Contemporary Forced Adoption Policy in Denmark and Norway: Rationales for the Biopolitical Regulation of Reproduction and Kinship

ABSTRACT

This article presents a critical reading of Norwegian and Danish contemporary forced adoption policy as biopolitical regulation of reproduction and kinship in the Nordic welfare state. The analysis investigates how contemporary forced adoption policy has been shaped through legislative amendments from the early 2000s to the present and discusses central rationales behind the policy of forced adoption. Over the period, two amendments to the Danish and Norwegian laws were decisive for how forced adoption is practiced and lead to significant increases in forced adoptions per year. The 2009 amendment in Norway, relied on a rationale of safety and stability, which positions forced adoption as the scientifically optimal choice for the child underpinned by ideals derived from development and attachment psychology. The 2015 amendment to Danish law relied on the rationale of exception, asserting the indisputable necessity of forced adoption. Additionally, it built on the rationale of probability to make live of a future in which the child belongs to the adoptive family while first kinship is terminated.

KEYWORDS:

• Forced adoption
• biopolitical regulation
• reproduction
• kinship
• Nordic welfare state

Introduction

In her 2020 New Year’s speech, Danish social democratic Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen articulated her ambition to “give more vulnerable children a new home”¹ by increasing the number of children placed in care through removal or forced adoption (Regeringen, 2020). The political commitment to promote forced adoption as a social services intervention subsequently found legislative expression in the 2021 “Children First” (Børnene Først) reform, which extended forced adoption rules to apply as early as before the child’s birth. The reform was enacted into law in 2023 (Barnets Lov, 2023; Regeringen, 2021). Concurrently, successive amendments to Danish forced adoption laws have facilitated a rise in the number of forced adoptions from 9 cases per year in 2018 to 37 cases in 2022 (Ankestyrelsen, 2023).

Forced adoption is one of the welfare state’s most extensive interventions as all juridical ties between the child and the first family are ended making the adoptive parents the child’s only juridical parents. Norway and Denmark are the only Nordic states that practice forced adoption, sharing highly similar policies. While Denmark is still in the process of establishing its forced adoption practice, Norway has had a more consolidated practice with about 60 forced adoptions per year in the period 2014–2018 (Bufdir, 2022). The higher number of cases in Norway has resulted in several convictions in the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) for violating Article 8 on the right to family life, and in the case of Abdi Ibrahim v. Norway, likewise to allegations of violating Article 9 concerning freedom of thought, belief and religion (Faye Jacobsen & Hjaltason, 2021). Consequently, Norway has adjusted its forced adoption practice to require “weighty reasons” (tungtveiende grunner) (Vedtak til lov om barnevern, 2021), leading to a drastic decrease in the number of forced adoptions per year with just 7 cases documented in 2022 (Bufdir, 2023).

In the present article, I analyse contemporary forced adoption in Norway and Denmark as biopolitical regulation of reproduction and kinship. First, I situate forced adoption policy within the context of the Nordic welfare state and review existing research on this policy. Second, I outline my theoretical and methodological approach, which provides the tools to discuss the research questions: How has contemporary forced adoption policy been shaped through legislative revisions? And what are the central rationales behind contemporary forced adoption policy? My analysis draws on an archive of Norwegian and Danish legislative amendments, parliamentary debates and preparations from the early 2000s to the present and I identify two central legislative amendments. Focusing on the two decisive amendments, I analyse the most significant rationales behind contemporary forced adoption policy in Denmark and Norway.

Situating Forced Adoption Policy

In both Norway and Denmark, political reforms, guidelines and legal amendments since the early 2000s have intensified the political and regulatory pressure on social authorities to implement forced adoption as an intervention. In these contexts, each case of forced adoption is initiated by the municipal child welfare service and must then gain approval from the relevant board of appeal (Ankestyrelsen in Denmark and the county social welfare board Fylkesnemda in Norway) before the adoption can be executed. First parents have a right to juridical review (Barnevernloven, 1992; L 155 som vedtaget, 2019).

