Helder, E. J., Horstman, H. K., Henness, J., Lyssy, K., Vallance, C., Warners, A. L., Bailey, F. X. (2024). Memorable messages regarding adoption and religion: Perspectives of adult adoptees. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. https://doi.org/10.1177/02654075241276696
Abstract
Memorable messages that adoptees receive throughout development may have lasting impacts on their well-being, identity development, and relationships. Given historical and current adoption practices that link adoption and Christianity, more research is needed to examine the memorable messages that adoptees received while being raised in these religious contexts. Using a qualitative approach grounded in the communicated sense-making model, 41 adult adoptees were interviewed to identify memorable messages they heard while growing up in Christian adoptive homes, the communicators of messages, and their interpretations of the messages as children and adults. Results revealed a range of memorable messages communicated primarily by adoptive parents and church members, including that the adoptee was chosen by God, that the adoption was part of God’s plan, and that they were saved/rescued. Common childhood interpretation themes included accepting the messages, questioning belonging, and complying/people pleasing. Adult interpretations were generally more critical, including that the messages glossed over trauma and grief and implied negative views of first family/culture. These findings add to the literature in adoptive family communication by taking into account the religious undertones of many adoption-based messages and contribute to the broader literature on memorable messages by identifying participants’ progression of sense-making in interpreting these messages.
Keywords: Adoption, Memorable Messages, Religion, Adulthood, Belongingness, Communication, Family, Parent-child relationship
Memorable messages regarding adoption and religion: Perspectives of adult adoptees
Our study explores memorable messages that adopted adults who grew up in Christian adoptive homes received regarding adoption and their meaning-making about these messages. The intersection of religiosity and adoption has been explored in a small number of studies (see Helder & Marr, 2020). Most have focused on adoptive parents’ perspectives in examining how Christianity, specifically, impacts motivations to adopt and religious meaning-making in adoption. What remains unknown in the connections between religion and adoption are the experiences of adult adoptees. This is especially relevant given that Christianity is often an undercurrent in adoption practices in the United States, both historically and currently (Oh, 2015; Perry 2017). Though research has cataloged some of the more common messages received by adoptees (Baden, 2016; Docan-Morgan, 2010), there is less known about messages that adoptees receive about adoption and religion. According to family communication research about adoption (see Thomas & Scharp, 2020) and communicated sense-making theorizing (Koenig Kellas & Kranstuber Horstman, 2015), how adoptees process memorable messages about religion from their adoptive parents and surrounding community likely influences their identity and well-being. For example, past research on memorable microaggressions toward adoptees (Zhang, et al., 2019) has linked this type of communication with experiences of negative emotions, further supporting the necessity of understanding adoption communication from the perspective of adoptees. To these ends, we first explore the historical and current connections between Christianity and adoption, and then apply theorizing in memorable messages.
Christianity and Adoption
Historical adoption practices in the United States have been inextricably linked with Christianity. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, White missionary settlers pursued adoption of Native American children (Leacock, 1980) and religious groups facilitated adoption of Native children following massacres of Indigenous groups (Ward Gailey, 2010). In the early 19th century, religious groups formed boarding schools that housed forcibly removed Native children with the express purpose of ‘civilizing’ and converting them to Christianity (Briggs, 2012).
Christianity is also embedded in the historical formation and practices of the three main forms of adoption. First, as a forerunner to the foster care system in the United States, orphan trains were organized in the late 19th century by Charles Brace, a minister and founder of the New York Children’s Aid Society. They sought to place poor, immigrant Catholic children from New York City with Protestant families in the Midwest and West (Perry, 2017). Second, private infant adoption in the United States began in the early 20th century with maternity homes established by religious orders for unwed, pregnant women, with some birth mothers experiencing coercion from clergy and staff to relinquish their children for adoption (Davis, 2011; Solinger, 2001). Third, international adoption of children to the United States, which began in earnest with the conclusion of the Korean War in the mid-20th century, was led by Christians such as Harry Holt (Kim, 2006). Holt founded an adoption agency, Holt International, focused on placing Korean children with Christian families in the United States, which explicitly endorsed notions of adoption as evangelism and rescue (Kim, 2006; Oh, 2015). Throughout US history, child welfare and social service agencies were often founded by religious groups, with many of these faith-based agencies continuing to operate today (Mackenzie-Liu, et al., 2022).
