The de-kinning of birthmothers: reflections on maternity and being human

Abstract

Bringing together different strands of social analysis - the work on violence and subjectivity, legal anthropology and studies on kinship practices -, I propose in this article to treat a woman's giving away her child as a form of social suffering. Rather than focusing on the more spectacular phenomenon of "traffic" and "abduction" of children, I approach the "everyday violence" in adoption practices. In particular, I propose to demonstrate how legal plenary adoption emerges as a form of state-organized bureaucratic violence that "further burdens experience". Following this line of reasoning, I investigate the "de-kinning" of birthmothers, i.e., the institutionalized effort that goes into undoing the naturalized category of biological motherhood. However, my major question, treated in the second half of this text, will be: how is this process experienced by those most involved? Altogether, my purpose here is to follow through on situations in which the analysis of discourse and practice reveal the ambivalences of social experience, introducing new elements into policy debates, and enlarging on the creative possibilities of kinship's "plasticity".

Scales of grievability: on moving children and the geopolitics of precariousness

“…It illustrates, however, that the object of humanitarian pity really concerns the child as cut off from (worthy) forms of kin. In international adoption, birthparents are erased in the imaginary of 'orphaned' child-bodies (Fonseca, 2011). In the case of child asylum, parents of unaccompanied children are seen as suspect and not worthy of our universally defined notion of family life.…”

Strategies to Personalize and to Depersonalize Donors When Telling about Genetic/Gestational Origins

“…Kirjanmerkkiä ei ole määritetty.). What is more, the principle of exclusive bilaterality which we have considered creates a situation in which the kinning can only be done (or is only conceived to be possible) if de-kinning has previously taken place (Howell 2006;Fonseca 2011;Edwards 2014), with these two processes being the head and tail of the same coin.…”

“…This background can be perceived in the fear that their donor-ART conceived children might emphasize the genetic links that they have with the donors, among other things. Thus, as we will mention shortly, they develop strategies that we have called 'de-kinning', following Howell (2006), Fonseca (2011), andEdwards (2014). 19 As is said later, the other principle upon which this model is based is the principle of 'naturalness' which establishes that the parents are the genitors, that is, the man who has participated with his sperm and the woman who has participated with her egg and uterus.…”

Desestimando demandas en la orientación de los niños a la adopción en los juzgados de familia en la conurbación de Buenos Aires (Argentina)

“…Distintos trabajos han dado cuenta de cómo, a medida que el siglo xx avanzaba, la transferencia de los niños de una familia hacia otra fue institucionalizándose en la ley (Modell, 1994;Ouellette, 1995;Fonseca, 2012). En tanto la adopción fue conceptualizada como una medida de protección para la infancia, el Estado fue ocupando el lugar de redistribuidor de aquellos niños abandonados o huérfanos, aquellos/as niños y niñas "no deseados/as", antes llevado a cabo por particulares en acuerdos informales o por instituciones de la beneficencia.…”