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4
I want her to learn her
language and maintain
her culture
Transnational Adoptive Families
Views of Cultural Origins
Diana Marre

Going to my country of origin and getting to know my origins meant understanding

certain attitudes coming from my genetic background that I have. It was very revealing.
Asha Mir, a Catalan young woman adopted in India at age seven

When they see her in the park and they ask me if my husband is black, I say, No, but my
daughter was born in Haiti.
An adoptive mother

Introduction
The theme of the cultural origins of adopted children is a recurrent one among
adoptive families. The adoptive mother of an eleven-month-old baby, who was
adopted in China and arrived in Barcelona when she was three months old,
emphatically said in a prime-time television show that she did not want her baby to
lose her cultural origins: I want her to learn her language and maintain her culture
(TV1, 8 October 2003). In this chapter, I explore the many different and ambiguous
meanings attached to the notion of cultural origins by adoptive parents and the
uncertain boundary between nature and culture that exists in their narratives about
the cultural origins of children born in Asia, Africa and Latin America who do not
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74 Diana Marre

look like them.1 I examine attitudes towards difference, using Spanish ethnographic
data on how international adoptive families understand culture, cultural origins
and race. I discuss the role of adoptive parent associations which are formed to share
and discuss common experiences of difference; face questions of race and racism; and
build new ways of imagining race, kinship and culture (Volkman 2003: 29).
Field research for this article was primarily carried out in Barcelona (20025)
and I interviewed seventy adoptive families married and nonmarried couples,
single mothers and fathers, and gay and lesbian couples living in Catalonia. These
interviews were complemented by participant observation in ADDIF, the first
association of adoptive families of Catalonia, and by participant observation in the
internet list-servers of AFAC (Association of Families Adopting in China) and
ANSANM (one of the two associations of families adopting in Haiti); and two list-
servers on postadoption issues, which represent a more broadly Spanish population.

International Adoption in Spain

Today, in terms of international adoptions per capita, the Autonomous Community
of Catalonia has the worlds highest rate with 0.23 children adopted per one
thousand inhabitants (Spain as a whole has 0.12) and 51 per cent more international
adoptions in 2004 than in 2003. While Catalonia has 16 per cent of Spains
population and 16 per cent of the Spanish children born every year, it has 2830 per
cent of Spanish international adoptions, according to official records of the
Departament de Benestar i Famlia, Generalitat de Catalunya (Oficina de Prensa,
Barcelona 2005). In relative terms, the number of adoptees per inhabitant in
Catalonia is double that of Norway and Spain as a whole, the countries which rank
next highest in the international tables. In Spain, except for isolated cases,
international adoption began in the middle of the 1990s. Before this, people from
other countries came to Spain to adopt. In Spain, as in other Western European and
North American countries, international adoption has become a major means for
involuntarily childless people to obtain a child and thereby become a family, or for
people who want another child but are not willing to go through biological
procedures. In 2004, according to Selman, people in Western Europe and North
America adopted more than 40,000 children and the demand is steadily rising
(Selman 2002).
As in other countries, in Spain people adopt from abroad for several reasons.
First, there is a lack of local children available for adoption. The paucity of native-
born children in Spain is a result of a relatively recent process: the end of Francos
dictatorship in 1975, the subsequent transition to democracy and the ensuing
changes in Spanish family and womens lives. Contraception was forbidden in Spain
until 1978, when it was legalized by a Royal Decree (2275/78). In 1981, the Divorce
Act (Law 30/1981) was approved and later amended in July 2005 (Law 15/2005).
Voluntary sterilization surgery was legalized in 1983. In 1985 Organic Law 9/1985
legalized abortion but not on demand and this remains the case.2 In short, what took
decades to develop in other countries, happened in under ten years in Spain. In the
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Transnational Adoptive Families Views in Spain 75

second place, a restructuring of the social welfare system took place, while feminism
in Spain promoted the right of Spanish women to choose to delay childbirth and/or
to remain childless.3 Spain had the EUs highest birth rate in 1975 (2.8 children per
woman) but the lowest in 1995 (1.17 children per woman). Finally, family law in
Spain tends to preserve genitors biological rights, almost until they themselves
renounce them. Law 21 of 1987, considered as the starting point for the modern
regulation of adoption, suggested that one cause of the scarcity of national adoption
in Spain was, and still is, a legislation that is excessively protective of biological
parents rights. This has led some adoptive parents not to adopt children in Spain
even when there were children available to be adopted.4 A Catalan politician and
journalist, and a former member of the National Parliament and the Barcelona City
Council, is the mother of a biological daughter, an adopted son from national
adoption, and a daughter from international adoption. She complained bitterly
about the special attention given by the public administration to biological parents
who keep their rights for longer than they should be allowed to. In a letter to her son,
published in book form, she remarks:

So what was there in your suitcase? A marginal neighbourhood of

Barcelona, a lot of siblings spread between adoption and foster centres, a
father who did not know how to treat you all, only to mistreat you, yet did
not want to give you up the medieval blood right! and who prolonged
the status quo more and more, making things more complicated. And, if the
father did not know what to do in this world, the mother, literally, did not
know that she was in it, with a brain unaware of life, almost empty of
impulses. Children, only children expelled from the womb like an
automaton. There were more things in the suitcase: a foster centre since you
were born, correct but distant treatment from the people who took care of
you, the coldness of the established order, the absence of a father figure, the
multiplicity of mother figures, none of them, though, well enough defined
to seem close, ones own, real. So many busy mothers that none of them
behaved like a real mother, with all those children to be taken care of. And
no father. (Rahola 2001: 4243)

