2 - “Quase da Família” (Almost Family)

Summary

In Chapter 2, the author employs a Goffmanian analysis to reveal the strategic discourses, interactions, and practices that comprise the performances that adoptive families use in order to mask domination. Moving beyond a family’s framing of criação as altruistic, she deconstructs concrete examples that expose how adoptive families exert domination over filhas de criação through the use of symbolic inclusion in family events, the strategic use of racialized “family” language/titles, threats of punishment, and contingent (and paltry) monetary exchanges. The author argues that these strategies sustain the illusion of the full family status of filhas de criação through the cultivation of affective, social, and economic dependency, which women often interpret as family belonging.