Kim Park Nelson’s stance on transracial adoption. Both Register and Nelson state they are not anti-transnational adoption, but they do not shy away from addressing its downfalls and consequences. Their voices are not as strong as the National Council of Black Social Workers statement on transracial adoption, which states that transracial adoption is cultural genocide. However, both Register and Nelson believe a reason for adoption is to enrich adoptive parents’ lives. Nelson mentions in Shopping for Children in the International Marketplace that parents view their transracial adoptee as an exotic commodity (pg. 103). One of Register’s listed pitfalls that adoptive parents make is this same point - that adoptive parents try to keep the adoptees exotic. Register suggests that parents need to be genuinely interested in their adopted child’s culture and home country. She offers her experience of decorating her house in South Korean style to show her children that their birth culture is also important (pg. 101).

Register presents further evidence in her book about how transracial adoptees feel like they do not fit in because of their race. This raises the question we talked about in class regarding whether or not it is ethical for white adults from the U.S. to adopt transracially because of the racism the child will face. She supports her stance that transracial adoption can be unethical by listing questions that adoptees receive that make them think they aren’t who they thought they were: “Where do you come from,” “Aren’t you grateful that you came to this country,” “What race are you?” (132). She states that adoptees’ privacy is constantly intruded on when they get asked questions about their race and ethnicity (pg. 139). In her opinion, this is a consequence that adoptive parents impose on their adopted child when that transracially adopt.

Register brings a new idea and a different opinion that we have not heard in class regarding adoption language. Register does not like the word “birth parents” (pg 17). She believes that the word is too functional. She writes, “(Birth mother) suggests to me a brood mare or an egg-laying hen. Birth father, by contrast, stands for a person too seldom acknowledged” (pg. 17). She attributes her rejection of the common adoption language to the gratitude she feels toward the birth parents who gave her children birth, beauty, voices, wits, etc. Contemporary writers of adoption seem to have accepted the adoption language, even those who have ethical problems with adoption. By simply understanding her stance on adoption language, one can confer her ethical views on adoption. Register seems to have a viewpoint that birth parents should always have a claim to their children, and her view grows stronger when race is of matter. She states that white adoptive parents view their transracially adopted child as being different from them rather than vice versa (pg. 89). This ethical dilemma of transracial adoption of white people seeing themselves as dominant and superior presents a problem when raising the children within the American culture.  

Overall, I recommend Register’s book. The book has many strengths, including the perspective and experience that the author brings to the issue of transracial adoption and her suggestions she provides to prospective and current adoptive parents of transracial adoptees. She further develops the ethical issues of race and adoption by expressing her views on the consequences of keeping an adoptee “exotic” and the unethical issues associated with transracial adoption. Register challenges voices such as Pertman’s while echoing voices such as Nelson’s. She offers a new approach to the adoption language by rejecting certain words. The only downfall that I identified was that she only used a critical lens on transracial adoption and did not talk about the benefits of it. All in all, the book provided good insight into race and adoption.