A journalist from Madrid who formed a single-parent family with an adopted

daughter expressed herself in similar terms. She was called in by the Senate Special
Commission on International Adoption (SCIAS) to publicly defend adoption. She
explained that, having completed all the procedures for a national adoption, she
discontinued it when a social worker, who was visiting her, suddenly started crying.
When she asked what was the matter the social worker replied that, obeying a judges
decision, every month she had to accompany an eight-year-old girl to visit her father
who was in jail. The girl would remain speechless in front of him because he had
raped her repeatedly since she was three.5 The same criticism of the treatment of
biological parents by the law and government administration was made by the
coordinator of one of the associations of adoptive parents in Catalonia. He knew of
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76 Diana Marre

parents who, even three years after having children by national adoption, still had to
witness their children being addressed by their biological parents surnames when
they took them to see a doctor at the National Health Service. For these reasons,
CORA, the adoptive parents associations coordinating body, asked the Senate
Special Commission on International Adoption (SCIAS) for the modification of
state legislation, the Civil Code in particular, in order to clarify the reasons for which
parents could lose the custody of their children. Then, institutionalized minors could
be adopted by Spanish families.6
The years 1995 and 1996, which showed the lowest birth rate in Spain and in
which the Autonomous Communities of Catalonia and Madrid did not receive
applications for domestic adoption because there were no children to be allocated,
are recognized as the years in which international adoption started to gain a public
profile.7 Single parents, women and men have been able to adopt from the very
beginning in Spain. In July 2005, the Parliament approved a modification of the
Civil Code to allow homosexual marriages and, as a direct consequence, child
adoption by these couples. In the Catalan case, the family and civil codes were
modified in April 2005 to include child adoption by homosexual couples. Before
that, when homosexuals were not allowed to adopt, they did so as single parents.

Choosing a Country of Origin, Choosing a Way to Be Parents

The first thing to do in order to adopt a child in Spain is to fill out an application
form in the offices of the appropriate regional Autonomous Community. Who is
eligible to adopt depends on each Community.8 When filling out the application
form, adoptive parents must indicate the country from which they wish to adopt
because the Suitability Certificate (IC) must to be issued for a specific country.9 The
reason is that not all countries admit unmarried couples or single people as adoptive
parents, and only very few admit homosexual couples.
As an adoptive parent said, it is not easy to decide on the country of adoption,
because when parents do so, they start to build some bond with that country, which
is emotionally difficult to break or change. The mother-to-be of a Chinese girl said
that for her it would be a great shock to have to change country because, when she
decided where to adopt, she started imagining her daughter. Another mother, who
was filling out her application for Brazil and, due to problems with her ECAI
(authorized international adoption agency), finally had to adopt in Ukraine, recalled
the change as the worst moment of the process, something that discouraged her from
considering another adoption.10 A biological mother who had decided to have
another child, this time adopted, justified her choice of adopting in Morocco in
terms of geographical and cultural proximity:

We were looking through the files and, well, one has ones preferences, likes
and dislikes, and we decided we were not interested in anything to do with
Russia, Ukraine, Romania or China. I do not know. We do not know those
cultures, and then what? Latin America was another possibility, the other
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Transnational Adoptive Families Views in Spain 77

big area, but there were several drawbacks, such as the fact that in some
countries you had to stay for two months, which we could not do, and also
it was a very long trip, and with our child we were a little afraid of it ... I
guess people make those long trips without any problem, but we were
uncomfortable, anyway. The advantage was the language, of course Well,
we decided to pass on that. There was India, also, but there were other
problems. In India there are many orphanages and you have to have been
married in the Church to adopt from them because they are run by religious
staff, and we thought our file would be held up there. Then, our first idea
was Africa, not Morocco, but Africa, but there was Madagascar, which was
also an ordeal, because when you were there filling out forms I think it has
now changed you had to travel to South Africa on several occasions
because it somehow belongs to South Africa for some matters; you had to
travel from there. And we said then, well, Morocco.

Parents attribute a great deal of importance to the selection of the country where they
will adopt. In general, they feel that, after the decision of having a child, this is
probably the most important decision they make. It is a decision that will determine
the most important characteristics of the adoption process, which depend upon the
country of origin of the child to be adopted. As I have already mentioned, all the
adoption paperwork is done for one country only, or exceptionally for two. Since the
whole process takes too long from the adoptive parents point of view, a mistake in
the selection of the country would make the process even longer and more
problematic, distressing and expensive.
China is the principal country of origin chosen by Spanish adoptive parents.
After the U.S.A., Spain is the second most common destination for Chinese adopted
children. Many families adopting in China explain their decision by arguing that the
process there is made transparent and crystal clear by the countrys authorities and
this makes the waiting period easier. A single mother, who worked for a while as a
volunteer at an association of adoptive families while waiting for the assignment of
her girl adopted in China, pointed out:

Many people, once they solve the race problem, choose to adopt in China
because the process is legal, transparent and clean, and because everything is
very clear. If there is one thing a person who is adopting wants to have it is
information and, in this sense, adoption in China is very good, because people
are constantly informed about how the process is going and how things are
going. Everything is done on a rigorous first come, first served basis. A person
is given a number when they submit the application and that number is
always respected. No one is afraid of someone skipping that number.

Soon after that, the parents go on a trip to China, organized by Chinese institutions
such as the Womens Institute, if they choose not to use any Spanish mediation, or
through AFAC (Association of Families Adopting in China) or some of the Spanish
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78 Diana Marre