Prior to 2017, Denmark registered only one to two forced adoptions per year. However, after this point, the numbers started to rise steadily, reaching 30 in 2020 and 37 in 2022 (Ankestyrelsen, 2023). In Norway, the number of forced adoptions reached a peak of 74 adoptions in 2018. But, following the ECHR convictions, the numbers have declined to 11 in 2021 and 7 in 2022 (Bufdir, 2023). Nonetheless, the 2023 Norwegian expert report NOU: 7 on legal rights for children and parents in the child welfare system, suggests that ECHR convictions do not necessarily impede the practice of forced adoption. Rather, the report maintains that forced adoption is in the best interest of the child as a guarantee of stability and safety and inquire for possible alternatives (NOU 2023: 7, 2023).

In the Norwegian and Danish contexts, contemporary forced adoption policy is associated with a so-called ‘child-centred’ approach to social and family policy. The child-centred approach has a strong impact on modern Nordic policy and implies the discursive and institutional acknowledgment of the child as an autonomous rights-bearing individual (Bekkengen, 2011). At the same time, the so-called biological principle, which implies that children should grow up with their parents and that contact should be maintained if parents and children cannot live together, continue to guide child welfare policy.

Researchers have noted that Nordic welfare state policies increasingly intervene at the level of the family, enforcing normative ideals of the white, middle-class family (Keskinen, 2017). Social reforms and benefit reductions have increased child poverty rates in both Denmark and Norway, and low-income families are significantly overrepresented in the child protection system (Caspersen, 2020; Caspersen & Frier, 2019; Epeland & Normann, 2021; Westby, 2021). State welfare provisions are increasingly based on ethnic/racial criteria alongside policies that racialise family practices among minority groups as illegitimate, and ethnic minority families are disproportionately under social services scrutiny and suspicion (Handulle & Vassenden, 2021; Padovan Özdemir & Moldenhawer, 2017; Regeringen, 2021; Skytte, 2016). Forced adoption excepts municipalities from the economic responsibility for the child that is instead transferred to the adoptive family. This creates substantial economic incentives for municipalities to support forced adoption and in Denmark forced adoptions have primarily occurred in poor municipalities that face budgetary constraints.²

Existing research on Nordic forced adoption is closely aligned with policy narratives. A large portion of the literature consists of reports commissioned by state institutions, which are often authored by the same researchers contributing to academic literature on the subject. A number of reports review the impact of forced adoption on development and attachment in adopted children (e.g. Christoffersen et al., 2007; Gärtner & Heggland, 2013; Henze-Pedersen & Rasmussen, 2022), as well as the implementation of forced adoption by social services and possible obstacles to its extended use (e.g. Ankestyrelsen, 2018; Helland & Skivenes, 2019). The academic literature on Norwegian policy is growing, for example in relation to the national and international legal apparatus (Breen et al., 2020; Burns et al., 2019, Helland, 2021b; Skivenes, 2010), social policy (Helland et al., 2020; Tefre, 2020a, 2020b), and implementation by social services (Helland, 2021a; Helland & Nygård, 2021; Helland, 2020; McEwan-Strand & Skivenes, 2020; Skivenes & Tefre, 2012). This research promotes a consensus that forced adoption is a legitimate means of improving outcomes for children, with some authors explicitly advocating for its increased use in Norway (e.g. Helland et al., 2020; Skivenes, 2010; Skivenes & Tefre, 2012). In this article, I aim at denaturalizing the established rationales behind the extension of this policy in both countries, thereby facilitating a critical analysis of contemporary forced adoption.

Theoretical Framework and Conceptualisation

For this article, I employ the Foucauldian term of biopolitics, which entails attention to the mechanisms and strategies of power, applied to what Foucault (2003) described as the political problem of population. Biopolitics works through the project of optimization of life, that is, the process of making live and letting die. Applying a biopolitical analytics to forced adoption policy, I investigate how reproduction and kinship, as regulated by the state, make certain lives and kinships liveable and others unliveable through schemas of gender, race, sexuality, ability and class. Inspired by Judith Butler’s (2016) framework of “grievability”, I understand (un)liveability as demarcated by state power that makes certain lives, families, or kinships worthy of protection, while leaving others to hover in the sphere of non-being, never being able to be lived, and therefore not possible to consider lost.

