Conclusions

Abstract

Adopted children have been strangely absent from this study, although their presence has been evoked as central to the debates and arguments surrounding open practices. It seems therefore timely to preface this conclusion with the words of a nine-year-old adopted girl, from the recent study Adopted Children Speaking (1999). She captures in quite a simple way the problematic place that original kinship occupies in adoption work and how her own position has been forged through and within it. Being adopted is ‘surprising’ in a culture where original kinship occupies a foundational place in securing the truth of one’s sense of self.

Any child would be surprised if they knew their parents were going to give you to someone else. Any child would be surprised. (Thomas et al., 1999, p. 33)