ECAIs (international adoption agencies). They know in advance where their hotel
will be, regardless of the Chinese province where they will go to find the child,
because this decision depends on the Chinese authorities. The hotels are always the
same and they are usually four or five star so as to avoid unpleasant surprises. They
know that they will not be allowed to go to the orphanage where their daughter
(Chinese adoptees are almost always females) has lived so far. They wait for her at the
hotel, where she will arrive together with the girls assigned to the other families of
the group they are part of, which is organized by the Chinese authorities according
to the time of arrival and province of origin of the minors.
The reference to clarity and transparency in the processes in China includes,
although it is not explicitly mentioned, its regularity in the assignment and allocation
of children. Those who adopt in China believe they have the certainty that, nine or
ten months after applying, which is more or less the period of time of a pregnancy,
the CCAA (Chinese Centre of Adoption Affairs) will assign them, along with a
photo, the girl they have asked for, i.e., healthy, under twelve months or two years
old, as they have imagined, and compatible with them. This compatibility is
decided, according to their narratives, in the Centres Matching Room, the final stage
of the allocation of children (Howell and Marre 2006; Marre and Bestard
forthcoming). In due course, they will meet the girl they were waiting for: a toddler
(almost a baby), with almond eyes and dark straight hair and, above all, healthy. If
something happens between the moment of allocation and the meeting, the CCAA
would allocate them another girl. Recently, when a family was in China looking for
a girl through an ECAI, the CCAA told them that the girl had spilled a flask of
boiling water on herself, causing major burns on her face and neck. Consequently,
another girl was allocated to them before they returned to Spain. As for the first girl,
she was probably destined for what is called green ticket adoption, a system for
those who wish to adopt minors with a health problem. These are problems (a full
list of which is given to the prospective parents) that, from the parents point of view,
can be solved with the right economic resources; the initial cost of the adoption is
lower in such cases.
Therefore, adoption in China gives to adoptive families the feeling that there
will be no uncertainties and unforeseen events and, if there were, that the CCAA
would solve them. Decisions made by the CCAA take no account of families
opinions and it decides what information it will provide about the minors. But the
CCAA is the only body that takes the decisions and it apparently makes the same
decisions about similar situations. It therefore seems predictable and, above all, not
open to appeal: it does not allow the families any role in decision making and this
can be reassuring because it frees families from this difficult responsibility.
The CCAA decisions help to guarantee the continuity of the adoptions and,
above all, the image of transparency and clarity. It is ironic to note that the Chinese
government that offers adoptive families guarantees related to adoption processes is
the very one which adoptive parents think of as responsible for the abandonment of
girls in China. From the adoptive parents narratives the only child policy of the
Mao era is the reason why there are so many girls to adopt in China. They like to
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Transnational Adoptive Families Views in Spain 79

think that their daughters were wanted and loved by their biological mothers who
were compelled to abandon them by the government, not because of their decision
and/or desire. A common feeling towards biological Chinese mothers is that of
comprehension, solidarity and compassion. The act of abandonment by the
biological mother is an important proof of her love for her daughter, in the parents
narratives, taking into account that child abandonment in China is punishable by
law. This is also a condition that, for many parents, guaranteed the impossibility of
finding their girls biological mother in the future.
The second most common region of origin for adoption among Spanish
families, and the most common in some of Spains Autonomous Communities, is
Russia and Eastern Europe. There, according to adoption services and adoptive
parents (whether they adopt there or not), adoption processes are rather random.
The waiting periods and the final costs tend to be vaguely defined. Parents visit the
country to accept the child and it is only after this acceptance that the final adoption
process begins and often the parents need to return to the country to collect the child
some months later. During the first visit, adoptive parents sometimes reject the child
allocated and need to return once, twice or even more. Adoptions are carried out
through Spanish ECAIs or with the support of an association such as ASFARU
(Association of Families Adopting in Russia) or through facilitators who are local
agents with contacts with local authorities and orphanages. These agents are hired by
Spanish families using a word of mouth system of recommendations.
The corruption that the minors countries of origin are seen to suffer from is a
frequent subject among families adopting in the former Soviet Union, Latin
American or African countries; it is occasionally raised in relation to Asian countries,
but, I would say, never in relation to China. As the adoptive father of a girl of
Ukrainian origin pointed out, he had to bribe the authorities to exaggerate the girl's
health problems so that the adoption process would be expedited.11 He also had to
bribe the judge so that he would believe what the authorities had told him/her,
quickly confirm the adoption and allow them to return home as soon as possible.
This confirmation of the adoption and the return home is something that families
experience as a real relief and is part of all their narratives. The bribes considerably
increase the anticipated initial cost, but, from the parents perspective, they also
reduce the length of stay in the country of origin and lessen the risk of more
unexpected problems. Interestingly, corruption is always and without exception
attributed to the persons or institutions that receive or ask for the bribe and never to
those who offer or give it.12
The health condition of the minors worries the families adopting in Russia and
the former Soviet Union. As Khabibullina (2006) says, information about adoptions
from Russia and other Eastern European countries is rather limited, with a striking
emphasis on the medical condition of the adopted children and its effects on the
adoptive families. Families are very worried about the possibility of RAD (Reactive
Attachment Disorder)13 or FAS (Foetal Alcohol Syndrome) in children of alcoholic
mothers, which, it is thought, can be detected in a photograph or a domestic video
of the child. As Cartwright (2003) has pointed out, interpreting casual portraits for
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80 Diana Marre

medical information has become a common practice in transnational adoption and

especially in the specific case of FAS,14 which in Spain is only talked about among
families adopting in the former Soviet Union.15 Cartwright shows that certain regions
become associated with certain pathologies and the racialized appearance of children,
seen as Asian for example, may be interpreted as indications of medical problems
such as FAS, which are thought to be visually detectable (Cartwright 2003).
In choosing a country of origin, parents already engage with, and build up an
image of, the culture of origin of the child they hope to get. Ideas of fairness,
transparency, authoritarianism, corruption, health conditions, alcoholism and
poverty all shape the relationship and emotional bond parents build with the country
of origin, even before they have seen or met a prospective adoptee. The country and
culture of origin are engaged with energetically and interrogated in detail for
information about adoption and adoptive children, yet they are also perceived as
environments which it is a relief to leave behind, once the child has been secured.

Choosing a Country of Origin, Choosing a Child?

Choosing a country of origin is a decision that also determines some characteristics
of the adopted child. In Spain, it is not possible to choose the sex of the child,
although people are allowed to state a preference, which most families do and, in
general, they prefer girls.16 The selection of the country of origin also has, from the
perspective of the families, an influence on the possible sex of their future child.
Many families admit to choosing China because of the high probability of getting a
girl due to the fact that most, if not all, of the numerous minors given up for
adoption in China are girls.17 Some families wish to have a son and therefore they
choose Morocco because most minors given up for adoption there are boys.
Parents can specify an age range that they prefer. However, the professionals in
charge of evaluating them as prospective future parents recommend the age range
that they consider to be most appropriate for that family. In general, families say that
this is something they manage to agree with the professionals.18 Nevertheless, it is
well known that approximately 70 per cent of minors adopted in China are under
twelve months.19
The legal impediment against choosing skin colour or other physical features in
the children is solved, or at least avoided (only partially from the parents
perspective), through the selection of the country of adoption. Most families
anticipate what their adopted girls will look like by choosing to adopt in China,
Ethiopia, Haiti, Congo, Russia or Eastern Europe. Latin America, where initially
some Spanish families adopted but which is less and less common as a region for
adoption, is probably the origin that poses most questions for future parents in this
regard, as children from this region can be very varied in appearance. In general most
parents said that their child would probably be very ethnic.
The former director of the Catalan Institute of Fosterage and Adoption (ICAA)
has explained that adoptive parents prefer to adopt in China because, as I have
shown, the process is quick, easy and continuous information is provided. Russia,
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Transnational Adoptive Families Views in Spain 81

