Adoption, Communication, and Family Networks: Current Research and Future Directions

ABSTRACT This special issue of the Journal of Family Communication highlights the role of communication processes in adoption placements. Six original, peer-reviewed, empirical articles comprise this special issue. Together, these articles represent cutting-edge research on the formative dialogue that sustains adoption kinship networks. Each article is theoretically driven and analytically rich, offering important advancements for adoption and communication research and theory. In this introduction, I preview each article, emphasizing key empirical contributions. I then talk about the collective contributions of the articles. Finally, I offer future directions salient to the next phase of adoption communication research.