Archive for February, 2008

Seeing Pink: Gender Stereotyping in Toys

Published by
joi
February 26, 2008 in Articles, For Parents and Race and Identity. 2 Comments

From Anti-Racist Parent & Rice Daddies:

Seeing Pink: Gender Stereotyping in Toys

Before my daughter was born, I knew what kind of father I wanted to be for her. My babygrrl was going to be raised to be a fierce, strong woman of color. I was going to make her iron-on onesies emblazoned with portraits of Yuri Kochiyama, Angela Davis, and Frida Kahlo. Her toybox would be filled with both dolls of color, preferably made by either anti-corporate crafters or small indie companies, and things traditionally coded as “boy�? like trucks and cars and tools. Both toy guns and Barbie would be equally verboten in our home, and her closet would be a pink-free zone. I knew the constricting, restricting and damaging messages the world would soon bombard her with about race and gender, and dammit if I wasn’t going to all I could inside our home to inoculate her against them.

So yeah, it would’ve only served me right to have been gifted with a stereotypical “girly girl,�? a little karmic payback for putting all my crap on my poor baby’s head before she was even born. That hasn’t happened, luckily Continue reading ‘Seeing Pink: Gender Stereotyping in Toys’

2 Articles on Changes in International Adoption in the US - Adopting from Vietnam, and a Rise in Domestic Adoptions.

Published by
joi
February 11, 2008 in Articles and For Parents. 0 Comments

Here are two related articles about changes in international adoption, and the effects on domestic US adoption-

From the New York Times:

Eyes like black pearls, the softest skin and little tufts of hair made it totally easy to fall in love at first sight. And that is what Julie Carroll — and Jewel McRoberts and Tommi-Lynn Sawyer — did when they saw the three tiny girls at a Vietnamese orphanage. They adopted the babies after months of waiting and then had to leave them behind because they could not obtain entry visas to bring them back to the United States.

That was almost four months ago, and the families last week began a public campaign to press the State Department to let them bring Madelyn Grace, Eden and Anabelle to the United States. Enlisting the help of the senators from California, where two of the families live, the adoptive parents argue that they have been unfairly caught in diplomatic wrangling between the American and Vietnamese governments over concerns about corruption in the adoption process that led to the suspension of Vietnamese adoptions from 2003 to 2005.

“What has happened to us is completely unconscionable,� said Mrs. Carroll, who, along with her husband, Steve, and her three other children, traveled from their Camarillo, Calif., home to campaign for a 10-month-old sister, now in foster care in Vietnam.

“We don’t have a problem with them investigating the adoption,� she said, “but we have proved there is not a shred of corruption involved in it.�

Read the full article here: Families Adopting in Vietnam Say They Are Caught in Diplomatic Jam

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From USAToday:

Dana Kollmann and Robert Wall adopted two boisterous baby boys from Guatemala.

“They fight all the time,” says Kollmann, laughing about her sons, now 3 and 4. “They’re perfect.”

The Catonsville, Md., couple wants a third child, but the U.S. government is discouraging adoptions from Guatemala because of concerns about fraud and baby-stealing. They don’t want to adopt from Asia, Europe or Africa because they don’t have ties there. Both have worked as archaeologists in Central America.

[…]

Like Kollmann and Wall, many Americans are considering domestic adoptions of babies and foster-care children because of growing waits, restrictions and uncertainties in adopting abroad, according to a USA TODAY survey of a dozen of the nation’s largest adoption agencies.

Read the full article here: Those hoping to adopt look closer at U.S. options