the second most common country of origin, is the opposite, according to ICAAs
director. There the process is not easy but people choose to adopt there for ethnic
reasons: children are more white [blanquitos] and more similar to us.20 Many
parents adopting in Russia justify their decision in term of cultural or ethnic
similarities which often, according to the ICAAs director are, in fact, physical
resemblances. There was a case of a family adopting in Russia who, when they made
the first trip to meet and accept the girl they had been assigned and saw she was not
as they expected her to be, rejected the assignment for what seem to have been clearly
racialized motives. They said that they really needed a physical resemblance to the
baby so as to identify themselves as parents.
Different approaches to choosing a country of origin appear in the narratives of
adoptive parents. Families that have adopted in Haiti, Ethiopia and China often say
that, when they walk around with their girl, it is as if she is wearing a T-shirt that
reads Im adopted. In contrast, many of the families that adopt in Russia and
Eastern Europe want to keep the adoption a secret or at least have the possibility of
talking about it when they wish and of deciding if and when to talk about it with
their children. For many families, the origins issue is especially related to having to
talk about it with their children and about when, how and in which circumstances
to do it. But the issue is also related to the fact that they have to explain it to strangers
and people they do not want to discuss it with. An adoptive mother of two older
siblings of Russian origin defended herself against the presumption of racism
associated with families that choose to adopt in Russia or Eastern Europe, pointing
out that, they [her children] realize that every time we go somewhere together, they
do not carry the I am adopted sign with them for strangers that bothers them.
Families with children adopted in Russia say that many families who adopted in
Asia or Africa do it to try to seem cool or open-minded people. When in July 2004
a law was passed according to which families could have their adoptive children
reborn in Spain, giving them a Spanish birth certificate, many families thought it
was something that could only be beneficial or useful for families adopting in
Russia and Eastern Europe. The law aroused interesting discussions in several
listservs of adoptive families. Those who wanted to use this facility, most of whom
were certainly families adopting in Russia and Eastern Europe, would justify the
decision by saying they did it for their childrens sake so that, when they were older,
they would not be forced to give explanations to others when they did not want to.
For those objecting to it, the law meant a step backwards in terms of making
adoptive parenthood visible and simply encouraged the secrecy that had surrounded
adoption in Spain for so many years. All of them rejected, or simply could not think
in terms of, the possibility of children (re)born in Spain with African/Asian/Native
Latin American traits.
This perceived incompatibility between being Spanish and looking non
European is part of the common idea that adoptive parents are ethnically
homogeneous, all being white or Caucasian, despite centuries of sexual and
colonial exchange between Spain, North Africa and Latin America. Of the seventy
families I interviewed, only two adoptive mothers, who had adopted children from
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82 Diana Marre

Latin America and Morocco respectively, justified their choice in terms of physical
resemblances between themselves and the children.
Pregnancy the period of waiting before the child arrives in the family is a
time during which the bond with the country of origin of the child or with the
culture of origin is reinforced. Families adopting in Russia and Eastern Europe are
probably the exception. While there is almost no reference whatsoever to potential
health problems among families adopting in China, and it is a recurrent topic for
families adopting in Russia and the former Soviet Union, once the placement takes
place and the child is incorporated into the family, the latter category are the least
active families in relation to adoptive family circles and activities in Spain. They
seem to be less interested in a culture that they feel is very similar to their own. As
Khabibullina (2006) says, it seems that children adopted in Russia are invisible
because of their European looks. Besides, the popularity of Russian children
might sometimes be explained by the racial choice of adoptive parents.
Waiting time is also an experience that many families share with an association
of adoptive families, and these associations are usually organized by country of
origin.21 Its for your child, so that he doesnt feel like hes the only one and for him
to know that there are others like him, said one father who was a founder of one of
Barcelonas oldest associations. It is also a time during which the associations
encourage families to buy books and other cultural material about the countries of
origin of the children and even encourage them to learn their language. The
associations and their events, activities, services and meetings especially the annual
or biannual full-day major parties tend to create a community whose children are
(and look) similar.
With the exception of most families adopting in Russia and Eastern Europe, the
decision to keep a postadoption bond with their childs country of origin is
something that adoptive parents never question. This may be as a result of changing
trends within the adoption world generally that emphasize questions of roots, and
more explicitly the need to encourage a child to accept his or her two cultures.
Today, most expecting or new adoptive parents will say that they plan to undertake
a journey to the childs country of origin once their child reaches adolescence. Their
arguments for doing so are rather similar and appear not to be thought through.
Having been told by the experts that it is an important aspect of the childrens sense
of identity to be familiar with their original culture, they, being good parents, make
this part of their future planning.
In Spain, parents are adamant about their adopted child not losing touch with
their culture of origin. There is literally no home I have visited for an interview with
an adoptive family without some sign of the childs country of origin: pictures,
images and objects with the exception of parents who adopt from Eastern Europe,
which is, from their point of view, adopting into the same culture.
The distant relationship that parents adopting in Eastern Europe and Russia
have with the countries and cultures of origin is striking in its difference from the
more engaged relationship formed by parents adopting from other regions. It seems
clear that it is the impact of racialized phenotype that makes culture more
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Transnational Adoptive Families Views in Spain 83

important. Engaging with cultural difference is a way of dealing with racialized

difference: it recognizes the ineradicable physical difference of race but
simultaneously denies it by focusing on culture. As I show below, however, culture
is conceived in naturalized forms that connect it intimately to racialized difference.

