ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the processes of remembering and forgetting fold children's memories into the life-space of the family, in doing so; they open the family up to other relations and forces. Photographs are not the only material links that adoptive children bring with them to their new families. Many children have a small number of possessions, primarily clothes and toys, that they have acquired during their time with birth parents and foster parents. The chapter shows how parents manage the ongoing sets of dilemmas and ambiguities produced by the links between their child's past, present and future. It finally explores how relations between adults and children are worked out, through focusing on the life-space of the family, which includes the spatial and temporal relations constituting the family home, the affordances of objects within the home, and the field of possible actions that arise from these intersecting sets of relations.
