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Interwoven Narratives: A Qualitative Exploration of Adult Adoptees Parenting Their Biological Children Across the Lifespan

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Thesis(3.8 MB)

Date

2024

Authors

Field, Julia

Supervisor

Scherman, Rhoda
Hammond, Kay

Item type

Thesis

Degree name

Doctor of Philosophy

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Publisher

Auckland University of Technology

Abstract

The lived experiences of adoptees have been largely unexplored, especially as they progress through their lifespan. The dominant discourse on adoption in Western academic circles and the wider media and society has tended to idealise the adoption experience or minimise its effects, yet the reality from the adopted person’s point of view can be profoundly contrary to this. Adoption also has a fundamental effect on relationships, yet despite parenting being a common life experience and one of adulthood’s core developmental tasks for many people, relatively little has been written on the nature and quality of adopted people’s relationships with their biological children. In addition, there has been a surprising dearth of research examining the lifelong impacts of adoption in such a relational area. I undertook a close examination of the lived experiences of adopted persons who have become biological parents and grandparents. Using a developmental psychology framework drawn from Erikson’s eight-stage psychosocial model, I explored and braided three distinct strands into a coherent whole, held in place by the scholarly structural design. The first strand used an ethnographic approach to allow adopted adults space to narrate in their own voices how they considered being adopted might have affected their parenting as their children grew and matured. The participants comprised nine adults (including myself as researcher) who were adopted in the early weeks of their lives through domestic adoption in Aotearoa New Zealand under a closed system. There were eight mothers and one father, ranging in age from 53 to 71 years at the time of interviews. All had adult children aged from their 20s to their 40s, and six also had grandchildren. The in-depth interviews created emotionally demanding but valued experience for the participants. Interviews were recorded, transcribed, and analysed interpretively and thematically. The second strand comprised a braided autoethnographic articulation and a profound and personal reworking of my lived experience as I juxtaposed the participants’ narratives with my own. The final strand examined the range and breadth of extant theory and research into the life-long effects of closed stranger adoption and adoptees becoming parents. By highlighting the interwoven layers of connectedness between theory and adoptees’ experiences, this research adds complexity and nuance to existing literature, reflecting the profound pervasiveness of adoption across adoptees’ lives. I found that, rather than diminishing with the passage of time, for the participants, issues actually became clearer and better able to be expressed. The findings of this doctoral research provide insights to adopted people, their children and grandchildren—and even to non-adopted persons. The outcomes will also inform those in the clinical realm to develop better therapeutic modalities for this particular population.

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http://hdl.handle.net/10292/18099

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Doctoral Theses