The Identity Construction Of The Adopted Children From China In The United States

The study of identity is anatomized into multiple parts where each part is examined by scholars with different academic backgrounds due to the multidimensional nature of the issue of identity itself. Psychology and sociology, the two major fields in which identity is studied, stand at distinctive, or sometimes, opposite points to look at the issue of identity. Psychologists concern more with the individual development of identity mentally while sociologists focus more on social structures and on individuals as a part of group or community.The new phenomenon of white Americans adopting Chinese children emerges in the1990s and grows into unprecedented wave of intercountry adoption soon after. The identity construction of the adopted children from China in the United States calls for urgent academic research and study, which is multidimensional in its nature. Therefore, a coordinated theoretical framework combining the identity formation theory, identity status paradigm from psychology field and the racial-ethnic identity study on minority groups from sociology viewpoint is most desirable to analyze the issue at stake. In addition, a close examination of empirical studies on what efforts the white adoptive parents are making to help construct cultural and racial identity in their Chinese adoptees is conducted to build up a comprehensive understanding of this issue.Applying the psychological and sociological theory to analyzing the identity construction of the adopted children from China in the United States, the outcomes are positive and negative at once. On the positive side, white adoptive parents’efforts of installing Chinese culture into their Chinese adoptees correct the past ignorance on internationally-adopted children’s birth culture which has been testified as a major cause of this group’s identity crisis growing up in the United States. On the negative side, the ways how these efforts are materialized are problematic. Through imagining Chinese culture, celebrating Chinese festivals, and consuming Chinese cultural products, white adoptive parents bring to their Chinese adoptees some Chinese "culture bites" which represent hardly real Chinese culture and which imply more deeper racial stereotypes towards Chinese minority groups.Though both positive and negative consequences are at hand, the open debate around American intercountry adoption from China and the identity construction of those Chinese adoptees helps to open up the door for future changes. Along with children adopted from China growing up into adolescence and early adulthood, there will soon be more to study on how adult Chinese adoptees look at their own identity growing up in white communities and what they are going to say about the efforts made by their white adoptive parents to install Chinese culture in them.