A Trip to Difference, the Country of Origin and Cultural Origins

In their narratives, with what do families link the idea of origins? Some link origins
or culture of origin with a language, even if the girl has been adopted as a baby, as is
the case with the Chinese girls. The Association of Families Adopting in China
(AFAC) offers language classes to parents and girls. An adoptive mother said that she
would like it if some ill-humoured classmate called her [her daughter] Chinese, or
told her go back to your country, [the girl] would answer with a string of insults
in Chinese, even if it was made up.
In contrast, an adoptive mother with children adopted in Russia pointed put
that, even though her children had a map of Russia in their room with thumbtacks
on the cities where they had been born, she was not teaching her children about
Russian culture. She also mentioned that she could not help laughing in the face of
her local Russian consul when, at the time of registering her children, he
recommended that she renew their passport every five years so that the children
could have Russian nationality when they grew up, if they wanted to. Similarly, the
mother of a Ukrainian-born girl said, I do not educate her in the Ukrainian culture,
or its food, beverages, clothing, language, music or anything; but I know this is not
the norm, that I am an isolated case.
Families also talk about food and regional products, and thus they incorporate
new products into their diets and pass around recipes from the country or region of
origin. They buy music, objects, children's books and they go see movies coming
from the country of origin. From the moment the decision about country of origin
is made, they start to take an interest in its literature, music, language, food and other
products. As a mother-to-be who was waiting for a girl from China while doing
voluntary work pointed out, the future adopting parents know that the country of
origin, or simply the origin, influences what they normally call the culture of
origin of their child, even when they are referring to a new-born or a child only a
few months old. In many of these and other cases, the terms origin or culture of
origin are used to refer to phenotypical features, that is, to race. An adoptive
mother of a girl from China, who lived in the Autonomous Community of Galicia,
pointed out: Of course I want to be able to talk to my child about her cultural
origins, shell be aware of the difference whenever she looks at herself in the mirror.
One mother, who did not know if she could have her own children but had
decided that, in any case, she preferred to adopt, said more or less the same thing:
Many people, once they solve the race problem, choose to adopt in China. Thus,
even though from the very beginning she had thought about adopting in sub-
Saharan Africa, she carried out her first adoption in China, followed two years later
by another one in Africa. She considered her daughters to be different but said she
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84 Diana Marre

felt prepared for the experience. However, she recognized that when she decided to
adopt for the second time, and to do it in Africa, some families with whom she had
shared her first adopting experience in China told her that they did not feel prepared
to adopt in Africa and the furthest they could go, in terms of differences, was China.
Her husband did not have a problem adopting in Africa, as long as the child was a
girl. He explained this by saying that he did not see himself being able to say no to
(i.e., controlling) an adolescent boy from Africa when, he felt sure, the child would
be taller and bigger than him.
The issue of origins or cultural origins of the child, or the fact that the children
themselves will probably raise the issue of origins, is something that all adoptive
parents mention. This is not something new and Howell (2003, 2004) and
Yngvesson (2003; Yngvesson and Mahoney 2000) have described this for Norway
and Sweden respectively. They both agree that the operacin retorno (operation
return, the Spanish version of other countries motherland tours) is more related to
the parents than to the childrens needs and desires. Paco Ra, adoptive father and
coordinator of one of the most active associations in Madrid, prepares these tours
and says: sooner or later, your children will ask you to take them to their country of
origin so they get to know their own origins. Adolescence implies a construction of
the identity and Judith, who is ten years old, is at its doors. I prefer to anticipate it
instead of coming too late. Therefore, weve already decided where to go for our 2005
vacations: Zipaquir [Colombia]. Howell (2004) has even suggested that the relative
lack of interest on the part of most young adoptees in their origins may be, for their
adoptive parents, a confirmation and reaffirmation of the kinning bond they have
been able to build. This was true for a Spanish single-sex female couple. For them it
was very important that it had been so difficult to return to Nicaragua to adopt their
second daughter, accompanied by their eldest one who had also been adopted in
Nicaragua: the adolescent did not want to go back to the country and did not enjoy
the trip at all.
In some sense, adopters are often concerned with origins in an attempt to get a
grip on a childs particular, individual character. It also seems as if origins refer to the
place, town or city where the child is thought to have been born, or the place where
he or she was institutionalized. To establish a contact with that place has the aim of
reducing as much as possible the sense of the unknown and ghostly, of that
backpack that all parents perceive that their children bring with them, no matter
how old they were at adoption. The adoptive families are convinced that there is a
past; they are certain that they do not start from zero. So they want to know as much
as possible about that past.
It is not only important where your child comes from, but also to know his or
her reality, an adoptive parent said to justify the requirement imposed by some
countries that adoptive families stay in the country of origin of their children for
several weeks. In general, families try to know or have the largest possible amount
of data about their children. Thus, if they are able to visit the institution the child
has lived in, they can get to know who took care of him/her, what the child ate, how
he/she was dressed and therefore collect stories that they can tell their child later. If
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Transnational Adoptive Families Views in Spain 85

they can, they visit the site where they are told the child was found abandoned, they
take pictures or film the site, the street, the atmosphere, the people. They try to talk
to people from there. That is, they try to collect the elements needed to build a story
about the childs origin that they can tell him/her later.22
Adoptions with contact between biological and adoptive parents also indicate this
need to construct a story. Many of the families adopting in Haiti do this so they can
choose one orphanage in particular that allows the possibility of having an interview
with the childs biological parents. The objective is, in many cases, to obtain the
maximum possible information about their children, to clear as many doubts as
possible and to find explanations about their child, for the present and the future. A
mother said that it had been a good experience to know the biological parents of her
two daughters, because she rapidly found an explanation as to why they were so tiny
in spite of their age. They were like that because their biological parents were also very
small and not because of malnutrition or any disease (Marre 2003).
In the parents retelling of the time when they went for their children, they never
talk about that place as an interesting, nice and pleasant place; they rather mention
its lack of resources, its problems, its poverty, its corruption and its stifling hot or
freezing cold weather. Moreover, they systematically retell the moment of taking the
plane back home as a relief.23 The need for a break, what Yngvesson (2003) refers to
as a clean break, necessary to create a new kinning link, also explains the fact that
what people look for in order to fill the emptiness is objects, images and various
elements with which to create a story, which the adoptive families need in order to
create a sense of uniqueness. It is interesting to note that the huge interest in
gathering pieces of the puzzle, as they are usually referred to, does not generally
include any type of contact with the families that fostered the children or that took
care of them and who might have more information about the children. These puzzle
pieces are never words or stories coming from others or that children can hear from
others mouths. The words used to make a story about origins, seen as the best way
of integrating the child into the family, are words of the adoptive family, the kinship
language of their adoptive family.
Although they always perceive origin as linked to many problems, as a place
children were rescued from so that they would have a better future, parents also show
respect, gratitude and understanding because that place gave them a girl and the
possibility of being parents. More often than not, in stories about origins, cultural
origins and birth origins, the biological mother figures importantly. As one mother
said: I love the Chinese culture in many respects and I deeply respect this country.
I owe them my girls life and I feel very sorry for the woman that carried her for nine
months and I dont even want to think what she was going through. The biological
mother is, however, an ambivalent figure. With some distress, another mother asked:
Is it good to idealize an unknown mother they cannot get to know? Is it advisable
that in the mental universe of our girls there be a mother who is good and ideal while
we turn into the witches because we dont let them go out at night?
This overlapping of origins and biological family is evident in a different way
in the words of a young Catalonian woman born in India. She declared that, going
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86 Diana Marre

