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Transcript

The Ecological Model:

All You Can Ever Know

by: Perri White

Word count: 3,005

Introduction

Adoption

Her story

Nicole Chung

Nicole Chung is the main character of her own memoir, All You Can Ever Know. The memoir is a story of love, sadness and identity. Often growing up hearing her mother say, "may be all you can ever know." Nicole explains the phrase to have double meaning. "It hints at the vastness of what can be gleaned—true or false—from an origin story, even as it evokes a sense of permanent loss and incompletion." This memoir confronts the difficulties that Chung faces growing up as an adopted Korean American daughter in a predominately white town in Oregon with white Catholic parents. In the book, Chung discusses her search for her biological family, the events that lead up to her adoption, her identity as a Korean American and the role she plays in her adoptive families life. The book helps readers that are battling between two cultures.

"The sometimes lonely space between two cultues and about how powerful the truth can be." - Nicole Chung

Adoption

Adoption is when a person resumes the parenting of a child from the child's biological or legal parents. The process is an emotional, social and legal process in which a child will not be raised by their birth parents. The child becomes a full-time permanent legal member of another family. Some infants and parents are brought together through a private adoption. A small number of international adoptions involve children born in another country and adopted by American parents.

Specific issue

Adoption cont....

"No matter how they arrived in the family, an adopted child is a child of the parents who adopted them"

adoption cont....

Some children are adopted by relatives or non-relatives from foster care. The use of wording is essential. From the start the adoptive parents should make the words "adoption, adopted, birth family, biolgoical family, foster care, kindship care" part of everyday conversation. There are benefits of adopting a child. Every parent is unique and the benefits can vary from each family. Adopting can both benefit the family and the child in numerous ways.

Benefits of adoption include:

  • Fulfilling lifelong dreams of raising of child
  • experiencing the joy and blessing of adding a child to the family
  • building new relationships
  • continuous learning and growth

For a child....

  • life of opportunities
  • support/new start

Cons of adoption include

adoption cont....

  • cost, grief or loss
  • open and closed adoptions come with challenges
  • if transracial adoption child can have a racial idenitiy crisis

Open adoption allows birth parents to know and have contact with the adoptive parents. Since every adoption plan is unique, mostly everyone even those who have placed their baby or adopted a child have their own defintion of open adoption. Open adoption depends on the level of openness. The expected mothers can talk, meet or even have the family that are raising their child to be present at the hospital. The birth parents have on-going contact with the adoptive parents and the child. The child knows about their adoption and could potentially have direct contact with their birth parents.

Open Adoption

Closed adoption is when an adopted person and their family recevie little to no information about the brith family and the birth family receive little to no information about what happened to the child after the adoption. Closed adoption have been the normal in adoptions up until the last two decades. Placing a child through the colsed adoption approach can lead to denial and identity issues. The child not having ties with their birth family can impact the child numerously.

Closed Adoption

A transracial adiotion is what Nicole Chung had. A transracial adoption is when a child that is of one race or ethnicity is adopted into a family of another race or ethhnicity. Like what was discovered in the book, All You Can Ever Know. There ware cons of transracial adoption. Adopting a child from another race will be incredibly noticeable. Like Niicole she encountered racial discrimination and was bullyied by her peers. Our environment is full of those that are racist and prejudice. The child may experience a loss of culture. Nicole did not know anything about her Korean culture and her adoptive parents refused to emerse her into the culture. Nicole was exposed to negative comments and remarks from those around her because she looked differently.

Transracial adoption

Issue summarized

"The truth was that being Korean and being adopted were things i had loved and hated in equal measue" -Nicole Chung

Nicole Chung was lucky for such a loving family to have adopted her. Despite the love she has for her adoptive family and they have for her, she still felt incredibly alone and unseen. Since her parents did not discuss her adoption and her biological parents, Chung felt uncertain of who she was supposed to be. She often resisted some of her adoptive relatives. They would often say things like: "you're our Asian Princess! and of course we don't think of you as Asian." This was an issue because it made Nicole feel like being Korean was not a good thing but being American wa "right." Just like at school, her adoptive family did made her feel bad about having a transracial idenitity.

Issue summarized

Issue summarized cont...

issue summarized

cont....

Nicole's adoptive family wanted to ignore the fact that she was the product of people from the other side of the wold and unknown foreigners. To her adoptive parents, she was not a daughter of immigrants but instead one of them. "And perharps I never would have felt differently-- perhaps I , too, would have thought of myself as almost white."

The issue of not talking to Nicole about her adoption made her feel like her Korean culture was not important. It give her feel like her identity did not matter. She did not feel like she fit in anywhere. Her adoptive parents though that this was helping her or "saving" her from her birth parents, but really it was damaging her.