Considering forced adoption as biopolitical regulation of reproduction and kinship, I align myself with scholars who have approached transnational adoption as, for example, reproduction policy and biopolitics (Hübinette, 2020), affective biopolitics (Myong & Bissenbakker, 2021) and reproductive governance (Briggs, 2013; Stuvøy & Myong, 2023). Critical transnational adoption studies have probed the intersection of kinship and race and how children are made adoptable through processes of racialization that determine what counts as desirable kinship (Kroløkke et al., 2016). Research in transnational surrogacy and reproductive technologies have likewise provided clues to understanding forced adoption as regulation of reproduction, kinship and population (e.g. Dahl & Andreassen, 2023; Smietana et al., 2018). In this article, I draw on this body of critical conceptualizations of reproduction, kinship and family as entangled with global and local hierarchies of race, gender, sexuality, ability and class (Kroløkke et al., 2016; Smietana et al., 2018).

Barker (2017) introduced the term “benevolent violence” to describe those situations in which coercive means are used to uphold the welfare state’s ameliorative goals and where the welfare state’s ameliorative practices have violent effects. This concept makes it possible to discuss how forced adoption, despite, or perhaps because of, its discourses of benevolent intent leads to forms of violence.

Colonial reproductive violence and eugenics, including practices of forced sterilization and forced adoption, have historically been components of Nordic reproductive politics (Blaagaard & Andreassen, 2012), with specific national trajectories in Norway and Denmark. This history exemplifies how the reproduction, family and kinship formation of some groups are encouraged and supported by welfare state policy while those of others are ignored or subjected to violence. While the colonial and eugenic precursors to current reproductive politics are beyond the scope of this article, they remind us how biopolitical regulation of reproduction is intrinsic, rather than foreign, to Nordic welfare state politics.

Method and Materials

Comparisons and exchanges between the Norwegian and Danish contexts are present in reports and policy documents (see, e.g. Helland & Skivenes, 2019; Institut for Menneskerettigheder, 2020; Socialforvaltningen, 2017), and the laws of both countries share numerous similarities. However, the Norwegian and Danish policies are not identical, and it follows that what the two policies can say about each other has important implications for understanding the political investment in the extension of forced adoption.

My analysis draws on an archive of legal amendments and parliamentary debates in Norway and Denmark from the beginning of the 2000s, when contemporary forced adoption emerged as a subject of political debate, to the present. The collected materials consist of amendments to the law on forced adoption, parliamentary discussions of these amendments as well as the preparatory documents for these amendments and their appendices. The selection of materials was structured according to the points in time when legislation on forced adoption was discussed and/or amended by the Norwegian and Danish parliaments and governments. In Norway, contemporary forced adoption appeared as a subject of debate in the early 2000s, with its first discussion in the Storting in 2002 and the law was amended once in 2010 (Barnevernloven, 1992, § 4–20 a; St.meld. nr. 40, 2001–2002). In Denmark, the first hearing on forced adoption took place in 2003, and amendments to the law occurred in 2009, 2015 and 2019 (L 105 som vedtaget, 2009; L 121 som vedtaget, 2015; L 155 som vedtaget, 2019; Retsudvalget, 2003). Government-commissioned reports and data obtained through rights of access granted by the Norwegian Fylkesnemndene and the Danish Familieretshuset were also included in the material. Lastly, knowledge production in the form of reports is included, as these inform how policy is shaped and point to how power functions through categorizations and the construction of knowledge (Foucault, 1994).

My analysis is situated in the comparative space between the nation states of Denmark and Norway, and it appears central to apply a comparative approach that can take account of similarity and difference as co-constituted with both each other as well as with my analysis of them. Attending to what Barad (2007) has called “the relational nature of difference”, I am interested in exploring how each rationale can complexify and problematize the understanding of one another rather than in establishing in which ways they are most different or most similar to each other. In my analysis, I have found that the Danish and Norwegian rationales for forced adoption policy highlight aspects about each other. Through their comparison, Norwegian and Danish policies exist in mutual intra-action and must followingly be approached as entangled and informative about each other.

