ABSTRACT
Adoption and fostering both invoke the idea of an adult caring for a child not born to them, through intentionally, proactively arranging kinship ties. This chapter outlines a range of anthropological ways of thinking about adoption. First, considering “adoption as (assisted) reproduction,” we review cultural anthropological scholarship on adoption and fostering as processes and intentions, and show how these practices inform the anthropology of reproduction. This framework, however, requires aligning mainly with the perspective of adopting parent(s). Approaches that center the perspective of birth parent(s) include adoption as reproductive injustice, outsourcing of reproduction, or stratified reproduction (Colen 1995). Perspectives that center adopted persons include the “afterlives” of adoption: what it means to have been adopted, searches, the creation of “families we choose” (Weston 1991). We illustrate these analytics with material from our own researches on fostering and domestic and international adoption in Peru and Spain, and from colleagues working globally. Social work analysis and practice uses the concept of the adoption triad, including the three perspectives we highlight here - adopting parents, birth parent(s), and adopted person; we close our discussion by expanding this triad to include the work of mediators/brokers, policymakers, and others.
