A qualitative* exploration of adoptive family practices in contemporary India: the voices of adoptees of closed adoptions
Abstract
Drawing on an empirical narrative research study, this article illuminates the lived experiences of Indian adoptees of closed adoptions, that is, those who had no contact with their birth parents in the run-up to or following adoption. The findings of five in-depth accounts comprising young adult and adult adoptees present a deep and nuanced understanding of what remains a relatively unexplored area of adoptive family lives in contemporary India practised in an environment where the intricacies of culture and notions of biological ties are privileged over social ties. This article illustrates how the way adoption stories are lived, experienced and shaped contributes to adoptees’ understandings of how to navigate the challenges to confirm their membership in their adoptive families in a situation where these relationships fall under constant suspicion, denial and disapproval. While it is accepted that this non-representative sample cannot reflect wider perspectives of adoptive lives, it nevertheless highlights the inherent complexities and provides a useful springboard for further research.
Keywords: adoptive family; family practices; closed adoption; adoptees’ voice; India
Introduction
Adoption is an established family practice in India but a little-studied topic. Sociologists have widely written about changing family structure and dynamics in India over the years, yet adoption is arguably the most neglected family relationship in the sociology of family (Fisher, 2003; Ruggiero, 2021). Contemporary sociological debates and concepts improving understandings of the diversity of family lives have moved us away from the terminology of ‘the family’ as some static normative ideal, to focus on what families do rather than notions of what the family ought to look like. Morgan’s (1996; 2011) concept of family practices has been useful in exploring the complex realities of family lives rather than assessing whether they live up to a policy-driven normative standard of ‘the family’. He conceptualises family practices as a series of practical and emotional activities that family members and others play in relation to each other. While carrying out the practices, they affirm, reproduce and sometimes define the relationship (Morgan, 2011; 2020). While these practices are important to define the relationships, at the same time, they need to be conveyed to and understood by relevant others to make the actions effective. Finch’s (2007) concept of ‘family display’ contributes to our understanding of how meanings of ‘family’ are conveyed, recognised and understood as ‘family-like’ relationships. Finch argues that the need for display might be greater for families furthest away from ideas of what a ‘proper’ family looks like. For example, she suggests it may be more useful to think about degrees of intensity in the need for display: ‘… the need for it becomes more or less intense at different points in time, as circumstances change and relationships continue to be renegotiated’ (2007: 72).
These shifts suggest family relationships are not necessarily fixed or defined by biology, or law, and those that fall outside traditional familial norms may be seen to unsettle and challenge established norms (Goodfellow, 2015). The contemporary shifts seem more relevant when the quality of family relationships deviates from a conventional understanding of family connected biologically. The adoptive family falls under the non-conventional category and is therefore different in its composition and the process through which it is formed. However, the relevance of the contemporary debates about family practices for adoptive families has received little attention. Considering the sociocultural diversity in India, where the conventional framework of family is based on the sociocultural dynamics of caste, class, marriage, and lineage and adoptive family practice is an increasing trend, the limited knowledge base of family practices developed in the context of Western societies needs to be explored for its wider social significance.
The study on which this article is based attempts to illuminate the subjective elements of the social construction of adoptive family lives in contemporary India from the adoptees’ perspective. It explores five in-depth accounts of three young adults and two adult adoptees, on the dynamics that they negotiate in their everyday lives to achieve socially sanctioned forms of familial kinship in an environment where cultural importance is attached to the primacy of biological connectedness. Given the rising number of ‘closed practice’ adoptions in India – where there is no contact with the birth parents in the run-up to or following adoption – I focused on the actions and activities done by adoptees in a situation in which their relationships fall under constant suspicion, denial and disapproval. I argue that although the law affirms equal rights and privileges to adopted children as to biological children, in reality, adoptees do not fit the template as defined by the legal mechanisms. For adoptees, acceptance is a continuous lifelong process involving intense and active work within a sociocultural milieu established and determined by everyday tasks accompanying and supporting the maintenance of kin relations. There is no evidence indicating the existence of legal and social mechanisms to support adoptees and engage people with lived experience to understand the latent dynamics they deal with in everyday life. Without an understanding of the subjective meanings of these family practices, promoting adoption within a policy agenda would be unfitting – and potentially even dangerous – to adoptive family practice.
Understandings of family and adoption in the Indian context
It is largely accepted that family occupies a pivotal space in the reality and imagination of societies and individuals in India (Singh, 2005; Medora, 2007; Bhandari and Titzmann, 2017). Family is especially important in the Indian context because it provides many of the facilities, support and care that are often provided by the state in other countries (Prasad et al, 2020). Over time, the understanding and composition of the Indian family have changed in various ways due to the rapid socioeconomic and technological advances. Such changes have generated adaptative transitions in the family context, which in turn have been reflected in modified socialisation practices (Prasad et al, 2020). In spite of these adaptations, however, family dynamics such as structure, form and functioning have, by delineating boundaries, created acceptable practices regarding cultural factors such as caste, class, religion, sex, gender relations, marital practices and authority structure within the family (Chadda and Deb, 2013; Prasad et al, 2020). ‘Caste’ is one of Indian society’s most distinctive phenomena. It is ascribed to an individual at birth and cannot be altered. Socially and societally, it is considered a system of graded relationships that institutionalises inequality (Laungani, 2005). Family characteristics are correlated with caste. For example, family and kinship networks include kin who are neither biologically nor related through marriage, but are related by caste.
