Adoptees’ Partners’ Conjugal and Coparental Experiences and Their Attitudes Towards Adoption

Abstract

Adopted adults are presented in the literature as being particularly vulnerable from a mental health and attachment perspective. This could affect their experience of romantic relationships. To our knowledge, however, no data directly concerning adoptees’ partners are currently available. We then explored their conjugal and coparenting experiences and attitude toward their partner’s adoption through semistructured interviews with 10 partners of adoptees, and submitted their responses to thematic analysis software. We then assessed their attachment, dyadic coping and coparenting using standardized scales. Results revealed highly contrasting experiences. Although the participants showed normal scores for all scales and although half of the sample did not consider their partner's adoption as risk factor, for a few participants adoption was a source of marital conflict, particularly around the issues related to the search for origins. Future research should examine dyadic issues such as the search for origins and choice of partner.

Keywords:

• attachment
• coparenting
• couple
• romantic relationship
• thematic analysis

Acknowledgments

We would particularly like to thank the nonprofit organizations La Voix des Adoptés, EFA 13, AFOR, Racines Coréennes and Le Mouvement Retrouvailles for telling their members about our research protocol. We also thank Léa Plessis, Mathilde Grillo, Mathieu David and Elisabeth Portier for their careful reading of our manuscript and their constructive comments. No funding was received for the present research.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 There are many definitions of resilience (ability, functioning, balance or personality trait), but in this study, it can be defined as the ability to maintain normal psychological and physiological functioning despite exposure to stress and adversity (Elbau et al., 2019).

2 In France, Aide Sociale à l'Enfance (ASE) is a public service for children and families with acute educational or material difficulties. It takes care of children either in their own homes or in foster families.