to my country in search of my origins had meant for me being able to understand

certain attitudes that had come up and were related to my genetic inheritance. This
explicit reference to the genetic past as an explanation for present attitudes is one way
of thinking about the importance of origins. Another way of linking past origins to
the present is evident in the words, cited at the start of this chapter, of the mother of
a Chinese girl adopted when she was three months old, who emphatically
maintained that she did not want her child to lose her culture of origin. Culture of
origin here is something seen as already imbued into a three-month-old baby: it is
naturalized into something quasi-biological, something that is as much part of her as
the way she looks.
Origins and culture of origin thus mean many different things to parents. They
invoke language, foods, music and other regional products; they explain physical
appearance; they provide elements that are needed for a story to tell the children and
others, including the parents themselves, about why the children are the way they
are; they figure as oppressive places, the reality of which is to be held at a distance;
they are places which command respect and gratitude, but which may be idealized
by rebellious teenagers; they are the source of genetic traits and quasi-biological
cultural heritage. This last aspect is particularly noticeable when it comes to parents
ideas about the bodies of the children they adopt transracially.

Knowing or Building Difference: Managing Difference in the Body

Most adopters say they are aware that their children are different. Origins, cultural
origins or country of origin refer to the difference. Nevertheless, they know that
when they talk about difference, they are also referring to certain types of problems
perceived as linked to difference, problems that they want to anticipate. The word
anticipate is often mentioned by adopting parents. But, what does anticipate really
mean? It means to state explicitly and to emphasize something that is seen as self-
evidently problematic and that may create stigma (Goffman 1963). Likewise, as
some families would comment in their meetings, they feel they have to prepare
themselves on a daily basis to explain where their child is from. When someone
asks me if my husbands black, I answer that he is not, but I say that Clarisa was born
in Haiti, said one mother who had found an ironic way of answering the recurrent
question about her daughters skin colour.
The emphasis on difference is not something exclusive to girls of African or
Haitian origin. Some mothers of girls born in China recommended doing a tight
ponytail in their daughters hair to stress their almond-shaped eyes. These mothers
treat their childrens eyes with special eye drops because, they claim, those types of eyes
produce low quantities of natural tears. Nevertheless, it is evident that the emphasis
on the difference is greater among parents with children adopted in Africa, Haiti and
Latin America. As Wade (2002: 4) has said, only some aspects of phenotype are
worked into racial signifiers and they are the aspects that were originally seen to be
ways of distinguishing between Europeans and those they encountered in their
colonial explorations. Phenotype is thus linked to a particular history.
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Transnational Adoptive Families Views in Spain 87

From the parents point of view, it seems to be better to place extra emphasis on
those traits that appear to be evident and/or may be stigmatized. Adoptive parents
spend a lot of effort in emphasizing the differences between themselves and their
adopted children. But, at the same time, they can make statements such as the
following, affirmed by a high school teacher, mother of an adopted child of
Ethiopian origin and two biological sons: Imagine how much ours we feel her to
be that we dont even see her black anymore. Im not kidding. You don't see the
colour, it's just love. The journalist who interviewed this mother understood her
comment as a positive attitude towards cultural (actually racial) differences.
Evidently, this is a possibility and, in fact, it is supposed that this adoptive mother,
once [she] solves the race problem, can adopt in Ethiopia. Nevertheless, she needs
to emphasize her love for her child saying that they dont see the colour. But what
would happen if they saw her black colour? Could they not love her in the same way?
Why does she need to emphasize so explicitly her love for her daughter?
For adoptive families, the adoption of phenotypically different children means a
deeper process of reflection during the preadoptive as well as the postadoptive stage.
From their perspective, it requires the acquisition of the skills, tools and know-
how typical of the cultures of origin of their children, in order to adequately treat
their bodies and customs. These explanations are found even among families
adopting in China who, because of their attitudes, are perceived by other families as
the elite. The parents of girls from China often spoke of the thousand-year-old
culture of their baby daughters, which was linked to their perception that their girls
had a natural meekness and intelligence. These natural qualities, however, may be
improved by parents from the start, for example through naming. An adoptive
mother of two girls, one Chinese and the other Congolese, told me she had called
the former one Honey and the latter Forest in reference to their natures.
Reference to how fast childrens general health improves, and especially how
their bodies do, is recurrent among adoptive families. This is not only a question
related to health but also to appearance. The first thing parents mention in their
accounts is the state in which they found the children, what the clothes looked like
in which the child was handed over and the condition of his or her hair and skin,
which is something they hasten to examine in detail, in search of signs. Skin and hair
care is a recurrent subject among parents in general and especially of girls of African
or Haitian origin. For most of them, their daughters skin is very delicate and needs
special care with creams, oils and soaps to moisturize it. The skin is said to require
constant moisturizing with extra products, otherwise it becomes white, the most
usual word to refer to the appearance of their very dry skin. Also the hair receives a
lot of attention and energy from white mothers of black girls. Not only is it present
in their accounts, but it is also a recurrent topic in the listservs in which one can find
products, recommendations on how often Afro hair should be washed (compared to
non-Afro hair), what types of shampoos, conditioners, combs, brushes and rubber
bands should be used, and so on. The considerations about hair and white mothers
difficulties in dealing with it are identical to those described by Tyler in her work on
mixed families in Leicester (Tyler 2003, 2005). Most mothers point out that the best
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88 Diana Marre

thing to do is to take the girls to a hair salon for black people, as one woman said,
because they naturally know how to deal with it:

You have to go to one of these hair salons that there are now, run by
immigrants, because not only do they know how to deal with the hair, but
they also have the appropriate products. One can look at how they do it,
but we will never be able to do it as they do it, because for them its natural.