In the given sociocultural context, adoption has been predominately practised as a device to sustain approved family lineages. It has been seen as a need-based solution for adults motivated by economic, religious, social, and emotional desires and demands (Bharat, 1993; Bharadwaj, 2003; Bhargava, 2005; Groza et al, 2012; Mitra, 2016). Adoption in India has been traditionally intrafamilial and undertaken primarily to adopt male children when there were no biological sons within the family. Adoption of a child outside the extended family was less common, and abandoned children were rendered non-adoptable because of their unknown family background (Bhargava, 2005; Groza et al, 2012). However, with the enactment of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act 2000, which emphasised domestic adoption over intercountry adoption in India, practices significantly changed. The Act carved out a legal and structural space for the establishment of an adoption system which, for the first time, meant that everyone – irrespective of religion – could adopt a child, where previously the practice was targeted at Indians of certain religions such as Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist and Jain. Between 1988 and 2001, the number of intercountry adoptions was greater than that of domestic adoptions; from 2002 the reverse was true.
Although adoption has been widely researched across social science disciplines in the West – primarily in psychology and social work – it is not an easy area to research on the Indian sub-continent because of the confidential nature of the practice (Bhargava, 2005). This became particularly evident to me when I began my research in 2018 and acquired only a handful of studies providing only a fragmentary and sketchy map of the current adoption landscape.
According to the first longitudinal study by Bharat (1993), adoption in India was mired in social attitudes and apprehensions regarding the unknown parentage of the adopted child. It broadly showed that the majority of Indian child adoptions were to foreign families (67 per cent), as opposed to Indian families (33 per cent), with a clear preference for male children in domestic adoption. A significant shift in gender preference among adoptive families in India was evidenced by Bhargava’s (2005) study. However, adoptive parents’ preference for younger children and non-disclosure of their adoptive status provided important insights into the feelings about adoptive family practice in India (Bhargava, 2005; Groza, 2012). There is undoubtedly a higher cultural value given to biological family relationships over adoptive relationships creating what has been referred to as ‘visible violence to the cultural norms’, which cannot be reabsorbed within a family and community to which it belongs without stigmatising individuals caught in the public gaze (Bharadwaj, 2003; Groza, 2012). This is reflected in practice: more than 80 per cent of adoptive families do not disclose their adoptive status to the child, even though family members, neighbours and other acquaintances may be aware, meaning that in most cases, everyone in a family and community is likely aware of a child’s adopted status except the child themselves (Bhargava, 2005; Mohanty et al, 2014).
While the existing literature confirms the predominance of social stigma in relation to adoption, much is based on hearsay and based on the implications of societal disapproval. There is very little that is evidence based, particularly evidence reflecting the voice and experiences of adoptees themselves. In light of the surge of domestic adoption in India, it is critical to understand how adoptees feel and practice their family lives in the sociocultural milieu of their country, and how they challenge the biological version of kinship to create a legitimate one. This article presents adoptees’ perspectives whose voices are absent in the current available evidence.
The study
For my doctoral research, I undertook a series of in-depth biographical interviews with five female adoptees in India and analysed the narratives. Three participants were young adult adoptees, and two were older adults – one of whom was a domestic adoptee and the other international. Both of the older adoptees are now adoptive parents themselves and are in their mid-forties. The range of my sample was limited and determined by availability. It is imperative to know the process of accessing the experiences of adoptees to be able to make a connection with the findings of the study.
Due to ethical demands, as well as the practical challenges involved with identifying potential participants, I chose to use social media – primarily Facebook and WhatsApp – to recruit participants for my study. To ensure anonymity and confidentiality, the response window within the public domain was blocked, meaning that interested individuals had to contact me privately.
I had hoped that, due to the changing trends regarding domestic adoption in India, the landscape would prove more favourable to reaching adopted people and accessing their experiences. These preconceptions were quickly reassessed when I failed to recruit any participants within the first three months of my fieldwork. I was forced to expand the geographical coverage of my research area, and after a further four months recruited five adoptees who participated in the research. Most came from Maharashtra, a state in western India with the highest rates of adoption in the country. The parents of two of the younger adult adoptees acted as gatekeepers for their participation and contributions to the study.
