Overview

Scope note: this territory has a literature written largely by the adoptees inside it, and it does not fit in one lesson. Treat this as orientation. Expect to read further, seek consultation, and consider referral or co-treatment.

This lesson covers family configurations that fall outside the two-parent heterosexual nuclear family: kinship adoption, same-sex parent adoption, single parent adoption, and other structures. The adoptee literature on these is still developing, and it's smaller than what exists for transracial and intercountry adoption. Expect to follow the literature as it grows.

Kinship adoption

Kinship adoption is legal adoption by biological relatives, most often grandparents, sometimes aunts, uncles, older siblings, or cousins. The placement usually follows a family crisis: a parent's death, addiction, incarceration, severe mental illness, or child welfare intervention. The adoptee grows up inside a family system where the biological family who couldn't raise them is the family who did.

Many kinship adoptees don't think of themselves as adopted the way other adoptees do, because the family system may never have used adoption language. A child raised by her grandmother may have always called her Mom, and known her as grandmother and parent at once without those being separate identities. The legal adoption may have come later, formalizing what already existed. Adult kinship adoptees often don't present with adoption framing at all; the material shows up around the biological parents, the family system, or the circumstances, without ever being named as adoption.

The original family system is part of the adoptive family system. The biological mother who didn't raise them may be the adoptive mother's daughter, present at family gatherings or conspicuously absent from them. The reasons for the placement are family history the adoptee grew up knowing. Unlike non-kin adoption, the kinship adoptee usually knows exactly who their biological parents are and may have ongoing or intermittent relationships with them.

Identity questions take a particular shape when family members hold overlapping roles: the grandmother who is also the mother, the biological mother who is also the adoptive mother's sister, the cousins who are also siblings. Adoptees may experience this as grounding, or confusing, or hard to explain, or differently at different points in life. The cultural script for what to call whom often doesn't match the actual configuration.

Loss and grief operate inside ongoing relationships here. The adoptee grew up with the aftermath of the crisis, may have witnessed the addiction or the death or the removal, and may have continued contact with a biological parent who couldn't parent them. They may have watched their adoptive parents grieve their own child. And the adoptive parents carry their own load: grandparents who became parents again while grieving the loss of their child to addiction or death, often with guilt or shame attached. Many kinship adoptees grew up sensitive to that in ways non-kin adoptees don't have to manage.

A clinical picture from this territory: a client mentions in passing that her mother is actually her grandmother. Later, describing her grandmother's stroke and the medical decisions in front of her, she says she can't lose her mother, and then stops, because she has already lost her mother once. She has surprised herself. The surprise is the clinical material, and the useful move is to follow what she just noticed rather than to introduce adoption framing into her understanding of her own life. Something like: you just said something that surprised you, and I want to make room for it. She may take the thread or return to the crisis. Both are hers to choose.

Same-sex parent adoption

Same-sex parent adoption has been more visible since the 1990s and substantially more common since federal marriage equality in 2015. Older adult adoptees raised by same-sex parents grew up in a different legal situation than younger ones: some had only one legal parent for years, because second-parent adoption wasn't available in their state; some grew up in families married in some jurisdictions and not others. That legal precarity is part of the family history they carry, and it can sit alongside the ordinary adoption material this course has described.

Single parent and other configurations

Single parent adoption, and other structures outside the standard picture, carry their own versions of the same questions: what the cultural script expects, what the family actually was, and where the adoptee had to explain themselves. As with every configuration here, the clinical work is to follow the client's own account rather than the configuration's reputation.

Keep — one-page takeaway

Scope note: this territory has a literature written largely by the adoptees inside it, and it does not fit in one lesson. Treat this as orientation. Expect to read further, seek consultation, and consider referral or co-treatment.

Kinship adoption

• The biological family who couldn't raise them is the family who did. The original family system is inside the adoptive family system.
• Often no adoption language was ever used, so the client may not present with adoption framing. The material surfaces around the family, not around "adoption."
• Overlapping roles: grandmother who is also mother, biological mother who is also aunt, cousins who are also siblings. The cultural script doesn't fit.
• Grief happens inside ongoing relationships, often with the crisis (addiction, death, incarceration, removal) witnessed directly.
• Adoptive parents carry their own grief about their own child. Many kinship adoptees grew up managing that.
• Don't import adoption framing. Follow what the client notices.

Same-sex parent adoption

• More visible since the 1990s, more common since 2015 marriage equality.
• Older adoptees may have had one legal parent for years, or parents married in some states and not others. Legal precarity is part of the family history.

Single parent and other configurations

• Follow the client's own account rather than the configuration's reputation.

Continued considerations

• How many kinship adoptees are already on your caseload, unnamed as such?
• What does your intake do with a client whose grandmother is also her mother?
• Sit with this: what's lost when a family never had language for what it was?

↓ Download this takeaway (PDF)