Given these historical foundations, the link between Christianity and adoption continues to impact many of the 115,000 U.S. children adopted each year (Koh, 2023). In nationally representative datasets, Protestant women are overrepresented among adoptive mothers relative to the population and religious attendance predicts propensity to adopt, especially among non-Hispanic whites (Helder & Marr, 2020). One in four adoptive parents reported religious or humanitarian reasons for adopting (Berry et al., 1996), and more than two thirds of Christian adoptive parents claimed that their religion was a factor in their decision to adopt (Helder et al., 2020). The specifically stated reasoning for adoption by Christian parents includes a biblical mandate to care for orphans, adoption as a ministry, physical adoption as a result of spiritual adoption, and wanting to extend their blessing to others (Firmin et al., 2017b; Perry, 2017). These motivations to adopt show how Christian adoptive parents may understand adoption and talk with their adoptive children about their decision to adopt, which may in turn impact adoptees in significant ways.
For religious adoptive parents, religion may not only serve as a catalyst for choosing to adopt, but also frames the messages they give their children about adoption. In Christian families, adoption can be seen as a way to fulfill spiritual mandates, particularly by caring for orphans and the poor (Firmin et al., 2017a; Smolin, 2012). The evangelical orphan care movement assumes that upon realization of being saved by God, all Christians must extend that same grace to children in need (Merida & Morton, 2011; Smolin, 2012). Christian theology in these contexts has connected adoption metaphors used in the Bible to discuss salvation with the adoption of children (Merida & Morton, 2011; Smolin, 2012). Qualitative studies with evangelical adoptive parents have identified themes, such as adoption giving parents a personal connection to God’s unconditional love (Firmin et al., 2017a) and a greater sense of gratefulness for God’s providence while coping with uncertainty about the adoption process (Foli, 2017). Several of these messages endorsed by adoptive parents mirror common adoptive microaggressions (e.g., rescue, saved, grateful adoptee) that have been described in studies with adolescent and adult adoptees (Baden, 2016). Consequently, it is important to examine these types of messages from the perspective of adult adoptees, given that their positionality and experiences may lead to different interpretations of the very same messages.
Memorable Messages in Families
Although humans are inundated with countless daily messages, only some have lasting impact. These influential messages are known as memorable messages (Knapp et al., 1981). Memorable messages are usually brief, verbal statements that are retained because the recipient perceives their content as important and relevant (Cooke-Jackson & Rubinsky, 2018; Horstman et al., 2023). Typically, messages are conveyed by an older authority figure, often a family member, who is held in high regard by the recipient. These messages are considered more impactful when the receiver perceives the provider intended goodwill. Given that memorable messages often are delivered by an authority figure (Knapp et al., 1981), they are commonly conveyed in the family and by parents, in particular. Memorable messages from family members are typically focused on contexts of health (i.e., sexual health, mental health, body image), socialization (i.e., socialization around school, work, and race), and coping (see Horstman et al., 2023). While the first composition of the memorable messages framework focused mainly on positive messages, newer research has shed light on negative messaging (Flood-Grady et al., 2021; Ford & Ellis, 1998), along with adding nonverbal communication and the media as ways that memorable messages are transmitted (Cooke-Jackson & Rubinsky, 2018).
Trends in memorable message research also include addressing the historically atheoretical nature of this body of work by offering structures for understanding the concept. The two dominant models in the current literature are the theory of memorable messages (ToMM, Cooke-Jackson & Rubinsky, 2018) and the communicated sense-making (CSM) model (Koenig Kellas & Kranstuber Horstman, 2015) in conjunction with the communicated narrative sense-making (CNSM) theory (Koenig Kellas, 2018). Although the ToMM offers a detailed explanation of the various sources, content, and impact of memorable messages (see Cooke-Jackson & Rubinsky for overview), the CSM model is better suited to the current study because of its attention to the sense-making qualities of memorable messages. Grounded in narrative theorizing (e.g., Bruner, 1990), the CSM model offers six communication devices – accounts, attributions, communicated perspective-taking, memorable messages, metaphors, narratives – as narrative-like communication that humans use to make sense of their lives (Koenig Kellas & Kranstuber Horstman, 2015; Horstman et al., 2019). These devices, including memorable messages, help humans to organize and synthesize their thoughts, process their emotions, move forward after complex experiences, and are intimately connected to mental, physical, and relational health (Koenig Kellas, 2018). Memorable messages are powerful sense-making devices in that recipients “pull forward” these messages from the past to make decisions in the future (Medved et al., 2006).