Even though the youngest of the adoptees was over the age of 18 and lived at home at the time of their participation in the study, I nevertheless sought parental consent for all my approaches to ensure appropriate ethical practice as well as to recognise the cultural sensitivities regarding parental control in Indian family relationships (Morrow, 2008; Boddy, 2013). The difference between exercising their freedom of expression and making their own decisions was reflected in all three young adult adoptees cases: while one took the lead in contacting me – selecting the venue and scheduling our interviews – the others had to obtain parental consent. Although parents gave their consent to be contacted for any further information or clarification post-interview, they provided no direct contact channel for their children. The message was subtle yet clear: contact was through them only. Conversely, the two older adoptees’ eagerness to share their experiences was evident. Responding to a Facebook post, one of the older adoptees was instrumental in connecting me to the other. All interviews were conducted in person and all at the participants’ homes bar one (which took place in a restaurant). Interviews were taped and transcribed. They varied between one hour and forty minutes and two and a half hours. Parental presence in one of the young adult’s interviews not only created a challenge regarding confidentiality and privacy, but certainly influenced the shaping of the narratives. It therefore highlighted the need for adoptive family stories to be viewed and understood within the wider sociocultural context.
All participants were from upper-middle-class families living in cosmopolitan cities. All adoptions took place legally through recognised adoption agencies. The two older adult adoptees were established entrepreneurs. One of the three younger adults was a working professional, while the other two were pursuing undergraduate degrees at university. Four of the five participants were less than six months old when they joined their adoptive family. The international adoptee was four years old. Four participants were Hindu, one was Parsi married to a Christian. Four of the five participants learned about their adoptive status at an early age – ‘It was never a secret,’ as they said. The other learned at the age of 12. None of the participants were known to me prior to the study. Pseudonyms were used for all the participants.
I followed a narrative inquiry process to illuminate the lived experiences of my participants and to explore the multi-layered complexities and nuanced understanding of doing adoptive family lives in an evolving sociolegal context (Clandinin, 2007; Riessman, 2008). Participants had total freedom to share as much or as little as they wanted with minimal prompting and encouragement. As one might expect, the ‘narrative flow’ was different for each.
Analytical framework
Analysis involved both the content of the accounts and the process by which the data were collected. To build my analysis, I drew on the narratives which reflect the activities and actions of adoptees in their everyday lives towards establishing their membership in their adoptive families and social spaces. Activities are those within which the meanings of the adoptive family relationships are constructed and conveyed to resist biological primacy and the conventional framework of family. The process of these activities resonates with Morgan’s (1996; 2011) concept of ‘family practices’ and Finch’s (2007) notion of ‘displaying families’, which emphasise the social actors who constitute their social world, and these relationships cannot be taken for granted. Morgan and Finch emphasised that family and relationships cannot be adequately characterised without active demonstration by the actors involved. Simultaneously, it can’t be ignored that social and cultural variations influence the way people conceive of family and practise it to gain social legitimation. Morgan’s work is concerned with the micro-level detail of family life and is useful for exploring subjective experiences. Using his framework, I explored the factors influencing the processes of adoptive family practices and their implicit interest in subjective definitions of what ‘practices’ or ‘doing’ means in the context of the adoptive family. Without understanding the subjective meanings of these family practices, I argue that their significance cannot be discerned in how adoptees do their family lives in contemporary India to gain social legislation.
Findings
The narrative accounts demonstrated the necessary actions involved in day-to-day encounters with people and institutions in and outside the immediate family to resist the discourse of biological primacy and to negotiate the disruptions caused by negative attitudes and cultural boundaries to establish a legitimate sense of family. They also reflected the sentiments of the adoptees about these actions as they shared their experiences of adoptive family lives, highlighting powerful parties within – as well as outside – the family. The ‘powerful parties’ were primarily those with some kind of biological family affiliation through conventional, conjugal or heterosexual arrangements privileged over mere social ties.
Being adopted: marking out adoptive kinship
It was a pleasant evening in spring when I first met 24-year-old Nisha in a rooftop restaurant where she is a frequent patron. Adopted as a newborn, Nisha is the only child of her adoptive parents who adopted her following a series of miscarriages. Nisha’s account was expressive, coherent and unrestricted. Recalling her childhood, she recounted a number of instances in which she was upset by other’s comments:
‘I had a very smooth childhood but there were a couple of things that happened. That is also why I don’t look like my parents. My grandparents always adored me, always. But I was a troublemaker. I used to break things. Once my grandfather called me Shudra. Like he was talking to my grandmother in kitchen and then I overheard them. I went to my mom and asked what is Shudra? She explained to me, then I was upset. I said, my grandfather does not like me. That stayed in my mind.’
Nisha’s account contained several stories told with varying degrees of emotion, but she kept returning to this particular experience. The term Shudra is defined in Hindu scriptures and literature as the lowest of the four categories of Hindu social order. Those belonging to this caste are said to be the darkest skinned and are traditionally shoemakers or other leather workers (Mishra, 2015). The use of the term Shudra is not only derogatory but also culturally insensitive. To make its use by her grandfather more bearable in its context, Nisha cushioned its impact by emphasising her grandparents’ adoration for her. Nevertheless, the overheard remark indicates some implicit shame connected to Nisha’s relationship with her extended family which operates outside the norm. The prejudicial perception suggests that as Nisha is not part of a conventional family formed by marriage and birth, her existence is not fully recognised (Fisher, 2003; 2007; Almack, 2008; Garber and Grotevant, 2015). One might assume that such unkind comments as a result of unwanted actions or behaviours are common in Indian society and directly attributable to Nisha’s adoptive status triggering a sense of inadequacy and perceived discrimination in Nisha herself (Goldberg et al, 2011). However, Nisha’s stories precisely illustrate the sociocultural factors and perceptions towards adoption that inevitably shape and influence her everyday life.
