Culture keeping: White mothers, international adoption, and the social construction of race and ethnicity

Contemporary international adoptive mothers are encouraged by a myriad of sources to "keep culture" for their children by transmitting cultural information and arranging ethnic activities related to their children's birth nations. This dissertation explores this phenomenon by investigating the ways in which white adoptive mothers construct meaning and structure family life around the social concepts of race, ethnicity, and kinship. Based on in-depth interviews with forty international adoptive mothers residing in New England, this study compares the culture keeping of women who adopt interracially from China and mono-racially from Russia.; Women with Russian children employ three approaches to culture keeping (Multicultural, Ambivalent, and Kincentric). The Multicultural approach, largely based within the home, is characterized by a commitment to culture keeping and focuses on two strategies, food and holidays. The Ambivalent approach combines high motivation to keep culture yet little follow-through in implementation. The Kincentric approach focuses on assimilating children into adoptive families and white middle-class culture through emphasizing shared racial identities within the family. Roughly one third of participants followed each Russian culture keeping approach.; Culture keeping among women with Chinese children centers on both racial protection and ethnic competency. All participants with Chinese children participated in culture keeping. Culture keeping efforts focus on Chinese adoptive culture, which is based on the experiences of other white mothers with Chinese adopted children.; I argue that international adoption encourages a heightened sense of maternal positioning vis-a-vis family and race but does not transform racial and kinship ideologies. Rather, motherhood for white women who adopt internationally involves emotional, mental, and physical work which centers on negotiating racial and biological difference within the family and in facilitating racial and class privilege for the child. Whiteness takes on particular importance when it is challenged by non-biological kinship and by interraciality. White mothers respond to these challenges by attempting to neutralize them through their particular approach to culture keeping.