Trenka et al. (2021) point to the marginalization of adoptees within knowledge production on transracial and transnational adoption and they question the universality of knowledge produced by “experts” with privileged positions in the dominant discourses. Accordingly, I find it important to step out of the invisibility associated with expertise and position myself as a PhD Fellow without prior experience of being party to a child welfare case. With this article, I dedicate time and space to a thorough account of how forced adoption policy has been discussed and legally regulated in order to make apparent the field of Nordic forced adoption policy and my own navigational choices in it.

In the following sections, I will first review how forced adoption policy has been shaped through legal amendments in Norway and Denmark, telling the story of “what happened” with the policy and its political operationalization. In these sections, I identify two decisive legislative amendments. Subsequently, I will discuss what I consider to be important rationales for the forced adoption policy in each context of legislative amendment, as established by parliamentary discourse, legal texts and reports. My identification of the rationales is based on extensive readings of the material and analytical considerations of the discursive arguments.

Forced Adoption Policy in Norway

Contemporary forced adoption policy first appeared on the Norwegian political agenda in 2001, with the question of whether contact with first parents should be included as a possibility, in the form of so-called “open adoption” (St.meld. nr. 40, 2001–2002). At the time, the number of forced adoptions per year was decreasing, following the 1996 ECHR judgement in the case Johansen vs. Norway deeming Norway in violation of the right to family life (Tefre, 2020a). The question was raised by the centre-right Bondevik government as a consequence of recommendations from the Supreme Court and the 2000: 12 NOU expert report on the child welfare services (St.meld. nr. 40, 2001–2002). In more detail, the Supreme Court had recommended the possibility of contact with first parents in the context of forced adoption in order to prevent the need to weigh the benefits of contact with first parents against the benefits of adoption when determining the child’s best interest. The 2000: 12 NOU expert report likewise saw contact as a compromise between the benefits of the stability associated with adoption and knowledge of one’s biological origin. As the report stated: “We are here talking about the importance of continuity in the child’s life, or access to what is called the roots” (NOU 2000: 12, 2000, p. 206). However, the government ultimately opted not to introduce a contact provision, as such a provision was anticipated to lead to an increase in forced adoptions, which was not desired at the time.

The discussion about open adoption, and its anticipated increase in forced adoptions, was significant in shaping the Norwegian political debate. During the 10 years that followed the initial recommendation, the political sentiment changed. In 2004, an alteration of the decision-making procedure was initiated by the social democratic Stoltenberg government, removing the adoption authorities in cases of forced adoption and making Fylkesnemda the only decision-making authority (Ot.prp. nr. 64, 2004–2005). While the restructuring aimed at improving and simplifying the procedure in order to avoid lengthy processing times, it entailed a fragilisation of the legal rights of first families and children. Furthermore, the Stoltenberg government encouraged the use of forced adoption by issuing guidelines to the municipal child welfare services in 2008–2009 (Ot.prp. nr. 69, 2008–2009) and again in 2012–2013, following the publication of the 2012: 5 NOU report (Prop. 106 L, 2012–2013).

In 2009–2010, the contact provision in the §4–20 law on adoption in the child welfare services was discussed and adopted unanimously in parliament. The amendment introduced the opportunity for limited contact with first parent(s) in the context of forced adoption, on the assumption that this would facilitate more forced adoptions and thereby increase the number of children made “safe” (Prop. 7 L, 1. Behandling, 2010, p. 2836; Prop. 7 L, 2009–2010). Contact would depend on the adoptive parents’ consent and was not to be granted automatically. Information obtained from rights of access granted by Fylkesnemndene, shows that, contact was appointed in approximately half of all forced adoption cases in the period 2017–2019 and almost all cases in 2018–2019.

As anticipated, the Norwegian contact provision facilitated considerable increases in the number of forced adoptions per year, from 27 in 2011 to 74 in 2018 (Bufdir, 2022). The provision is decisive for how forced adoption has been practiced in Norway and will serve as a focal point for my analysis of the rationales behind contemporary forced adoption policy.

