Adult adoptees coping with the transition to adulthood

There is a lack of empirical evidence in adoption research focusing adult adoptees who become parents. Giving birth to a child urges the adoptee to recall the past, the origins and the birth family. Participants were 34 married or cohabiting couples within which one partner is adopted. Interviews were analysed through a software, the T-lab, to compare the adoptee’s mental representations of the transition to parenthood with those of their partner. Findings revealed that partners often give the adoptee the opportunity to maintain the complexity of the dual connection, along the axis of their origin and that of their adoption.