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Purpose: The purpose of this study was to explore relationships among adoption, individual, and family variables on false belief performance of children adopted internationally (CAI). Method: Using a quasiexperimental design, thirty-five 4-year-old children adopted from Asian and Eastern European countries before age 2 years were compared with a U.S. group of 33 nonadopted 4-year-old children on a standardized English-language measure, 3 false belief tasks, and a go/no-go inhibition measure. Results: The adopted group differed significantly from the U.S. nonadopted group in expressive language and false belief performance. For the adopted group, inhibition measures were significantly correlated with core language scores. Core language scores and number of older siblings predicted false belief performance. Conclusions: Similar to children who are not adopted, language competence and living with older siblings positively influenced social understanding in CAI. Because CAI experience interrupted language acquisition and live with fewer older siblings, they are at risk of having weaker language competence and social understanding in their adopted language. When working with CAI, practitioners should assess social communication, language competence, and inhibition skills. They should assist adoptive families in providing socially mentored opportunities for their children to observe and interact with older children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extending previous research (e.g., Baxter et al., 2009) by examining adoptive parents' sense-making of laypersons' conceptions of family, and following Owen (1985), we conducted a metaphoric analysis of twelve focus groups—69 parents with adopted children from either Vietnam or China. Adoptive family as battleground emerged as the primary metaphorical frame that adoptive parents use to make sense of laypersons' remarks about their families. A battlefield with lines drawn between dueling ideologies about family comprises this battleground. Demographers' and scholars' plural views oppose laypersons' narrow conceptions of how families “should be.” Parents understood laypersons' remarks as saying (directly or indirectly) that their adoptive families violated the traditional view of family in terms of: racial dissimilarity between members, construction of family via adoption, and adoption of a child born outside the United States. Laypersons' traditional view is both reinforced and constituted by racist, biologically normative, and nationalist beliefs, which, when instantiated in talk (e.g., racist remarks), represent assaults on transracial, international adoptive families. Our results suggest racism, biological normativity, and nationalism remain dominant in U.S. family ideology. As an implication, we suggest changes to pre-adoptive education to help adoptive families discursively cope with their stigmatized social position. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This interpretive study utilized Owen’s ((1985) Thematic metaphors in relational communication: A conceptual framework, The Western Journal of Speech Communication, 49, 1—13) metaphoric approach to identify and understand the cognitive structures undergirding transracial, international adoptive parents’ sense-making and management of familial and personal identities during interactions that challenge familial and personal identities. Twelve focus groups with 69 parents with adopted children from either Vietnam or China were examined inductively. The results found the metaphors of adoptive parent as protector and adoptive parent as educator manifest in parental discourse. Protectors aim to guard identity, enacting defensive, somewhat reactive discourse, meeting invasive remarks straight-on, using confrontational, strategic, and toughening discourse. Seeking to build identity, educators enact less reactive and more intentional discourse through discourses of preparation, modeling, and debriefing. Based on these findings, we suggest improvements to pre-adoptive training. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An essay is presented on the adoption of Vietnamese children by Americans following the U.S. intervention in the region during the Vietnam War, and political motives behind the adoption. Topics discussed include the U.S. policy for the admission of alien orphans, the Vietnam resistance against the U.S. government-backed Operation Babylift, the mass evacuation of infants and children after the war, and the role of adoption agencies like Welcome House on interracial and international adoptions.

The article reports that the U.S. and Vietnam resolved an official agreement setting the terms for cooperation on adoption of children. The agreement was to stop a suspension on the adoption of Vietnamese children that had been in effect for several years. The new agreement's preamble emphasizes that adoptions should be consistent with the principles of intercountry adoption.