Forced Adoption Policy in Denmark

In 2009, Denmark’s contemporary law on forced adoption underwent its first amendment, aimed at promoting its greater use and extending its applicability. The 2009 amendment expanded the law’s scope allowing for the forced adoption of infants under 1 year and children who had been in foster care for more than 3 years (L 105 som vedtaget, 2009). This modification was prompted by the perception that the existing law was “by and large unemployable”, resulting in 0–2 forced adoptions annually (L 105, 1. Behandling, 2008–2009, p. 2; Lovforslag L 121, 2014–2015). The proposition was adopted by a parliamentary majority, with the aim of securing “stability and continuity” for the most vulnerable children (Lovforslag L 105, 2008–2009). However, the amendment did not have the desired effect of increasing the municipalities’ use of the practice. Thus, in 2014, the social democratic Thorning-Schmidt government initiated another amendment of the law.

The 2014–2015 Danish proposition marked a significant shift in the formulation of forced adoption policy and law in Denmark. The 2015 amendment altered the conditions for forced adoption, requiring it to be made probable rather than proven that the first parent(s) are permanently (varigt) unable to provide adequate care in order for a forced adoption to take place. This brought Danish law closer to Norwegian law, which also relies on the prediction that first parents will be permanently unable to provide adequate care, and thus that the non-adopted child will be destined for long-term foster care (Lovforslag L 121, 2014–2015). However, unlike the 2009 Norwegian amendment, the 2015 Danish amendment was adopted in a less consensual political climate, influencing the nature of the parliamentary discussions.

The 2015 amendment made the estimation that a parent will not be able to provide adequate care in the future the exciting factor for the intervention and not necessarily the actual occurrence of insufficient care in the past or present. It was thereby decisive for the formulation of forced adoption policy and it enabled a drastic increase in forced adoptions from 2 per year in 2017 to 37 per year in 2022 (Adoptionsnævnet, 2021; Ankestyrelsen, 2023). Consequently, this amendment will serve as the second focal point in my analysis of the rationales behind contemporary forced adoption policy.

In 2019, the Danish procedure for forced adoption underwent further change. Similar to the 2005 Norwegian amendment, the decision-making procedure was shortened replacing Familieretshuset with Ankestyrelsen as the sole decision-making authority (L 155 som vedtaget, 2019). This revision, while aimed at expediting proceedings, also compromised legal protection for first families and their children.

Nevertheless, Danish forced adoption policy differs from that of Norway in several aspects. Norwegian law is reliant on the child’s foster family acting as adoptive parents, with the condition that, prior to the adoption, the child must have lived with the foster family and the foster family must have demonstrated the ability to raise the child as their own (Barnevernloven, 1992, § 4–20). In Denmark, forced adoptions to the child’s foster family is relatively infrequent, and the majority of Danish forced adoptions are to families previously unknown to the child, termed fremmedadoption (Ankestyrelsen, 2023). Lastly, Danish law allows forced adoption as a more immediate intervention with the 2009 amendment permitting the adoption of infants under 1 year old and the 2023 law introducing the possibility of forced adoption before the child is born (Barnets Lov, 2023). In summary, Danish practice arguably constitutes a more decisive break with first kinship than the Norwegian approach.

The Rationale of Exception

In the Danish parliamentary debate over the 2015 proposition, forced adoption was spoken of as a “very drastic policy”, “the most intrusive”, and something that “violates everything” (Lovforslag L 121, 2014–2015, 1. Behandling, p. 12). The parliamentary debate reflected a tension associated with carving out a moral position from where forced adoption was an act of care for those children where all other measures were deemed inadequate. Followingly, forced adoption policy was positioned as a state of exception making it possible to suspend the limits of state juridical and political power (Agamben, 2005), under the rationale that protection of the child’s best interest in these cases demanded exceptional state intervention.

A government politician in favour of the proposition and the associated increase in forced adoptions expressed, “[my] thoughts immediately went to those kinds of totalitarian regimes where mom and dad have not been thinking the right thoughts or something and made enemies with the one sitting at the end of the table in some kind of system, and then the children are forcibly put up for adoption. It makes my stomach turn and make all alarm bells ring” (Lovforslag L 121, 2014–2015, 1. Behandling, p. 3). Reading Agamben’s state of exception, Puar (2007) discusses how the mode of emergency created by the state of exception serves as an alibi for liberal democratic governments to disavow the linkages between its mode of government to that of totalitarian governments. It is notable how the government politician, in the quote above, explicitly referred to totalitarianism to construe forced adoption policy as a response to an exceptional situation and distance the policy from the totalitarian form of government, which the policy would otherwise be associated with.

