Identity and Adoption Across the Life Course: Anti-Racist Approaches to Practice

Undergraduate / Graduate

This course is designed to provide students with a foundational understanding of social work principles relevant to working with adoptive families and adoptees throughout their lives, grounded in contemporary scholarship. Students will critically reflect on their own beliefs regarding family and kinship while being introduced to adoption-specific models of identity and practice, including the adoptee consciousness model (Bronco et al., 2022). Students will explore adoption-related forms of discrimination, such as historical and contemporary epistemic injustices and adoption micro-aggressions, along with learning about adoption-centered identity formation, beyond those that presume biological family relationships. The course aims to equip students with the skills needed to support adoptive families and individuals who are themselves adopted, fostering healing through an understanding of how factors like racism, classism, colorism, war, sexism, policy, colonialism, and capitalism influence adoption. Key topics include the adoption process, attachment, race, biology, identity, adoption-related trauma, and everyday needs for post-adoption support.