Adoptive Parents

Nicole's adoptive parents. Both described to be filled with love and are high religious individuals. They affirm to Nicole as special package from God. Her parents took the colorblind approach to dealing with the adoption. In regards to loving her no matter what she looked like, they would often say, "you were black, white or purple with polka dots." Her surrogate parents told Nicol that her parents gave her for adoption because they thought she deserved more than the life they could get to her. They would purposefully withhold information regarding her birth parents because they were worried that the birth parents would change their mind and attempt to “steal” their daughter back.

Cindy

Family

Nicole's older sister Cindy grew up with her and Nicole's biological parents. Cindy believed that her younger sister died at the hospital so neither of the sisters knew of each other's exstience growing up. Growing up with her birth parents, Cindy experienced a dark upbringing which included physical abuse, violence and a collasping marriage.

Birth mother

Nicole's birth mother is a Korean woman. She had Nicole on May 5, 1981 in Seattle Washington. She was abusive and alienated her child. Nicole refers to her as her "mother" or "parent" instead of "adoptive mom or parent". The first time Nicole spoke to her on the phone, her birth mom says, "This is your mother." She told her children that Nicole died and they did not bring her back from the hospital.

Birth parents

Birth father

Nicole's birth father is a Korean man. He is a published writer and scholar on Korean literature and culture. According to Cindy, he was the one who pushed for the adoption.

The issue of adoption relating to the

ecological factors:

Ecological Factors

Microsystem are the peple and communities with whom an individual comes into direct contact with.

Nicole's adoption has had a huge affect and impact on Nicole and her adoptive parents relationship. From a young age Chung asked her mother difficult questions regarding her adoption. She was adopted at two months old by a white Catholic family in Portland. When Chung sparked the questions regarding adoption, her parents often responded in a religious sense crediting God's will. The adoptive parents not wanting to talk about Nicole's biolgoical family impacts her relationship with her family.

Microsystem

Nicole grew up in a predominately white community. She was severly bullied in her childhood and felt uncertain as to where she "belonged" in society. She encounted racism at school from kids in her class. Though her adoption was never kept a secret, her adoption was an impact functioning in both her peers and at school. She was practically the only Asian that she had ever seen in her community. Since her parents did not discuss her racial idenitity she had to try and navigate it herself. In grade school, Nicole brought in family pictures of her adoptive parents and this sparked the question from her peers of, "Are those your parents? How come you don't look like them? Don't you want to meet your real parents?" She was often teased for being ugly and for having "slits" for eyes. She did not have a well founded friend group that she hung out with. She recalls feeling alone and confined with the same bullies that circled her throughout her childhood. The constant racial discrimination and taunting made school difficult for her. Ultimately, it would have been more beneficial for Nicole's adoptive parents to have talked to her about her adoption. This openness could have helped Nicole with her racial idenitity and discimination she faced from her peers at school.

cont....

cont....

The book is told from Nicole's perspective but sometimes we hear it from Cindy's. As the book progesses, we see that Nicole and Cindy forage a bone. They begin to create a genuine friendship and then it turns into a true sister bond. Cindy and Nicole exchange stories about their upbringings. This relationship is important because Nicole finally receives that bond with a person that looks like her. This helps her navigate through her idenitity crisis throughout the book.

Mesosystem is the communication and relationship between different microsystems (the people close to you in your life). The lack of openness between Nicole's birth and adoptive parents could have been beneficial for Nicole. Had the birth parents and aoptive parents been in communication, this could have helped Nicole with her idenitiy crisis growing up. The contact with the birth family gives the adoptive parents access to medical history. Chung often thought about if she would inheret her birth parents medical condition/history. She blindly has to navigate her medical issues. During her pregnancy she was not able to provide the midwife with family medical history because she did not have any information regarding her biological family. Also, Nicole dicussed her fear for inheriting her birth mothers abusive traits and her daugher experiencing similar feelings of not knowing their genetic history.

Mesosystem

cont...

A postive relationship for Nicole growing up would have been between her teachers and her parents. There was a lack of communication and relationship between these microsystems. Nicole did not discuss to her parents or her teachers about the bullying she faced during school hours from her peers. Both of these adult figures in her life did not know what was going on with Nicole in terms of her mental health regarding her adoption and idenitity issues. The teachers did not communicate to her parents the bullying she received at school. Had her two microsystems been in contact about the bullying that was taking place, Nicole would have been a little happier both at home and in school. If she had these two as support systems when dealing with her bullying about her adoption this could have created more of a postive benefit in her life , she would had better coping skills and healthier life.

