Connecting to birth culture: a phenomenological approach to understanding how transracial adoptive parents address cultural depth

ABSTRACT

Adult adoptees and adoption professionals encourage transracial adoptive parents to provide cultural socialization (CS)—learning about and facilitating a sense of connectedness to children’s birth culture. Research showed that CS is related to positive developmental outcomes. However, recent studies suggested that there were varying degrees of cultural depth in CS (Quiroz, 2012; Zhang & Pinderhughes, 2019). This qualitative study examined how transracial adoptive parents addressed cultural depth in CS. Thirty transracial adoptive parents participated in semi-structured phone interviews. Five themes related to cultural depth were identified using phenomenological analysis. Findings revealed that parents’ cognitions about culture (understanding of adoptees’ birth culture, acknowledgment of limited cultural knowledge, and the belief that “culture is not everything”), and actions that facilitate cultural connections (providing role models, creating diverse context) all varied in depth. This paper discussed variations in CS depth and suggested that a deep cultural connection may provide a foundation for adoptees to pursue their identity development journeys as adolescents and young adults. Social workers can use the findings of this study to guide their self-examination of cultural understanding, as well as to help adoptive parents to provide deeper CS to their children.

KEYWORDS:

• Cultural depth
• cultural socialization
• phenomenological approach
• transracial adoption

Acknowledgments

This research was supported in part by a grant from Tufts University Graduate School’s Students Research Competition.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Tufts University [Graduate Student Research Competition].