Furthermore, the word ‘overheard’ indicates two different versions of ‘family talk’ working in parallel within the adoptive family in the presence – and absence – of the adopted child (Morgan, 2011). A private narrative appears to encompass uncertainty and latent voices that stir up conflict concerning adoption and its inherent personal and social roles. The adopted child is not part of this private narrative, which reflects the unknown origin of the child that is expected to be kept hidden and not spoken of. This supposition, however, appears to be refuted by another of Nisha’s experiences which she encountered as an adult and described as ‘disturbing’:
‘Once my grandmom told me that I was from Silver Park and my mom was very upset about it. My grandmom told me, suddenly. She is really old and I am very fond of her. She is very fond of me. She was talking to me and just happened to tell me that the hospital you are from, you are adopted from [.] is only for the women who [.] who get knocked up. She used the term knocked up […] my grandmother. That just hit me in my face. I was like WHAT?! Even though it doesn’t matter, I don’t care honestly. But it hit me very [.] ekdum munh pe [say it to my face]. This was just a few months back.’
The Silver Park referred to by Nisha is apparently an area for destitute and homeless women. Her grandmother’s comment and inherent assumptions about the circumstances of Nisha’s birth – and the likely conditions that led to the birth mother relinquishing her child – seem to question Nisha’s legitimacy. It demonstrates how the absence of blood ties is more than just biological but encompasses issues of social caste, class and religion making adoptees vulnerable within their adoptive families and categorising them as ‘other’, apart as they are from the dominant social group of shared family blood ties (Gaynor, 2014). The comment, which included identifiable information, also labelled Nisha’s position as culturally deviant. Nisha is undoubtedly a loved member of her adoptive family, as she claims. Nevertheless, these instances highlight that she is simultaneously not fully one of them. For Nisha, being worthy of her grandparents’ adoration gives her legitimacy within the family. But her lack of blood ties threatens that legitimacy. The emotional challenge for Nisha, therefore, is in being simultaneously legitimate and illegitimate within the family. Her reference to the conversation being ‘just a few months back’ also indicates how the emotional challenges of adoption unfold over time – indeed throughout life – and that the sense made of it unfolds gradually. It seems always a work in progress with connotations that might crop up at any time, by accident or design.
Similar childhood experiences were reported by Julie, an intercountry adoptee who was adopted at the age of four by an Indian couple in the US who subsequently returned to India when Julie was seven years old. A mother of two – an adopted daughter and a biological son – Julie is an established business executive who introduced herself as ‘half Black, and half White’. Drawing on her experiences as a child coming to India she reflected on unpleasant comments encountered by her mother about Julie’s skin and features.
‘My mother always say, you know when we came back from America, lot of people said, she does not look like you. She is so White. Look at her hair. Look at her nose. She looks like [.] at that time the word Anglo was very used in India. My mother was finding it so offensive, you know. Being a brown skin woman, living in America, you become so sensitive to those type of words and accusations and feelings and all those. And she could get so angry.’
Julie’s narrative illustrates how physical traits – such as skin colour and physical resemblance – are central to developing understandings of social structures and social processes, as well as articulating social inequalities (Shilling, 2016). Public reaction to adopted people and their families reflects cultural assumptions that physical similarity between parent and child is expected. The absence of resemblance therefore invites disapproval. The subconscious or deliberate nature of biased attitudes towards adoption can make life difficult for adopted people and their adoptive parents, irrespective of skin colour. It might be said that those involved in, or in the vicinity of adoption, have to work hard emotionally and socially to understand and accept this particular type of family formation.
The effect of physical resemblance – or lack thereof – was prominent in other participants’ accounts indicating that adopted people are not automatically accepted positively by those in their family and social circles. For example, the friends of Seema, a young adult adoptee, didn’t accept her adoptive status, as she resembles her adoptive father. Sharing details of her experience of others’ perceptions of adoption in her narrative, she said:
‘The first reaction by most of them is like either you are joking or they would like completely rejected. They would be like NO! First they say that you look like your father. So that makes it tougher for them to believe that I’m adopted.’
Having an accidental physical resemblance with an adoptive parent appears to have benefited Seema with equal status to a biological child with those she refers to who struggle to believe she is not biologically related. But that legitimacy is threatened following disclosure. This threat of legitimacy is reflected by Nisha who shared her experience of disclosure with colleagues:
‘You know, as I told you that I’m adopted, I told my colleagues. They are like “Jhoot mat bol. Aise thodi hota hai” [“Don’t tell lie. It doesn’t happen like that”]. Don’t lie. Don’t make a case. I am like, [.] I am adopted. It’s okay. It’s not a big deal. I am saying [.] they are so terrified themselves even [though] they are not adopted. It’s me who is telling them.’