A context in which these messages are “pulled forward” is religious sense-making. Keeley (2004) explored religion in final conversations with someone who is dying and found that most included religious faith or spirituality. The overarching theme from the interviews was validation, specifically an emphasis on God’s will, a belief in afterlife, and appreciation of community (Keeley, 2004). Similarly, Droser and Seurer (2022) found that after a loved one’s death, respondents reported less grief when messages such as advice, memories, and sense of availability were communicated. Religiosity, assessed by religious attendance, was a mediator between message type and grief and adjustment. In addition to these studies focused on religion, many memorable message studies report religious messaging as part of their findings (e.g., Cooke-Jackson et al., 2015). While memorable messages have not been specifically examined in the context of adoption, research has investigated patterns of communication within adoptive families more generally.
Adoptive Family Communication
Family communication plays an influential role in the formation of adopted individuals’ and their family members’ identity development (Colaner, 2009; Thomas & Scharp, 2020). The Family Adoption Communication (FAC) model tracks the progression of communication that occurs between adoptive parents and their children during different developmental stages and also acknowledges that there is a disproportionate level of power between various family members, such as adoptive parents having control over the information they share or withhold from their adopted children (Wrobel et al., 2003).
Communication between adoptive parents and adoptees is consequential to adoptees’ identity and well-being. Adoptive parents’ messages embedded in stories about the adoptive children’s origin (i.e., adoption entrance narratives, AENs), in particular, have been linked to adoptees’ self-esteem, generalized trust, and well-being (Kranstuber & Koenig Kellas, 2011; Hays et al., 2016). Adoptees tend to incorporate the messages crafted by their parents’ AENs into their own stories (Kranstuber & Koenig Kellas, 2011). In some cases, AENs can serve as a form of positive reinforcement that builds familiarity and a complete history (Harrigan, 2010). Yet AENs can also reinforce and perpetuate damaging themes, including messages that attribute adoption to fate, portray adoption as an act of rescue, or legitimize adoption by reasoning that their family is made whole through adoption (Hays et al., 2016; Kranstuber & Koenig Kellas, 2011). In transnational adoptions, AEN themes tend to include sexual/domestic violence, an uneducated birth mother, and a further social stigma of single motherhood trapped in a “Third World” (Yook & Kim, 2018). Moreover, transnational AENs can reinforce the humanitarian salvation narrative, in which “white savior” adoptive parents rescue the orphaned child (Yook & Kim, 2018). In sum, research on AENs suggests that adoptive parent-child messages about the adoption affect and reflect adoptees’ sense of self and well-being.
Research has also examined ways that communication about adoption initiated by those outside the family is experienced by adoptees (Docan-Morgan, 2010) and adoptive parents (Suter, 2008; Suter & Ballard, 2009). Adult adoptees fielded intrusive comments and questions about their adoptive relationships and identity as well as received compliments about their appearance, ultimately reporting feeling uncomfortable, objectified, and defensive in response to this type of communication (Docan-Morgan, 2010). Similarly, adoptive parents have reported that communication containing negative comments about their child’s birth country, stereotypes about their racial and ethnic group, and praise for adopting (i.e., “wonderful for saving this child”) challenged their family identity (Suter, 2008). Of note, a portion of adoptive parents felt affirmed by praise for adopting (lucky, blessed, saving a child) while other parents had negative perceptions of these comments (Suter & Ballard, 2009), revealing the range of reactions to this particular type of communication. These studies highlight the impact that communication about adoption can have when it is directed at adoptees and adoptive parents from individuals outside of the family.
Thus, the CSM model and current research suggest that both memorable messages (Koenig Kellas & Kranstuber Horstman, 2015) and family communication about adoption (Thomas & Scharp, 2020) are consequential to adoptees identity and well-being. Research with adoptive parents has identified that a significant number have religious motivations to adopt and use their religiosity as a lens through which they make sense of their experience as adoptive parents (Helder & Marr, 2020). However, some of the very same messages that religious adoptive parents endorse have been described as microaggressions by research that focuses on the perspective of adult adoptees (Baden, 2016). More research is needed to better understand the ways that adoptees themselves make sense of the religious messaging they receive. In the current study, we interviewed adult adoptees who had grown up in homes where adoptive family members were affiliated with Christianity. Our primary research questions were (1) what memorable messages about religion and adoption did adoptees receive? (2) who communicated these messages? (3) how did the participants make sense of these messages as a child? and (4) how do they make sense of these messages as an adult?
