This guest blog post was written by May Borgen.
The article was written by Amanda L. Baden, Lisa M. Treweeke and Muninder K. Ahluwalia in October 2012 for the Journal of Counseling & Development. The title of the article is Reclaiming Culture: Reculturation of Transracial Adoptees. The authors coin the phrase “reculturation” because they do not believe that the current term of acculturation or enculturation accurately describe the reclamation of birth culture of individuals who have been transracially adopted whether internationally or domestically. The reason given for that is that adoptees’ birth culture is less readily accessible to them as they would be for other individuals who function cross-culturally.
Among the strong pints of the article is that it gives a good clear description of the developmental process that a transracially adopted person experiences from birth and onward in developing a cultural identity. The article also describes different outcomes of the reculturation process. Included in the article are differences and similarities between transracial adoptees who have been internationally and domestically adopted. The article also provides three different approaches to reculturation as being education, experience and immersion and implications of reculturation for parenting, practice and future research. The cultural developmental process is described clearly and informatively including tables and charts.
The article does dispel myths about adoption in that it describes the expectation generally held in society that individuals belongs to their birth culture for the rest of their lives. Due to most adoptive parents in the US being White-American, the lived culture of most adoptees will be White American regardless of their birth culture. The article describes the process the transracial adoptee experiences in developing a cultural identity consisting of both their birth culture and their lived culture combined. Many times this process involves identifying with a third culture of adoptees with which they familiarize themselves and come to identify with. When transracial adoptees reclaim their culture, this entails their full immersion into their birth culture. If the adoptees become bicultural they will rather seek reculturation the country in which they already live with persons of their own ethnic background. Those who assimilate into their lived culture will not pursue connection to any greater degree with their birth culture, and those who combine culture will combine all these different ways of relating to their cultural background.
The article mentions the different circles of influence that transracial adoptees participate in as well. Parental influence is mentioned as highly important in the reculturation process of the transracial adoptee but the article does state that “we believe that the transracial adoptive parents alone cannot eliminate the trajectory that adoptees make toward reculturation”. The article doe however emphasize the importance of parental understanding, empathy, self-awareness, and racial consciousness as factors likely to affect the reculturation process of the transracial adoptee.
A weakness of the article is that it does not cover the topic of implications of the reculturation process for the practice of adoption, and the education of adoptive families which would have been very helpful.