Being confronted by someone talking openly and confidently about being adopted seems to have been received as startling. It also highlights the gap in adoption talk between parents and adopted children (Mohanty et al, 2014). Further exploration of Seema’s account suggests that general narratives about adoption are predominately formed by fictional stories and unevidenced perceptions not based on real-life experience:
‘They [friends] don’t understand it. Their understanding of adopted children is resentment, being a wrecker and not enjoying life and just being sad all the time. But it’s not like that. Basically, people have not been used to with kids or not been friends with people who are adopted. They are influenced by movies. If you see movies, they usually show an adopted child who is always a troublemaker, always going against the rules. So that’s what they are influenced by.’
These accounts underpin normative assumptions about ‘family’ and how adoption disrupts these. They also suggest how discourse constitutes the context of constraints within which family practices are conducted that do not treat adoption kinship as equal to biological kinship. Although in the eyes of the law, adoption operates to sever and remove the child’s birth history and replace it with a new family culture, the child’s original social background is simply not reducible to the replacement of the new family heritage in which it operates (Sales, 2018). As a result, adoptees appear not to be granted full membership and social acceptance in the eyes of others within or outside their families.
Negotiation and navigation: a flexible approach to ‘doing’ adoptive family
It is evident that adoptees strive to establish social legitimacy of their relationships to be accepted within the normative category. This effort is seen as a success and displayed as strength in terms of the enduring character of the family bonds that are formed through adoption. The process involves give and take to navigate the experience of adoption and create a supportive environment. Sometimes, adoptees disclosed their adoptive status to those within their social circles without even being asked – perhaps in a conscious attempt to control others’ actions and mitigate any negative implications associated with others’ knowing about their non-standard origins. Citing a particular experience, Nisha underscores the importance to her of being open about her adoptive status and how she believes it helps make her more acceptable to others:
‘I’m very open about my adoption. The reason I’m telling you because, it has relevance, I spoke to my friend’s mom about my adoption. I was talking to her and just said. Her mom really liked me. How open I was about everything. That’s how my friend and I became so close.’
Nisha’s openness about her adoptive status suggests that she acknowledges the difference between herself and others, but does not feel that the fact diminishes or contaminates her status. She feels that displaying her adoptive status openly is crucial for social integration, that is, by being seen as a member of an unconventional family that ‘works’ and is therefore ‘legitimate’ (Finch, 2007; Almack, 2011). Similar levels of acceptance may not be as confidently assumed from those who might not be familiar with the concept of adoption. In these cases, some adoptees took a selective approach, anticipating different reactions towards the adoptive identity. Seema is more concerned about negative reactions and does not reveal her adoptive status until she has a level of familiarity with those she chooses to disclose to:
‘If someone asks me, I wouldn’t deny. I’ll be very free. I openly tell them. But the thing is that some people take it in a different way. So, like [.] after I come to comfort level with some, I told them that I’m adopted. It also depends on the type of person. Some people are very open-minded and some are close-minded. Usually, I’m very judgemental when meet a person. I try to scan them and understand if they are being more accepted what I’m going to say or not.’
Negotiating to gain other’s acceptance of their adoptive status does not seem mechanical but contingent on various factors including the other person’s perception, circumstances and own subjectivity. If any of these are not favourable, adoptees will often choose not to disclose. The variance in approach demonstrates fluidity and complexity on the part of the adoptee across space and time. It underlines the importance of the development of quality interpersonal relationships in order to be treated equally irrespective of the differences in origin. However, a deeper analysis of Seema’s account reveals that when subjected to the gaze of outside audiences, she evaluates her needs and makes choices in a way that is directly related to who matters and with whom she needs to negotiate familial and social obligations.
The various disclosure strategies reflect how adoptees embrace various approaches to navigating the challenges of legitimising their position or neutralising the threat they pose, while not directly denying their adoptive status. But it’s not the case always, as narrated by Shikha, a young adult, who learned about her adoptive status at the age of 12. She once responded ‘No!’ to a peer who asked her directly and aggressively, ‘You are adopted?!’ However, she was open about her adoptive identity in a public forum at which she was invited to share her adoptive life experience: ‘I liked that district administrator. He complimented me for my speech.’
Both cases illustrate how the way adoption is communicated or expressed can be both positive and negative – and directly affect how the adoptee responds and whether or not they choose to disclose their adoptive status. On the face of it, the second experience seems to be a positive one in which Shikha is left feeling valued and appreciated for her differences. But the first left her feeling uncomfortable. Shikha emphasises this in her statement ‘I didn’t like the way she asked me,’ in response to why she denied her adoptive status, albeit in a private space. The spatial and emotional contexts are significantly different in each case with one being a public forum promoting pride, positivity and public acceptance regarding adoption. And the other one is a defensive counter-narrative diffused with anxiety and fear of negative preconceptions of adoption. Shikha’s responses in both instances illustrate the importance of spatial and emotional dimensions in relation to her ability to assess public perception and demonstrate adoptive family practices for achieving full membership of adoptive status (Morgan, 2020).
