Over the next few weeks, I, Andie the Intern, will share a new blog series with you. There are different ways we approach our education in the Adoption Community. We listen to varied lived experiences. We attend trainings. We participate in workshops and group learning. We surround ourselves with a similar community. We go to therapy. We read the research. But sometimes, the research is not accessible to us, or we can’t read around the statistical reports and analysis, or we just do not understand the clinical jargon. This is where I, and others like me, come in.
Thus begins this blog series created specifically for my field placement here at Adoption Support Alliance: What the Research Says. I will be looking at different adoption-related topics, searching for and reading research, and then sharing the information here for you in language and ways you can understand and implement it into your own adoptive families and lives.
A good researcher will list their conflict of interest at the bottom of their reports. An excellent researcher will list them right away. While I am not a researcher, I will speak to my conflicts of interest right away. I am an adoptee. I will always process first through the lens of an adoptee. adoptees are, and always will be, my priority. My research analysis will always be biased towards centering adoptees. Second, I am an adoptive parent. This does place me in a position of more power in the adoption triad. However, it is not the primary lens through which I function within the adoption constellation. The adoption constellation includes adoptees, biological parents, adoptive parents, extended families, friends, caregivers, and professionals that work with adoptive families. Finally, as a social worker, my focus will always be improving and evolving adoption to make it more ethical.
Without further ado, our series begins with the topic of What the Research Says on Adoptee Identity Development.