ABSTRACT
These statements by two Norwegian adoptive mothers of children from Columbia and Korea respectively and a transnationally adopted adolescent girl, express very succinctly the paradoxes inherent in transnational adoption. They show what I wish to call the adoptive family’s dilemma,
namely the desire for conformity and the having to admit to nonconformity. Conformity in the case of parents is focused entirely upon the wish of couples to become ‘normal families’ and their inability to achieve this in the usual biological reproductive manner. While, on the one hand, they want to be part of the ordinary community in which they live and, in a sense, are able to feel this as the first statement indicates, their part in this larger community is achieved only through being members of a sub-group, namely that made up of other adoptive families. Conformity in the case of adopted children is expressed in the majority’s wish not to be thought of as different, and the efforts they engage in in order not to stand out, but live as ordinary Norwegian children and adults. The paradox here arises when we consider that most of them do not look like native-born Norwegians.
