Creole Son - by E Kay Trimberger (Paperback)

About the Book

"E. Kay Trimberger integrates memoir, science, and social science to create a compelling story and cautionary tale, exploring through reflection and research her thirty-five-year journey in California as a white single mother of an adopted black/biracial son. When her son was twenty-six, Trimberger helped him reunite with his Louisiana birth families. The families' embrace, and their openness about their lives, lit the spark that led to this book. Trimberger learned that many of her son's cognitive and psychological strengths, and his difficulties with addiction, mirrored those of his birth parents, with whom he had had no previous contact. As a result of this reunion, she began to investigate the role of genetic heritage in adoptees. While most adoption memoirs and social science analysis focus on the loss experienced by adoptees, Creole Son looks at the continuities between birth families and adoptees even when they have never met, and the challenge adoptive parents face in raising a child with traits unlike those of their own birth family. Using her academic training as a sociologist, Trimberger discovered the field of behavioral genetics, where much of the research is done on adoptive families, comparing over time the psychological and cognitive traits of adoptees with those of their birth parents, adoptive parents, and birth and adopted siblings. Findings stress the importance of both biological heritage and environment-and their interaction-in shaping adult outcomes. Adoption researchers have made little use of these research findings. In contrast, Trimberger integrates her story and that of her son with the findings of specific behavioral genetics studies, giving equal weight to the impact of the environment in Berkeley in the 1980s and 1990s-easy access to drugs, a culture condoning their use, a mother ignorant about substance abuse, and a failed experiment in communal living. In an afterword, Trimberger's son, Marc, now in his late thirties, discusses how her narrative and research have helped him better understand his personal journey. 'Creole Son' includes a strong Louisiana presence in Marc and Trimberger's cultural explorations and their interaction with his biological extended families, Creole and Cajun. These experiences lead Trimberger to postulate a new type of extended family, one that integrates adoptive and biological kin-a model that goes beyond current notions of open adoption. While based on only one family's experience, Creole Son addresses issues of contemporary relevance: the possibility, but difficulty, in crossing race and class boundaries; the increasing diversity of family forms; the impact of drugs and violence in the environment; and curiosity about how nature and nurture interact to make us who we are as individuals. It analyzes the implications for all parents, adoptive and natural"--

Book Synopsis

Creole Son is the compelling memoir of a single white mother searching to understand why her adopted biracial son grew from a happy child into a troubled young adult who struggled with addiction for decades. The answers, E. Kay Trimberger finds, lie in both nature and nurture.

When five--day--old Marco is flown from Louisiana to California and placed in Trimberger's arms, she assumes her values and example will be the determining influences upon her new son's life. Twenty--six years later, when she helps him make contact with his Cajun and Creole biological relatives, she discovers that many of his cognitive and psychological strengths and difficulties mirror theirs. Using her training as a sociologist, Trimberger explores behavioral genetics research on adoptive families. To her relief as well as distress, she learns that both biological heritage and the environment--and their interaction--shape adult outcomes.

Trimberger shares deeply personal reflections about raising Marco in Berkeley in the 1980s and 1990s, with its easy access to drugs and a culture that condoned their use. She examines her own ignorance about substance abuse, and also a failed experiment in an alternative family lifestyle. In an afterword, Marc Trimberger contributes his perspective, noting a better understanding of his life journey gained through his mother's research.

By telling her story, Trimberger provides knowledge and support to all parents--biological and adoptive--with troubled offspring. She ends by suggesting a new adoption model, one that creates an extended, integrated family of both biological and adoptive kin.

Review Quotes

By sharing her family's journey, Kay Trimberger sheds light on the issues faced by many of those raising children who struggle with great challenges and offers hope and a new way forward.--David Sheff, author of Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction

Kay Trimberger's personal, intriguing book lays out a compelling case for progressing toward a genuine Extended Family of Adoption, in which ongoing relationships among all the child's relatives-- by birth or through adoption-- become the norm.--Adam Pertman, author of Adoption Nation

Psychotherapists will find this to be a foundational resource in their work with both adoptive parents and adoptees, and an absorbing and accessible guide for their patients.--Ilene Philipson, author of Married to the Job: Why We Live to Work and What We Can Do about It

This book, in the end, is about how heredity and environment are intertwined and can help to provide hope and guidance to other adoptive families.--Jenae Neiderhiser, president of the Behavior Genetics Association

This will be an immensely helpful and deeply personal book for so many, and one I've been looking for these past twenty-eight years.--Meredith Minkler, coauthor of Grandmothers as Caregivers: Raising Children of the Crack Cocaine Epidemic

About the Author

E. Kay Trimberger is professor emerita of women's and gender studies at Sonoma State University and an affiliated scholar at the Institute for the Study of Social Issues at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of The New Single Woman, among other books, and writes the blog Adoption Diaries for Psychology Today.

Andrew Solomon is a professor of clinical psychology at Columbia University Medical Center and the author of the New York Times bestseller Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, among other books.