Adult Adoptees as Partners and Parents: The Joint Task of Revisiting the Adoption History

Abstract

Adoption is unanimously considered a lifelong process, but adulthood and parenthood are life cycle stages that up to now have been explored only marginally. The principal aim of the present study is twofold: first, to analyze whether and how parenthood might lead the adoptee and his/her partner to reinterpret the adoption history and, second, to verify whether the attitudes of the two partners concerning adoption are similar or complementary. Thirty-four couples consisting of one adopted and one non-adopted partner, now parents, were interviewed and a graphic instrument, the Double Moon Test, was administered. Results revealed that most couples showed a shared attitude in valorizing both the origin background and the adoptive family. However, in a number of cases a divergent position emerged, highlighting the crucial role of the non-adopted partner in encouraging the adoptee to revisit his/her adoption history. Overall, the practical relevance of the research findings is discussed and future direction of research are suggested.

KEYWORDS:

• adult adoptees
• couple's relationship
• parenthood
• family relations

Notes

¹”Snow ball” sampling is a procedure of selecting participants for a study and is characterized by the fact that the list of persons called to discuss the subject matter is selected by counting on the cooperation of the subjects in the study. Each participant is asked to indicate the name of one or more persons who correspond to a profile defined in the design/drawing up of the study. From this list, it is then possible to proceed with the choice of the persons to be involved in the study.

²The Double Moon Test has been used in some previous qualitative research studies (Greco, 1997; Greco & Iafrate, 2001; Greco, 2006). The process of validation of this test is still in progress and currently involves 100 subjects.

³The terms concordance versus discrepancy in no way refer to the quality of the relationship within the couple.

⁴The drawings have been reproduced here in their original version, minus any personal reference, in order to guarantee anonymity.