War Born Family

The origins of a transnational adoption strategy that secured the future for Korean-black childrenThe Korean War left hundreds of thousands of children in dire circumstances, but the first large-scale transnational adoption efforts involved the children of American soldiers and Korean women. Korean laws and traditions stipulated that citizenship and status passed from father to child, which made the children of US soldiers legally stateless. Korean-black children faced additional hardships because of Korean beliefs about racial purity, and the segregation that structured African American soldiers’ lives in the military and throughout US society. The African American families who tried to adopt Korean-black children also faced and challenged discrimination in the child welfare agencies that arranged adoptions.Drawing on extensive research in black newspapers and magazines, interviews with African American soldiers, and case notes about African American adoptive families, A War Born Family demonstrates how the Cold War and the struggle for civil rights led child welfare agencies to reevaluate African American men and women as suitable adoptive parents, advancing the cause of Korean transnational adoption.

This is an important book [...] As Graves skillfully and convincingly shows in her book, the experiences and actions of African American couples who adopted Black Korean children form a significant part of the early phase of transnational and transracial adoption from Korea. A War Born Family is thus a rich contribution to the fields of Adoption and Family Studies but ought also to be included in the history of the transnational Civil Rights Movement and Cold War Cultures as well as in discussions on (Black) motherhood and family formations in the 1950s.

Kori A. Graves is Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the University at Albany, SUNY, where she teaches courses on marriage and family, race and gender, and women’s history.