Somebody's Children

A feminist historian and an adoptive parent, Laura Briggs gives an account of transracial and transnational adoption from the point of view of the mothers and communities that lose their children. Briggs sees adoption as part of larger structures of inequality (poor people do not adopt the children of the wealthy, as she points out). In the U.S., Black, Latina, and Native American mothers are more likely to be pressed to give up their children and in Latin America violence and poverty have spurred less-than-consensual adoptions. Briggs traces the histories of the changing circumstances of such adoptions from the mid-20th century through the present.

Laura Briggs is Chair and Professor of Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is the author of Reproducing Empire: Race, Sex, Science, and U.S. Imperialism in Puerto Rico and a co-editor of International Adoption: Global Inequalities and the Circulation of Children.