Despite taking selective approaches to disclose adoptive status outside the family in a number of settings, a proactive desire for disclosure was evident in the older adoptee Amita’s narrative about marriage, a relationship that needs collective approval in the Indian context. Amita’s story illustrates how she purposely shared her adoptive status when planning for her marriage, although she admits to being more selective about disclosure in her everyday life:
‘One of the first thing, I told my husband that I am adopted. Check with your mom whether she is okay with that or not. He said, my mom won’t bother. I said, tell her. It’s not a secret. I don’t want her to know [find out] later. So he told her. Then [.] she said, it’s okay. How does it matter? But I am sure there are families, where it would matter.’
Amita’s account depicts the significance – and potential impact – of being an adoptee in relation to marriage. In India, marriage is regarded as a social, religious and cultural duty – and obligation (Medora, 2007). A management graduate and only child of parents who are both doctors, Amita is obviously socially and economically well positioned in all other respects. Perhaps this went some way to ameliorating any potential negative connotations related to her deviant biological status. However, being part of a non-conventional family, it concerned Amita that her association with a biologically conventional family might disrupt the social norms. Amita’s desire to pre-warn her future parents-in-law stems from the institutionalised prejudice about adoption and signifies the importance and relevance of biological background to marriage in India. Their acceptance was more likely due to their attitudes and perceptions – perhaps as much because of their relationship with and fondness for Amita personally – as much as any preconceived ideas about adoption generally. Amita’s account also illustrates how, when it comes to marriage, the adoptive identity needs collective approval. Amita’s approach appears as a negotiable family form, and as such represents a shift from regular family practices in India.
Aside from the negotiations and navigation of challenges in everyday life, verbal reference to defensive activities and behaviours were also evident in participants’ accounts. These seemed to be articulated to present their adoptive family relationships as on a par with biological families by mirroring and comparing activities of normative familial constructs. Participants spoke about activities, interactions and characteristics of family relationships to display the bond they shared with immediate and extended family members, highlighting adoration and care when appropriate as confirmation of acceptance and inclusion. Seema communicated intimate family constructs through several stories, including the following example: ‘I’m very close to my brother. We love each other, the way we fight with each other.’
Similarly, Julie and Nisha shared accounts which reflected the strength of their familial relationships. It is evident that Julie feels cherished by her extended family.
‘I’ve a big family and I’m very very loved and pampered by everyone, my uncles, aunts, grandparents. My grand aunt, that’s my mom’s Massi [aunt], would say to my mom, you know, in her last life she was here and she was finding her way to get back here. You were her vessel to bring her back to India.’
Highlighting family members’ adoration, Nisha shared:
‘My aunt told me, when we got you, you looked like a crow. And we used to feed you so much laad pyar se [love and affection] after six months we have to put you on diets. The paediatrician put me on a diet because I became such a fat baby.’
An intersection of age, time, gender, and generation is visible in the above accounts which connect the adoptees with the institution of family and with family members individually. Exhibiting intimacy appears to be an established ‘family practice’ that takes an important place in maintaining family relationships and confirming family membership to the outside world, which was evident in these accounts (Morgan, 2011; 2020). For example, the love and care shown to a newborn child is an expected and routine act in any family. However, Nisha’s narrative illustrates the importance of family practices and relationships with others, which serves to construct and strengthen her sense of identity within the family and, through her presentation of them. It may be understood that the general perception of an adoptive family is likely to be fluid and less authentic (Finch, 2007). Presenting it within familial relationships as a way of family practice has the potential to appear powerful and conveys a sense of intimacy and significance of family relationships (Finch, 2007; Morgan, 2020). Part of the process of displaying and constructing adoptive family relations is probably an attempt to resist the cultural notions that devalue adoptive kinship, which is widely apparent in the narratives of most participants of the study, albeit in different contexts.
Discussion
This exploratory study has inevitable limitations due to the paucity of the sample and the fact that all participants came from relatively privileged upper-middle-class urban families with sound international exposure. I have little to contribute, therefore, about perspectives of adoption and those of adoptees themselves in semi-urban or rural contexts. The fact that my study reflects the voices of only female adoptees when adoption has traditionally been a male-child-dominated practice for so long in India is another obvious limitation. Further research is needed to reflect the perspectives of a wider range of adopted people, including male adoptees and those from different socioeconomic and geographical regions.
Despite the limitations, however, the results of this study are significant in that – for the first time – they reflect the voices of adoptees in the Indian context. The overarching social scientific stance that emerged from the narratives is the idea that being adopted and ‘doing’ adoptive family lives in India is hard work and consists of two essential parts. In the first place, the fact of being adopted itself is tough and involves challenging – sometimes daily – the dominant cultural notions of family that are congruent with lineage, caste and class. Second, narrating the hard work of doing of adoptive family life to a researcher and bringing the former into specific focus.
The study reveals how adopted people – as individuals as well as part of their adoptive families – must continuously strive to achieve social legitimacy of their adoptive familial identities, either by displaying or not considering the spatial and emotional environment. In this way, they could be said to be putting effort into ‘doing’ family things, rather than ‘being’ a family to gain recognition for themselves from relevant others (Finch, 2007). This process echoes Morgan’s (1996; 2011; 2020) concept of family practices which incorporates several key concepts, such as fluidity and diversity which have been used by other scholars in family studies (Finch, 2007; Seymour, 2007; Heaphy, 2011). It suggests that there is diversity in adoptive family practices and displays in India in response to the challenges that adoptees face in their everyday lives in their attempts to create a legitimate version of kinship. It can be understood that adoptive families are the ‘families of choice’, created by the day-to-day ‘doing’ of family in a particular context (Finch, 2007; Morgan, 2011). While in the context of India, family membership across different religions is decided by marriage and birth, the adoptees who participated in this study appeared to do something different to conventional families in seeking recognition for their chosen relationships.