Methods
Participants
Following approval from the Institutional Review Board, the study was advertised through online networks of adult adoptees (i.e., ICAV), adult adoptee organizations local to research team members, and social media accounts. Participants were eligible if they were at least 18 years old, proficient in English, an adopted person in either a closed or open adoption, and were raised by a Christian parent(s). We excluded individuals who were adopted by an extended family member or step-parent. Upon recruitment, 153 individuals completed the consent form and screening questionnaire to determine eligibility, and of those 150 were deemed eligible. The pool of eligible individuals was divided into three groups by adoption type: private infant, domestic foster care, and international, and 15 participants were selected from each group using a random number generator for a total of 45. Of these 45, six did not respond to our outreach and two gave information in their interview that contradicted their screening questionnaire responses. As a result, an additional four participants were selected from the eligible pool using a random number generator. Ultimately, 41 participants’ interview transcripts were used for further analysis. Each of them were sent a $50 gift card as compensation for their participation. See Tables 1 and 2 for information on participants’ demographics, adoption information, and religious affiliation. The final sample was diverse in many respects but consisted largely of individuals adopted by heterosexual, White couples with strong religious commitment and frequent church attendance.
Procedure
Participants were contacted by one of the three lead researchers to schedule their interview. All interviews were conducted virtually via Zoom and were audio recorded. Interviews ranged from 43 to 142 minutes (M = 75.8 minutes, SD = 23.8). The first two interviews were conducted collaboratively by multiple members of the research team in order to ensure our interview approach was consistent across the team. Following this, the three lead researchers conducted the remaining interviews independently using the semi-structured interview protocol.
The interviews contained three sections. First, questions focused on the participant’s story about their adoption, how adoption was discussed in their home growing up, and their journey with religion. Second, participants were asked in an open-ended fashion about what messages they heard about adoption and religion while growing up. After participants recalled these messages, interviewers provided participants a list of 14 religious messages about adoption[1] via the chat section of the virtual meeting as a heuristic device in order to provide scaffolding and to assist participants in further understanding the context of the interview question. Each participant was then invited to reflect on the list, discussing whether or not these messages were a part of their experience. The final section of the interview concentrated on the childhood and current interpretations of the memorable messages.
Transcripts of interview recordings were created and edited for accuracy by three research assistants. Pseudonyms were generated for each participant and transcripts were uploaded into ATLAS.ti, a qualitative analysis software.
Data Analysis
Data were analyzed based on Tracy’s (2020) phronetic iterative approach, wherein research team members engage in iterative analysis between existing literature and the data. As such, data analysis began with data immersion and reflective journaling. Following this, we met to discuss data immersion reflections and observations about emerging themes. Next, we collaboratively completed preliminary open-coding on a single transcript to ensure shared understanding of the research questions and how they corresponded to the transcript.
Following this, we each independently conducted open coding of five to six transcripts. A portion of the team met to review all open coding, merging similar codes into overarching themes in order to create a draft of a codebook with definitions and exemplars. The full research team met to discuss and edit the codebook. Then, we independently coded the same transcript using the codebook draft and met to discuss discrepancies and overlap in coding, editing the codebook. This iterative process was repeated for two additional transcripts. Next, we independently completed a first pass of analytic coding, each on a different transcript, and met to discuss questions or difficult passages, making final edits to the codebook.
Once the final draft of the codebook had been developed, inter-coder agreement was examined using procedures outlined by Krippendorff (2018) and Richards (2009). Five transcripts that had been coded by the lead researchers were selected and the code labels were removed from all quotations. Following training on the codebook, two research assistants independently applied codes to the quotations of each of the five transcripts. Intercoder agreement was calculated separately for each code group using Krippendorff’s α and was at an acceptable level for each set of codes (Messages α = .86, Communicator α = .72, Child Interpretations α = .74, and Adult Interpretations α = .76).