Evoking Barker’s (2017) concept of benevolent violence, the parliamentary debate show how a coercive intervention can be construed as a tool to improve the living conditions of children considered exceptionally vulnerable. Political discourse on forced adoption, most notable in Denmark, but likewise in Norway, employs a language of care and protection from exceptional vulnerability portraying forced adoption policy as necessary and impossible to critique. Consequently, political investment in this policy become difficult to question.

An important difference between the 2009 Norwegian and the 2015 Danish amendments lies in their varying levels of consolidation and consensus at the time of the parliamentary debates. The 2009 Norwegian debate primarily focused on the question of whether or not to include a contact provision in the law, making the justification of forced adoption as an intervention more implied than in the Danish case (Prop. 7 L, 1. Behandling, 2010).

The Rationale of Safety and Stability

Forced adoption policy in both Denmark and Norway rests on the assumption that children subjected to this practice would otherwise be destined for long-term foster care, entailing instability and shifting care relationships. Accordingly, the perceived incapacity of the first parent(s) to be independent, permanent, and primary caretaker(s) incites the elimination of this kinship. The discursive categories of stability and continuity, present in both contexts, work to construe forced adoption as a consolidation of stability and not as a potentially violent disruption with first kinship. However, the rationale of safety and stability plays a more dominant role in the Norwegian context.

The assumption that forced adoption ensures safety, stability, and security for children was central to the Norwegian discourse surrounding the 2009–2010 amendment. According to the 2009 proposition, the Norwegian law on forced adoption aimed at guaranteeing children “stability, security, and permanency” in their care situation (Prop. 7 L, 2009–2010). The subsequent parliamentary debate established forced adoption as a means to liberate children from uncertainty, insecurity and instability, thereby fostering “peace” and “calmness” around the adopted child (Prop 7 L, 1 behandling, 2010). This logic held that vulnerable children require safety and stability, which can be ensured through adoption (Prop. 7 L, 1. behandling, 2010).

The safety and stability rationale is intertwined with scientific rationales that play an important role in the formulation of Norway’s forced adoption policy. To this day, politicians and expert reports employ a safety and stability vocabulary based in development and attachment psychology, to promote forced adoption as a viable intervention. In particular, the Norwegian NOU experts reports 2000: 12 and 2012: 5 laid the scientific groundwork for the political discourse on forced adoption, reinforcing political arguments about stability and safety. According to NOU 2000: 12, research documenting the adverse effects of unstable home conditions had actualized discussions about forced adoption. The report contended that adopted children fare better than those in foster care, due to the higher stability guaranteed by adoption (NOU 2000: 12, 2000, pp. 205–206). The subsequent 2012: 5 NOU report further developed the scientific basis for recommending forced adoption, concluding:

“Based on developmental psychological perspectives and the research-based knowledge about vulnerable children, which we have described in several places in this report, there is a basis for claiming that adoption should be a measure the child welfare service considers in cases involving long-term placements”. (NOU 2012: 5, 2012, p. 130)

The above quotation illustrates how scientific arguments rooted in attachment and development psychology have been leveraged to promote forced adoption. Employing a psychological framework, the NOU reports established “stability” as means of positioning the (adoptive) family as provider of “safe” and “stable” conditions, safeguarding the individual child’s psychological development.

Attachment psychology, originating in the works of John Bowlby, is a source of the language employed in the safety and stability rationale. Central to this theoretical approach are ideals of the nuclear family and exclusive motherhood as decisive for healthy attachment and development, safeguarding liberal democracy and middle-class social order (Rose, 1999). Beyond the context of forced adoption, attachment ideology is also reflected in the Scandinavian field of transnational adoption, where notions of attachment and love conflate, directing adoptees exclusively towards their new adoptive families (Myong & Bissenbakker, 2021). In both cases, attachment serves to erase the ambiguities and depoliticize hierarchies created through adoption.