The study also highlights how being part of an adoptive family adds layers of ‘outsiderness’ that must be negotiated to gain recognition in the social context with a focus on the process. These processes involve negotiating and renegotiating the hard work of adoptive family lives in which adoptees must decide to display or not to display and in each case to whom, how, when and where. The adoptees’ accounts emphasise their negotiations with the sociocultural expectations of being part of a family and display their adoptive status to minimise their position as ‘other’ (Gillespie, 2006). This process includes working out new kin relationships between adopted people and relevant others, and the extent to which individuals ‘come out’ about their adoptive identity within their own spaces and networks (Almack, 2008). In some cases, despite successful negotiation of kin relationships, there are everyday practices in which choices have to be made about what is and is not displayed. The everyday experiences of such practices could be identified as ‘the issues of living in and with ongoing difficult family relationships’ (Smart, 2007).
While Morgan’s concept of ‘family practices’ emphasises the quality of relationships to deal with the fluidity and complexity of modern life, in the context of Indian adoptees’ demonstrations it seems to be significant to gaining social recognition and legitimacy which might otherwise be denied because of their ‘tainted’ origin. These family practices are not, therefore, to maintain and sustain the relationships (Finch, 2007), but rather to establish and legitimise kinship. The continuous process and ongoing family narrative have the potential to establish adoptive family bonds as equal and to gradually influence and gain social approval of adoptive kinship.
Although these aspects of family lives might go beyond what the concept of family display and family practice can reveal, the concepts are nevertheless useful as orienting devices to explore what might be going on beneath the surface of adoptive family lives. In this context, my analysis has revealed the positive elements of adoptive family practices and illuminated what is happening at the ‘edges and behind the narratives of display’ (Gabb, 2011: 39). It could be said that negotiating displays of adoptive status and the practice of adoptive family lives is a continuous process people carry out more or less silently. The continuous process has, however, been instrumental in creating space for increased tolerance of adoptive family relationships in Indian society – although it is not yet at the same level of acceptance of adopted people.
Conclusion
This study demonstrates how building adoptive family lives in India is an uncertain journey. It demands different ways of thinking and doing family in space and time as it develops and attempts to gain the legitimacy of a biological family. In the creation of the adoptive family, adopted people challenge the cultural complexities and social fabric of Indian society whose very premise is based on caste, class, religion and gender; all viewed as fundamental to the formation of family through marriage and birth. As biological ties are privileged over social ties in the creation and maintenance of kin relations, adoptees work hard with a sense of inherent ambivalence to establish their membership in the family against the conventional model of what is right, proper and desirable. However, the results of this study indicate that open conversation can enable change, through which adoption is validated. The study reveals adoption unsettles ingrained assumptions about what makes a ‘good’ society in India. It is therefore undesirable that some struggle to accept such ambiguities. Nonetheless, some resolution/accommodation to the intrinsic inherent ambivalence of adoption is becoming increasingly evident and, with them, the possibility for hope.
Funding
This work was funded by the Sussex Chancellor’s International Research Scholarship (no. number 212979338).
Acknowledgements
I am indebted to my research participants who chose to share their stories and experiences with me. My sincere thanks to Barry Luckock and Professor Janet Boddy for their invaluable guidance in conducting this research. Finally, a special thanks to the anonymous reviewers for their constructive, critical and supportive feedback on earlier drafts of the article.
Conflict of interest
The author declares that there is no conflict of interest.
References
Almack, K. (2008) Display work: lesbian parent couples and their families of origin negotiating new kin relationships, Sociology, 42(6): 1183–99. doi: 10.1177/0038038508096940
Almack, K. (2011) Display work: lesbian parent couples and their families of origin negotiating new kin relationships, in E. Dermott and J. Seymour, (eds) Displaying Families: A New Concept of Sociology of Family Life, 1st edn, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp 102–18.
Bhandari, P. and Titzmann, F. (2017) Introduction. Family realities in south Asia: adaptations and resilience, South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal, (16).
Bharadwaj, A. (2003) Why adoption is not an option in India: the visibility of infertility, the secrecy of donor insemination, and other cultural complexities, Social Science & Medicine, 56(9): 1867–80. doi: 10.1016/s0277-9536(02)00210-1
Bharat, S. (1993) Child Adoption in India Trends and Emerging Issues: A Study of Adoption Agencies, Bombay: Tata Institute of Social Sciences.
