Negotiating Motherhood

Identity and Difference in "Open" Adoptions

Bibliographic Data

ID4769949
AuthorsBarbara Yngvesson (corresponding author)
Year1997
Volume31
Issue1
Pages31-80
Publication date1997-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueLaw & Society Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0023-9216 • E-ISSN: 1540-5893
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/3054094
OpenAlexW2320547694
LanguageEN
Citations received42
References cited31

Drawing on interviews with birth and adoptive parents who have remained in contact with each other following placement of an adopted child, this article examines the dynamic of motherhood that emerges in these relationships. Moving back and forth from legal and social event to women's subjective experiences of these events, it argues that open adoption constitutes a "potential space" where two familiar "truths" about motherhood-as an experience of identity and of connection, and as an experience of contingency and separation-converge in powerful ways. Focusing on the double vision of mothers who feel both "real" and "not real" at the same time, it explores the tendency of open adoption to resolve into familiar dichotomies of nature and law and its potential to produce new subjectivities that defy legal categories. The article suggests that analysis of the sociolegal world and of the possibilities for its transformation must work along the unstable boundary of different subjective worlds, moving between them to expose the exclusions and injustices upon which each is premised

Aesthetics · Contingency · Dichotomy · Epistemology · Identity (music · Negotiation · Perspective (graphical · Social science · Sociology · Space (punctuation) · Child Welfare and Adoption · Feminism, Gender, and Sexuality Studies · Gender Studies · Psychology · Reproductive Health and Technologies · Social Psychology

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