In both the Norwegian and Danish parliament debates on forced adoption, politicians referred to research concluding that adopted children will have better life outcomes (L 121, 1. behandling, 2015; Prop. 7 L, 1. behandling, 2010). Norwegian and Danish reports (e.g. Bengtsson & Jakobsen, 2009; Gärtner & Heggland, 2013) cross-reference each other and review international and Nordic literature, concluding that adopted children “do better”. Their conclusions demonstrate that efforts to protect children’s individual development and society’s social order are closely intertwined in forced adoption policy, where “doing better” is reviewed in terms of psychological development but also in terms of behavioural problems and reliance on public services.

The 2009 Norwegian contact provision represented a compromise between the so-called biological principle³ and stability for the individual child, which played an important role in the discourse on the amendment. The biological principle posed a juridical obstacle in decision-making on forced adoption, and recommendations from the Norwegian Supreme Court had prompted the inclusion of a contact provision. In the 2009 parliamentary debate, the biological principle was discursively positioned as an impediment to the stability and safety associated with adoption. Thus, through the safety and stability rationale, Norwegian forced adoption came to be associated with a scientific and rights-based approach to social policy vis à vis the biological approach and perceived old-fashioned family values. Accordingly, scepticism towards forced adoption as an intervention was connected with an outdated insistence on parents’ rights to their own children (Prop. 7 L, 1. behandling, 2010, p. 2837).

In summary, the safety and stability rationale has been used to sever the child from its first family kinship relations and individualize the child’s needs. In this process, questions of psychological development and social problems have been foregrounded, while questions connecting children’s vulnerability to class struggle and inequality have been backgrounded.

The Rationale of Probability

The 2015 Danish amendment made forced adoption contingent on the probability of first parents being unable to provide adequate care—presently and in the future. This change brought Danish law closer to the Norwegian, which stipulates that it must be considered probable that parents will be permanently unable to provide adequate care (Barnevernloven, 1992, § 4–20). The probability provision illustrates how the biopolitical process of categorization and regularization functions to predict. Through the probability rationale, forced adoption policy operates by aggregating characteristics implying inadequacy in the first family making it possible to sanction a probable yet unknown future.

The 2015 amendment was adopted in a less consensual climate than the 2009 amendment in Norway. In Denmark, the parliament was more divided on the extension of forced adoption practice, and proponents were consequently occupied with establishing the general relevance of the intervention. At the time of the Danish debate, one to two children were forcibly adopted annually, and critique from left-wing Socialist People’s Party and Red-Green Alliance, as well as the right-wing Danish People’s Party questioned whether the practice should be promoted at all (L 121, 1. behandling, 2015; Betænkning til lovforslag L 121, 2015, s. 2). Because, as in the case of Norway, the anticipated consequence of changing the law was an increased use of forced adoption (Lovforslag L 121, 2014–2015).

In the Danish political discourse, the definition of families potentially impacted by forced adoption played an important role in the argument for its extension. The 2015 proposition lists the characteristics of families potentially relevant for forced adoption as persons with “chronic mental illness”, “personality disorder”, “substance abuse”, “mental retardation”, or the inability to care for other of their children (Lovforslag L 121, 2014–2015, p. 6). The appendix to the 2015 proposition (with anonymized examples of forced adoption cases in the period 2009–2012) and information I have obtained from rights of access granted by the Danish Familieretshuset reveal that families impacted by forced adoption in the period 2012–2019 shared characteristics of so-called mental handicap and/or mental illness (Ministry of Children, Parity, Integration & Social Affairs, 2015). In the parliamentary debate, proponents of forced adoption described those affected by the policy as, for example, having “short circuits in the brain” and being “completely unable to handle only the most basic care for their children”, such as “a chronic substance abuser with for example a serious mental illness” (L 121, 1. Behandling, 2015, pp. 2–3). Physical disability was noted as an exception, for which parents should have the right to receive adequate assistance, and not be subjected to forced adoption (L 121, 1. Behandling, 2015, p. 5). Accordingly, parents considered relevant for forced adoption were construed as those who could or would not benefit from parenting assistance and who were characterized by an inability and indifference towards improving themselves and becoming suitable parents (L 121, 3. Behandling, 2015, p. 4).

