Intergenerational Voices of Adoption: Family Stories of Adoptees and Their Adult Children

Abstract Little is known about adoptees’ experiences through adulthood. Individuals sometimes make sense of their heritage, and come to understand and express themselves in their unique voices, through storytelling. Five mother-child(ren) dyads and triads participated. The mothers had been adopted in infancy and raised by an adoptive family. Their biological child(ren) had grown up aware their mother was an adoptee. The feminist relational method of the listening guide (Gilligan et al., 2003) was employed to hear the adoption stories passed from one generation to the next. Parent and adult child(ren) were interviewed together to explore voices embedded in the relational context of their story. The joint family interviews were analyzed for these different voices. The findings suggest mothers passed down stories of positive adoption experiences through voices that were both embracing of their adoption narrative and sometimes cautious. The children spoke from voices of embrace and curiosity. Both generations stated the meaningfulness of co-constructing family adoption narratives.