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It Takes An (Online) Village: Adoptive Parent Identity Construction Through Blogging, Elise Johansen Harvey

Association of Marketing Theory and Practice Proceedings 2020

There are over 1.5 million adopted children in the U.S. Extant literature primarily examines these adopted children, not their parents, in terms of identity, coping skills, stigma, and more. We know little about how adoptive parents establish their identity as parents without going through the visual and biological transition as women who give birth do. There is a need for research on the intersection of marketplace resources and communication in the formation and confirmation of parental and family identity. We draw on consumer culture theory, which illustrates how consumer coproduce their identity, or sense of self, through market-based materials. In …