Bhargava, V. (2005) Adoption in India: Policies and Experiences, 1st edn, New Delhi/ Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Boddy, J. (2013) Research across cultures, within countries: hidden ethics tensions in research with children and families?, Progress in Development Studies, 14(1): 91–103. doi: 10.1177/1464993413490477
Chadda, R. and Deb, K. (2013) Indian family systems, collectivistic society and psychotherapy, Indian Journal of Psychiatry, 55(6): S299–S80. doi: 10.4103/0019-5545.105555
Clandinin, D. (2007) Handbook of Narrative Inquiry, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Finch, J. (2007) Displaying families, Sociology, 41(1): 65–81. doi: 10.1177/0038038507072284
Fisher, A. (2003) Still ‘not quite as good as having your own’? Toward a sociology of adoption, Annual Review of Sociology, 29(1): 335–61. doi: 10.1146/annurev.soc.29.010202.100209
Gabb, J. (2011) Troubling displays: the affect of gender, sexuality and class, in E. Dermott and J. Seymour (eds) Displaying Families: A New Concept for Sociology of Family Life, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp 38–60.
Garber, K. and Grotevant, H. (2015) ‘YOU were adopted?!’ Microaggressions toward adolescent adopted individuals in same-race families, The Counseling Psychologist, 43(3): 435–62. doi: 10.1177/0011000014566471
Gaynor, T. (2014) Vampires suck, Administrative Theory & Praxis, 36(3): 348–72.
Gillespie, A. (2006) Becoming Other: From Social Interaction to Self-Reflection, Advances in Cultural Psychology: Constructing Human Development series, 1st edn, Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.
Goldberg, A., Kinkler, L. and Hines, D. (2011) Perception and internalization of adoption stigma among gay, lesbian, and heterosexual adoptive parents, Journal of GLBT Family Studies, 7(1–2): 132–54. doi: 10.1080/1550428X.2011.537554
Goodfellow, A. (2015) Gay Fathers, Their Children, and the Making of Kinship, New York, NY: Fordham University.
Groza, V., Park, H. and Oke, M. (2012) A study of adult adoptees in India placed domestically in India through BSSK, Pune: Mandela School of Applied Social Sciences, Case Western Reserve University.
Heaphy, B. (2011) Critical relational displays, in E. Dermott and J. Seymour (eds) Displaying Families: A New Concept of Sociology of Family Life, 1st edn, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp 19–37.
Laungani, P. (2005) Families in global perspective, in J. Roopnarine and U. Gielen (eds) Changing Pattern of Family Life in India, Boston, MA: Pearson Education, pp 85–103.
Medora, N. (2007) Strengths and challenges in the Indian family, Marriage & Family Review, 41(1–2): 165–93.
Mishra, N. (2015) India and colorism: the finer nuances, Global Perspectives on Colorism, 14(4), https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/law_globalstudies/vol14/iss4/14.
Mitra, S. (2016) Parenthood Through Adoption: An Indian Experience, PhD Thesis, Mumbai: Tata Institute of Social Science.
Mohanty, J., Ahn, J. and Chokkanathan, S. (2014) Adoption disclosure: experiences of Indian domestic adoptive parents, Child & Family Social Work, 22: 1–11. doi: 10.1111/cfs.12175
Morgan, D. (1996) Family Connections, Cambridge: Polity.
Morgan, D. (2011) Locating ‘family practices’, Sociological Research Online, 16(4): 174–82. doi: 10.5153/sro.2535
Morgan, D. (2020) Family practices in time and space, Gender, Place & Culture, 27(5): 733–43. doi: 10.1080/0966369x.2018.1541870
Morrow, V. (2008) Ethical dilemmas in research with children and young people about their social environments, Children’s Geographies, 6(1): 49–61. doi: 10.1080/14733280701791918
Prasad, B.D., Juvva, S. and Nayar, M. (2020) The Contemporary Indian Family: Transitions and Diversity, Oxon: Taylor & Francis.
Puhan, S.S. (2021) Illuminating Adoptive Family Practices in India: A Narrative Analysis of Policy and Lived Experience, PhD thesis, Brighton: University of Sussex, https://sussex.figshare.com/articles/thesis/Illuminating_adoptive_family_practices_in_India_a_narrative_analysis_of_policy_and_lived_experience/23484833.
Riessman, C. (2008) Narrative Methods for the Human Sciences, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Ruggiero, J.A. (2021) The challenges and rewards of presenting and publishing sociological research on adoption: an historical reflection on searching for an audience [preprint], https://digitalcommons.providence.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1058&context=sbg.
Sales, S. (2018) Damaged attachments & family dislocations: the operations of class in adoptive family life, Genealogy, 2(4): 55. doi: 10.3390/genealogy2040055
Seymour, J. (2007) Treating the hotel like a home: the contribution of studying the single location home/workplace, Sociology, 41(6): 1097–114. doi: 10.1177/0038038507082317
Shilling, C. (2016) The rise of body studies and the embodiment of society: a review of the field, Horizons in Humanities and Social Sciences: An International Refereed Journal, 2(1). doi: 10.19089/hhss.v2i1.39
Singh, J. (2005) The contemporary Indian family, in B. Adams and J. Trost (eds) Handbook of World Families, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, pp 129–66.
Smart, C. (2007) Personal Life, 1st edn, Cambridge: Polity.