Backpack, backpack; Backpack, backpack; I'm the backpack Loaded up With things and knick-knacks, too; Anything that you might need I got inside for you. Backpack, backpack; Backpack, backpack!
Most of the time, the theme songs from the shows my children watch run through my head on infinite loop merely to drive me slowly but steadily crazy.
But every once in a while they exist for a higher, more noble purpose--such as to tune my subconscious into an intellectually fruitful frequency...some spot on the cognitive radio dial that usually comes in very static-y or not at all. Except during those rare and very brief moments when the atmosphere and invisible sound waves admit the tiniest audible communication.
Such was the case a few months ago when I was in the midst of my piloting phase of research. I had been working since 5 am following up on my coding team meeting the day before. I had been trying to nail down what the heck I aimed to capture through the qualitative coding process: How do adoptive lay genetics translate to observable and quantifiable categories? What is the overlap between aspects of these lay understandings and the actual data that I have available to me?
I went back to a key phrase from my research plan, the Dora the Explorer song in my head (Backpack, backpack; Backpack, backpack) thanks to audio from the kids' Dora video seeping into my workspace from the playroom. I wrote down this key phrase above the top line of a blank page of my yellow, three-hole-punch legal pad:
I underlined it. Underneath I wrote:
I thought about that for a minute. Was interrupted by one of my daughters who wanted to know if she could have her cookie from Perkins. Helped my other daughter put in a new tape ("Elmo's World"). Went back to the pad. Crossed out feel and wrote underneath navigate. This is a word that I have read a lot in different accounts of adoptive family life: Adoptive families navigate this and navigate that. I think I even used the term myself in the research plan for my dissertation fellowship. OK, so navigate it is. (Backpack, backpack...)
I scribbled some more stuff on the page and eventually got around to making a list and the list had four things on it:
I had more scribbles where I tried out other words and asked myself questions:
"accessing?"
"Not just accessing--also deals w/evaluation/assessment of info."
"Exercising?"
"Not just exercise--orientation toward control--could decide no control OK."
"Evaluation" or "interpretation"?
So, how might adoptive parents navigate the fact of their lack of genetic tie to their adopted children? (Backpack, backpack...) Perhaps through information, agency, alternate ties, and intentional interpretation of similarities and differences between themselves and their children?
I was pretty excited here because the idea of navigation and the list that contained four items reminded me of a compass and its four main directional orientations. I tore out that page of my yellow three-hole-punch pad and began a fresh sheet. I copied at the top
How do APs orient themselves toward this fact?"
Ahhhh, now it was not navigate but orient--as in directional orientation--because I had in mind the four directions: north, south, east, west.
Backpack, backpack; Backpack, backpack: I'm the backpack loaded up with things and knick-knacks, too...
About this time I realized I had been hearing this song in my head despite the fact that the video had been over for some time. In the margin of my yellow pad, at an angle, I jotted out the words to this little jingle. Above it I wrote
"different tasks" (referring to the oft-repeated statement by many adoption researchers and other professionals that adoptive parents must often perform additional tasks than do parents who are related to their children by birth).
"different tools."
That's what I am getting at--what I mean by how do they orient themselves. They may do this through the use of different tools.
I filled up the second half of the page and a third of the next with this little story:
Were going on a journey: Where do we go in order to view our family situation as compared to the family situation of others? Here's what we decide to take on our journey:Our backpack: We might pack light or we might pack a lot of stuff. We might require very specialized tools, or more general or flexible tools. We might rely more on formal guides, or depend more on our own intuition, or seek out tips from fellow or past travelers. We might be primed to see on the way foliage or birds or rock formations or woodland animals. Of these flora and fauna, we might focus on how they remind us of others we've seen, or how they are more exotic than what were used to. And we may think them beautiful or ugly.
- Information
- Power/control/agency
- Alternate/replacement ties
- Interpretive glasses to view similarities and differences
...anything that you might need, I got inside for you...
Maps and books. Tools. Rope. Goggles. Everything we need to go either north or south or east or west. And from that place we look on our family a certain way--we have a certain "theory" about us as a family, a family that just happens to include parents and children who are unrelated genetically. We look at our family this way because of who we are and where we've been on our journey and the tools that we either already had or found/acquired/fashioned ourselves along the way.
...My thinking about my research journey has changed somewhat since I made these notes months ago. Actually, it is a little embarrassing, the breathlessness that characterizes much of my brainstorming notes. And of course there is still a lot more work to do. These thoughts represent just one step for me towards greater understanding of my research. But as Dora could tell me, any journey begins with just that.
Posted by perry032 at March 4, 2006 07:27 PM | TrackBack