Intentional Kinship through Caring Relationships, Heritage, and Identity: Adoptive Parents’ Inclusion of Non-Biological and Non-Affinal Relationships on Family Maps

Abstract

Structural open adoption has been beneficial to adoptees in integrating their birth heritage and identity. Adoptive parents also may sometimes seek out others who are neither related biologically nor through partnership to support their child in developing an integrated sense of identity. To what extent do these intentional kinship relationships become incorporated within the adoptive family network and how do adoptive parents view their role in their child’s life? Qualitative data on family inclusion of non-biological and non-affinal kin are reported from interviews with lesbian, gay, bisexual, and heterosexual adoptive parents (n = 25 families). Analyses of verbal and visual data from family map drawing interviews indicated that adoptive parents from the different types of families similarly included intentional kin in their conceptualization of their child’s family. Adopted children’s foster carers, family friends, other adoptive families, and other children and adults were specifically included on family maps to facilitate children’s knowledge of different aspects of their birth heritage and adoption story. The implications of open adoption policy therefore move beyond considerations of only birth family contact. In practice, open adoption procedures convey a broad message to families that appear to widen adoptive parents’ conceptualization of kinship.

Communication about children's origins among same‐gender adoptive parent families in Belgium, France, and Spain

“…Therefore, gay adoptive fathers' likelihood of displaying critical/minimization could represent a greater need to defend against the more severe societal prejudice directed toward gay versus lesbian adoptive parents. Thus, by keeping the psychological presence of the biological conception (represented by their children's birth parents) at a distance, parents affirmed the superiority of “ties of the heart,” or intentional kinship, and countered a heteronormative construction of family (Costa et al, 2021; Messina & D'Amore, 2018b). The overrepresentation of a critical/minimization position among Belgian participants can also be understood in relation to their children's age (Carone et al, 2021).…”