There was a lack of relationship that could have benefited Nicole growing up. This relationship would have been between a life coach/psychologist and her adoptive parents. If her adoptive parents were more open about her racial idenitity they would have known that she was struggling with living in a community filled with white people. Nicole did not see people that looked like her. If the parents would have provided Nicole with a life coach that looked like Nicole and knew about her culture this could have helped her overall as a Korean American young woman growing up and navigating in a community filled with white people.

cont...

Exosystem are the physical structures around the person. It influences and impacts the person in one way or another.

Policies and structures: Adoption is a legal process. In the United States apart from limited federal constitutional and statutory law, adoption is controlled by state law. While uniform adoption acts have been proposed for the states, only a few states have adopted them. State law varies in many particulars, but general features of adoption law that are common across most states in the US. The adoption is mostly a matter of state law and there is a limited amount of federal law relevant to adoption.

Exosystem

Nicole was adopted in Washington State so her adoption falls into state laws. Any person may be adopted in the state of Washington. Age or residence does not matter but not everyone is allowed to adopt a child. The prospect parents must be 18 years olf and a legal competent by the court. A family assessment must be passed for child needs. In court, an adoptive parent has to testify that they understand their rights as parents and their obligations.

Nicole's adoption is public record and may be reviewed to anyone. Every state is different regarding who is able to access adoption records. Some people often thought that knowing about adoption records is an intimate matter for the families and could be harmful knowing about the birth parents. The adoptive child knowing about their biological parents could hinder the child from being able to start a new life and integrating into new family life. This state having these records avaiable is important because it can provide the adoptive family with information about the birth family. In Nicole's case this would have been beneficial for her medical history. If these laws were not put in place Nicole would not have been able to find her biological family and would not have been able to reconnect with he sister. These laws made it possible for Nicole and for her child to know and grow up with her aunt (which is incredibly important to her).

cont...

Macrosystem

There is a social issue regarding adoption in our society especially transracial adoptions. People often think that white people adopt children of color to assimilate them to our American culture. Society often people of color see transracial adoptions are unfair because adoptive parents tend to not submerge the child in their culture. They lose their ties to their culture and have idenitity issues because they are not around people that look like them.

On the other hand, society often portrays adoptive children as being lucky to have found a good home and they would have not been able to receive such care with their previous family. This is not true. Some adoptions are not what they seem. Though an adoption can provide a child with better opportunities it can still be a potentially differnt scenario in the sense that the child could be abused or in Nicole's case have zero ties to their culture because the parents take the color blind aproach just like Nicole's adoptive parents did.

“It would have felt like the greatest of betrayals to tell them I didn’tbelong in this place, this town, this life --all they would hear, I felt sure, was that I didn’tthink I belonged in our family” (Chung 35).

cont...

Bibliography

Anon. 2019. “The Complete Guide to Adoption in Washington State.” Andersonhunterlaw.Com. Retrieved June 2, 2021 (https://andersonhunterlaw.com/blog/complete-guide-to-adoption-in-washington-state).

Anon. n.d. “Adoption Laws.” Adopt.Org. Retrieved June 2, 2021a (http://adopt.org/adoption-laws).

Anon. n.d. “All You Can Ever Know Summary & Study Guide.” Bookrags.Com. Retrieved June 2, 2021b (http://www.bookrags.com/studyguide-all-you-can-ever-know/).

Anon. n.d. “On All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung.” Thegeorgiareview.Com. Retrieved June 2, 2021c (https://thegeorgiareview.com/posts/on-all-you-can-ever-know-by-nicole-chung/).

Anon. n.d. Loc.Gov. Retrieved June 2, 2021d (https://www.loc.gov/law/help/adoption-law/unitedstates.php#:~:text=General%20features%20of%20adoption%20law,the%20permanent%20nature%20of%20adoption.).

Chung, Nicole. 2019. All You Can Ever Know: A Memoir. New York, NY: Catapult.

Chung, Nicole. 2021. “My White Adoptive Parents Struggled to See Me as Korean. Would They Have Understood My Anger at the Rise in Anti-Asian Violence?” Time, March 22.

Helmer, Diana Star. 1999. Let’s Talk about Adoption. New York, NY: Rosen Publishing Group.

References

Rosenhaus, Nancy. 2015. “What Is Open Adoption?” Adoptionswithlove.Org. Retrieved June 2, 2021 (https://adoptionswithlove.org/birth-parents/what-is-open-adoption).

Waldman, Katy. 2018. “Nicole Chung’s Adoption Memoir, ‘All You Can Ever Know,’ Is an Ode to Sisterly Love.” New Yorker (New York, N.Y.: 1925), October 9.

Wikipedia contributors. 2021. “Nicole Chung.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved June 2, 2021 (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nicole_Chung&oldid=1025443090).

Williams, Holly. 2020. “Nicole Chung: ‘If My Life Were Fiction, You Would Not Believe It.’” The Guardian, June 27.

Bibliography cont..

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