In the Danish debate, the discursive and normative establishment of first kinships as not only unliveable but also directly threatening to the child’s well-being worked as a rationale for extending forced adoption practice. First kinship was associated with a “life threatening” lack of love and happiness, with one speaker describing the homes of first families as somewhere she would not “dare be present” (L 121, 1. Behandling, 2015, pp. 2–3, 5, 8, 10). First parent(s) were thus discursively construed as incapable of loving their children, as well as dangerous to children and adult politicians alike.

In the Norwegian parliamentary debate surrounding the 2009 amendment, first kinship was constituted as the opposite of a “stable and predictable” future and associated with being lost in the system (Prop. 7 L, 1. behandling, 2010, p. 2835). In this case, the probability provision worked to discursively impart liveability and futurity to the child through adoption, while first kinship was construed as already unliveable.

Conclusion

My analysis has shown how contemporary forced adoption policy regulates reproduction and kinship through biopolitical rationales, making live of a future in which the child belongs to the adoptive family while first kinship relations are terminated. Norway and Denmark practice forced adoption to varying extents, and my analysis of their two central legal amendments has provided important entry points to understanding the dynamics of the policy in each context, as well as its manifestation as a Nordic welfare state phenomenon.

In the 2009 Norwegian debate, the safety and stability rationale constructed forced adoption as the scientifically superior option for children, relying on attachment and development psychology frameworks reinforcing ideals of the nuclear family and middle-class social order (Rose, 1999). The probability provision, guiding both Norwegian and Danish policy, asserts that forced adoption can take place if it is considered probable that first parents will be permanently (varigt) unable to provide adequate care in the future. This provision was explicitly included in Danish legislation in 2015. In the Danish parliamentary debate surrounding this amendment, forced adoption was established as necessary through the discourse of a state of exception that deflected potential critique. The Danish discourse on the probability provision further relied on the aggregation of characteristics that predicted inadequacy in first families and constructed life in the first family setting as threatening to the child.

Because of ECHR judgements, forced adoption in Norway has been made dependent on “weighty reasons” (tungtveiende grunner) leading to a drastic decrease in annual forced adoptions. This goes against one of the political ambitions behind the 2009 amendment aiming at making forced adoption a more applicable intervention in those cases where first parents are considered “permanently unable to provide adequate care” (Barnevernloven, 1992; Prop. 7 L, 1. behandling, 2010). However, neither ECHR judgements nor the adjustment of Norwegian forced adoption practice have resulted in adjustments of forced adoption legislation or practice in Denmark, where the annual number of forced adoptions continues to rise.

Lastly, my analysis has shown how political discourse and forced adoption laws in both Denmark and Norway marginalize discussion about the structures and policies that render certain kinships impossible in the Nordic welfare state context. This prompts further questions about how specific parents and kinships become associated with predictive markers for an unliveable future and how forced adoption becomes a mechanism for enforcing hierarchies that legitimize reproductive control and violence against parents and children in the Nordic welfare state.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Amalie Sehested Rom

Amalie Sehested Rom is a double-degree PhD Fellow at Centre for Gender Studies, University of Stavanger and Department of Social Science & Business, Roskilde University. Her PhD project approaches the contemporary policy of forced adoption as biopolitical regulation in the Nordic welfare state context.

Notes

1. All quotations from Danish and Norwegians materials are translated to English by the author.

2. In 2018, the Danish municipality of Lolland faced criticism for including forced adoption as an initiative in the municipal savings plan, while also being the Danish municipality with the highest number of forced adoptions (Gade & Madsen, 2018). Alongside the neighbouring Guldborgsund Kommune, Lolland accounted for one-third of the total number of forced adoptions in Denmark between the years 2018–2021 (Gyldenkærne & Borbiconi, 2022).

In Norwegian scientific discourse, forced adoption is also referred to as “adoption from care” (Helland, 2021a; Tefre, 2020a).

3. “‘The biological principle’ is a legal principle which is one of several principles on which the Child Protection Act is based. The biological principle in the context of child protection is linked to two factors: Firstly, the social order that children should grow up with their parents and that the public’s responsibility thus is subsidiary, and secondly that contact between the child and the parents must be maintained even if the child cannot live with the parents” (NOU 2012: 5, 2012, p. 15).