An adoptive mother advised others to contact black women when they took their
children to the park because it was the only way of learning how to handle kinky hair.
Another mother regretted not being able to get the appropriate products because she
lived in a small town without black immigrants. All the mothers were very pleased
when people from Africa, Haiti or South America commented on how good her girls
hairstyle looked.
Natural is also the adjective used to describe the inner rhythm that parents
perceive in their daughters (cf. Tyler 2003). A father of a two-year-old girl, adopted
in Central Africa, mentioned that some colleagues with whom he had been on a trip
were very surprised, as was he, by the way his daughter received him at the airport.
She did, according to him, an African dance full of natural rhythm. Parents also
describe the natural ability of their daughters from Africa to eat delicately with their
hands, forming a sort of bowl with them instead of a plate. The references to the
tastes, natural rhythmic musical skills and natural energy said to be characteristic
of children adopted in Africa and Haiti are as frequent as the references to the
natural meekness, intelligence and serenity of girls adopted in China.

Final Remarks
Adoptive families, individually or as part of an association, build and maintain bonds
with the country and culture of origin of their children. They often go to the
countries and they typically become consumers of some of their cultural products. It
is evident that they are building bridges with those countries and cultures. This goes
hand in hand with the perception that the children, when adopted transracially, are
very different from themselves. Adoptive parents create an ethnic construction of
their adopted children and also an ethnic self-construction, which places them as
white. With the exception of parents who have adopted Caucasian children in
Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, most adoptive parents, when they talk
about an interracial adoption, refer to the child as having different origins or as
being very ethnic or ethnically different. The notion of race is replaced by the
notion of ethnicity (Stolcke 1993, 1995; Wade 2002), even when referring to
peoples ideas about phenotypical difference. Childrens differences are linked, in
general terms, to their cultural origins or country of origin with no explicit
mention of racial difference but with reference instead to different traits. Evidently,
this does not happen exclusively in Spain. Volkman (2003) describes American
parents fascination with the imagined birth culture of their adopted children.
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Transnational Adoptive Families Views in Spain 89

Interestingly, and in order to point out the ambiguity found between cultural
origins and physical traits, Volkman began her article quoting Isabelle, a six-year-old
adopted girl in first grade in a New York city school. The little girl explained to her
mother that she had made a list of children she knew that were like her, adopted. The
mother asked her what those children looked like, and she replied: Chinese.
International adoptions always cross lines of nation and ethnicity, but when
adoption involves visible, racialized differences between children and parents, the
communities created around them and the associations of international adoptive
families try to become more and more visible and vocal (Volkman 2003: 30). Clear
examples of this are Spanish and U.S. families adopting in China and Spanish
families adopting in Ethiopia and Haiti. The opposite is true for the Spanish
association of families adopting in Eastern Europe and Russia, the most recent one
to be created and the least active one, despite the fact these regions were the second
most common place of origin for children in 2004 (after Asia), and the most
common in 2000, 2001 and 2003.
It seems clear that this contrast derives from the way culture is mobilized to
cope with a silenced form of race. The striking concern of parents with the culture
of origin of children whose physical difference from themselves takes a racialized
form even if, as in Spain, race is not an overt part of public discourse about
difference is surely a reaction to the perceived ineradicability of that difference.
Whatever the importance attached to a culture or country or origin, however, from
the parents point of view, these are always seen as worse than the adoptive country
and culture. The underestimation of a place or culture, which on the other hand they
insist that they want to keep alive for their children, is a paradoxical aspect of the
kinning process that, in interracial adoption, is probably the most difficult part of
adoption (Howell 2004). It indicates that the culture of origin responds to parents
needs rather than to the realities of life in the country of origin, which are seen as
something to be escaped from. It seems that Weil was right when he said that
children rarely maintain elements of their native cultures even when adopters
make strong efforts to preserve their childrens original heritages (Weil 1984: 277).
Interestingly, however, culture appears in these accounts as something heritable,
often in a powerfully naturalized and quasi-biological way, and I would argue that
this is related to the fact that culture is clearly standing in for the phenotypical traits
and racialized differences that parents discourses are so concerned with. There is no
clear distinction in these discourses between elements that are seen as heritable which
manifest themselves phenotypically, such as hair, eye and skin type; elements seen as
heritable which are thought to be internal but manifest in external behaviour, such
as natural rhythm, meekness, energy, intelligence or other intrinsic skills; and
elements which are cultural but still inherited, such as an automatic link with a
culture or language of origin. All these elements seem to form part of the baggage
that adopted children are thought to bring with them, even when adopted as babies.
With reference to the classic Western nature/culture dualism, things biological and
things cultural become very hard to separate from each other in practice.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank to Peter Wade for his comments on this chapter and for his help in
preparing the manuscript.

