Ethnic and racial socialization of internationally and/or transracially adopted children has been widely recognized as a viable and important social work practice area in the adoption community. Increasingly, adoption social work professionals and adoption agencies advocate for the importance of connecting children who have been adopted internationally and/or transracially to their birth culture. However, awareness of what constitutes good social work practice in this area is minimally informed by research evidence. The primary purpose of this study was to identify developmental contextual factors, such as adoptive parents' support of ethnic and racial socialization and neighborhood characteristics, and examine how such factors affect transracially adopted Asian children's ethnic identity development and psychological well-being. Using a web-based survey design, the study recruited 100 Asian adoptees, between the ages of 14-26 from adoption family support groups on various Internet e-mail "listservs". The results showed that while ethnic socialization was directly and negatively associated with adoptees' psychological well-being, the effect of racial socialization was positive. The finding suggests that parental efforts for socializing children to their ethnic culture facilitate adoptees' ethnic identity development, which in turn, decrease adoptees' sense of marginality and, thereby increase adoptees' self-esteem.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PITT/oai:PITTETD:etd-06042008-114616 |
| Date | 04 June 2008 |
| Creators | Mohanty, Jayashree |
| Contributors | Lambert Maguire, Christina Newhill, Kevin H. Kim, Gary F. Koeske |
| Publisher | University of Pittsburgh |
| Source Sets | University of Pittsburgh |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-06042008-114616/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Pittsburgh or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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