nprfreshair:

Kathryn Joyce tells Dave Davies about the different understandings of the word “adoption” in different cultures:

The U.S. — the American — understanding of what adoption means is not universal. This is not the same idea or tradition that people have in other countries. There is a sort of adoption tradition in Ethiopia, but it’s more like a guardianship: Your children are going somewhere for a time for a better opportunity and they will probably return, but there is never a severing of family ties which, in American adoption, that is kind of the cornerstone of the entire process is that this is a complete transferal of parental rights from one family to another and that does not exist in other countries.

Image via Big Think/U.S. Department of State

Read her piece from the May/June issue of MoJo.