Notes
1. Elsewhere I have developed the analysis of kinning and belonging among adoptive parents
and their children (Howell and Marre 2006; Marre and Bestard forthcoming; Marre and
Bestard 2004).
2. Abortion may only be legally performed if the health of the woman or the foetus is in
danger or if the pregnancy is the result of rape. Proposals to legalize abortion on demand
have been rejected several times.
3. Also, the marriage rate decreased from 7.60 per cent in 1975 to 5.04 per cent in 2004,
currently at the average EU rate. Maternal age at the birth of the first child, on the other
hand, has increased from 28 in 1976 to 31 in 1997, the highest in the EU. Now the birth
rate is increasing mainly because of the high birth rate of immigrant women (15 per cent
of the total births in 2004). Nevertheless, today the Spanish birth rate is 1.32 children per
woman compared to the EU average of 1.5 (La Vanguardia, 25 October 2005).
4. This situation produces a certain feeling of failure that makes national children remain
institutionalized until they reach adulthood, according to the former President of the
Catalonia Autonomous Community (keynote address to the conference on Adoption in
Catalonia and International Adoption: Complexities and New Horizons, 2931 May
2003). By June 2006, in Catalonia, there were 6,649 children in government care (see the
website of Generalitat de Catalunya, Departament de Benestar i Famlia, Atenci a la
Infancia i lAdolescncia: Dades estadstiques de l'atenci a la infncia i l'adolescncia,
which is at http://www.gencat.net/benestar/dgaia/estai.htm.
5. Actas del Senado sobre la Comisin Especial sobre la Adopcin Internacional, 7 October
2002; http://www.asfaru.org/pagines/comisionsenado.htm.
6. Actas del Senado sobre la Comisin Especial sobre la Adopcin Internacional, 23
September 2002; http://www.asfaru.org/pagines/comisionsenado.htm.
7. Interestingly, during 2003, the Autonomous Communities of Madrid and Catalonia
reopened domestic adoption closed since 1996 because there began to be some
children available for adoption, coming from the immigrant population.
8. Adoption is ruled by general regulations constituted by Spanish general law (Ley Orgnica)
and the international regulations to which Spain subscribes, but each Autonomous
Community has its own regulations and direct responsibilities are decentralized. There
are twenty-four government authorities related to adoption in Spain. The Ministry of
Labour and Social Affairs of Spain acts as a communication authority.
9. The modification of this requirement is one of the associations main priorities. The
administrations argue that, since their main priority is the minors well-being, it is
necessary to look for the best parents, taking into account the minor and his/her country
of origin. The associations claim that, since they are already sufficiently discriminated
against by having to obtain a certificate that is not required of biological parents,
suitability should be considered in general, not for a specific country. At present,
Catalonia is one of the few Communities which allows people to start simultaneous
procedures for more than one country.
10. ECAI stands for Entidad Colaboradora de Adopcin Internacional.
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Transnational Adoptive Families Views in Spain 91

11. I found a widespread belief among adoptive parents that the authorities in countries of the
former Soviet Union tended to expedite the adoption of children with health problems.
12. The issue of corruption appears in two recent movies, famous among adoptive families,
about international adoption, shot in the U.S.A., La Casa de los Babys (John Sayles,
2003), and in France, Holy Lola (Bernard Tavernier, 2005).
13. There is no single opinion about RAD: some doctors claim that it exists and RAD-
afflicted children are violent and dangerous, and especially that violent children come
from Soviet bloc, other specialists think that it is exaggeration and unfair stereotype
(Khabibullina 2006).
14. Cartwright (2003) and Khabibullina (2006) agree that FAS is a designation whose
diagnosis, especially in the absence of a child body, is both common and notoriously
tricky because it is a syndrome a set of possible conditions, not a fixed identity ... This
is because FAS features powerfully in both adoption discourse and discussions of cultural
patterns of alcoholic consumption as pathological behaviour. Alcohol consumption is
higher in populations undergoing economic crisis, and maternal alcoholism is one reason
for child abandonment or removal from the home (Cartwright 2003: 97).
15. A medical member of Tarragona Hospitals Paediatric Service referred to the case of
prospective parents adopting in Russia who asked about the health condition of a girl
who had been allocated to them. They gave the physician a domestic video, the
information given to them by the institution when the girl was allocated and their own
reactions when seeing her for the first time in a Russian orphanage. The baby, a sixteen
month-old girl born to a drug-addicted biological mother, had suffered during birth, for
which reason, according to the institutional information, the baby had a physical and
mental age five or six months below her chronological age. Although the physician
decided not to confirm this information to the prospective parents for ethical reasons,
they later decided not continue with the adoption process (Allu 2004).
16. The preference for girls does not seem to be exclusive to adoptive families. An article
entitled Pocos hijos y, si es posible, chicas (Few children and, if possible, girls) reported
work carried out by Margarita Delgado and Laura Barrios on population and fecundity
in Spain. This showed that there was a clear preference for girls, which was more
significant in the case of mothers with university training (El Pas, Sociedad, 6 December
2004, p. 29).
17. Ten years after the first international adoption and the ratification of The Hague
Convention in 1995, the proportions of adopted boys and girls are not known in Spain
nor in any of its Autonomous Communities. In the Spanish Autonomous Community
of Extremadura, 151 minors were adopted from China between 1997 and 2004. Just one
of them was a boy (Morell Bernab 2004). It is informally said that at the time of the first
allocation of Chinese adoptees in Spain, there were many boys, nearly eighteen, four or
five of whom were rejected because they were boys. This news was circulated and
discussed in two or three adoptive parents listservs and chat-rooms, but it never reached
the mass media nor was it confirmed by the adoption services.
18. In 2006 the law on assisted reproduction was modified. The new law did not include a
maximum age limit for women to begin assisted reproductive treatment. Adoptive
families are asking for the same treatment.
19. The Chinese Centre of Adoption Affairs has notified agencies and adoptive families that
they are unable to accept applications for children between two and four years old
because they do not have any children in this age range.
20.Agencia EFE press agency, 22 March 2006; http://www.20minutos.es/noticia/
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92 Diana Marre

102186/0/cataluna/adopciones/internacionales/.
21. I am referring to Autonomous Communities like Catalan or Madrid which have high
levels of international adoption. There are some Autonomous Communities with just one
international adoptive families association.
22. In the case of China, where information about female children is more difficult to obtain,
many adoptive families resort to the services of the U.S.-based adoptive parent of a
Chinese girl, who carries out a search of finding ads. These are reproductions of the
notices that, since 1996, the Chinese authorities have been obliged to publish in a local
journal when a little girl has been found abandoned. Those ads have often more
information than the one we have, a mother said. They are ads with a picture of the baby
girl and, thus, parents consider it to be the first picture they could have of her. As a
mother who was about to receive her baby girl told us: When I get the finding ad from
C., I will let you know. It will be in Chinese, of course, but I will have it translated when
I pluck up the courage to do so. Sometimes one does not know whether one wants to
know more or not. The same father from the United States also offers the service of
filming the place where the baby girl was abandoned and obtaining any information the
orphanage has about the child.
23. This is a general feeling that has been very well transmitted by the two films mentioned
above: La Casa de los Babys and Holy Lola.

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