Narrating Adoption: Resisting Adoption as “Second Best” in Online Stories of Domestic Adoption Told by Adoptive Parents

Leslie A. Baxter · Kristen Norwood · Bryan Asbury · Kristina M. Scharp

54 citations0/0 files storedJournal of Family Communication

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Child Welfare and Adoption Family Dynamics and Relationships Media Influence and Health

Abstract

Framed in narrative theory and relational dialectics theory, one hundred online stories of domestic adoption told by adoptive parents were qualitatively analyzed, revealing four primary discourses of adoption that challenge the idea that adoption is a second-best way to parent. Narrative beginnings were dominated by a discourse of adoption as a valuable alternative to pregnancy. Narrative middles-and-ends featured two discourses of how the adoption process unfolds: adoption as a worthwhile struggle guided by destiny and adoption as a smooth and predictable process. Intertwined with these process-oriented constructions of adoption was a discourse of adoption as communal kinning, which emphasized a hybrid family form comprised of both biological and nonbiological ties.

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2006Using thematic analysis in psychology 1985Naturalistic inquiry 2007Narrative Methods for the Human Sciences 1984Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics 2008Narrative Methods for the Human Sciences 1982The Dialogic Imagination. Four Essays by M. M. Bakhtin 1985Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics 2009Basic Elements of Narrative

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