ABSTRACT
In recent years, new kinship theories have revived the argument that kinship cannot be understood as biologically based social relations, but as social relations of belonging often expressed by metaphors coming from the biological arena.1 As kinship relations that are not necessarily grounded upon biological relations, adoption and fosterage seem to be good examples to test the validity of that argument. One research possibility is to study the process of “kinning” (Howell 2003), which means to thematize the way in which a kinship relation is built up, which symbols and metaphors for this new relation of belonging are found and, finally, how an attempt is made to make adoptive relationships resemble biological ones. Studies of adoption in Europe and America have shown how much effort adoptive parents put into “naturalizing” relations with their adopted children.