Next, each member of the research team was assigned five to six transcripts for analytic coding in which they were the primary analytic coder and two to three transcripts as a secondary coder. Both primary and secondary coders read and coded the entire transcript. Meetings were held to develop consensus between the primary and secondary coders and to address coding decisions for challenging passages. After all transcripts had been coded, the research team met to review the quotations that had been assigned to each code to identify whether any needed to be reassigned or removed.
A number of verification strategies were employed, including three criteria of Tracy’s (2010) “big tent” framework: worthy topic, credibility, and sincerity. The topic is deemed worthy by its significance and necessity for study, as evidenced in the review of literature. Credibility was established through creating multivocality between the researchers and participants. We engaged in member reflections, wherein an outline of the results, along with exemplars, was distributed to six participants. Each participant felt that their perspective was accurately captured in the results. For example, Clara reflected “The first thought that comes to mind is feeling like I’m not alone or ‘wrong’ in my thoughts. It’s really encouraging reading the similar themes from people that likely had a similar upbringing to me.”
Finally, we engaged in sincerity through self-reflexivity about our positionality regarding adoption research and lived experience. Self-reflexivity, or “honesty and authenticity with one’s self, one’s research, and one’s audience,” is a hallmark of qualitative research (Tracy, 2010, p. 842). The first author is a non-adopted, clinical psychologist who was raised in a Christian household with personal connections to adoption in her extended family. The second author is an American domestic adoptee from a private, same-race, closed adoption who is now in reunion with her birth family; she grew up in a Christian household, and is a communication researcher. The third author is an American domestic adoptee from a private, transracial, open adoption and a racial literacy consultant who specializes in educating about transracial adoption and racial identity. The fourth author is a non-adopted student in a graduate communication program. The fifth and sixth authors are undergraduate psychology students who are internationally and transracially adopted into Christian households. The seventh author has a bachelor’s degree in psychology, is a graduate student in occupational therapy, and is a transracial and international adoptee who grew up in a Christian household. In order to be aware of how our own and our team members’ lived experience may color our approach to the research, we discussed our positionality vis a vis adoption at the onset of the project and throughout data collection and analysis.
Results
Following analysis, several groups of themes emerged, including memorable messages heard by participants, the communicators of these messages, and the childhood and current adult interpretations of the messages. Table 3 provides categorizations, definitions and frequencies of each theme, while exemplars and relationships among themes are provided below.
Messages about Religion and Adoption
Participants recalled a range of memorable messages about adoption and religion. The most commonly reported message was that their adoption was a part of God’s planin which God was orchestrating the circumstances that brought their family together. As Eleanor described “the adoption, it was always talked about, like, this was God’s plan. And you know, you’re here for a reason and you’re in our family for a reason. And Jeremiah 29:11[2] got thrown around all the time.” Relatedly, participants also described the message of being chosen. For many participants this referred to the idea that they were chosen by God for their adoptive family (“it was spoken in terms of divine intervention where I was handpicked by God to be placed into the arms of this loving pastor and his wife.” Sarah). Other participants heard this message in the context of being chosen by their adoptive parents. Gabrielle described hearing this message by saying “my mom just saying, you know, we couldn’t really see ourselves adopting the other ones, but I just felt called as soon as I saw your face. I knew that you were the one that I wanted to adopt.” For a small number of participants who had some contact with their first family during childhood, this message also included that their placements were chosen by their first family. As an example, Ellen stated “but it was a letter that she [first mother] wrote that was explaining to me at the time why she was putting me up for adoption and that she wanted me to go to specifically a good Christian household.”
Another commonly reported message was that the adopted child is a gift/blessing for the adoptive family. This often included religious connections as participants recalled being referred to as a gift from God. Kyle stated “so I just can recall my mother in particular just, ‘oh, you’re such a gift. You’re what I prayed for, you’re exactly what I wanted.’” Similar to this, a number of participants also remembered hearing the message that being adopted made them special. Clara described hearing this in a church context “I heard that ‘I’m so special’ a lot. You know, because people would always talk about how like being a Christian is just like being adopted into God’s family. And I actually remember in like Sunday school classes, in children’s church, like, oh, Clara knows about how great that is.”
A significant number of participants described hearing that they were rescued/saved. This was referring to being saved from a bad situation, such as an orphanage or abuse/neglect, as well as being saved from a bad future (i.e., poverty, not being raised in Christian faith). Jia described hearing “that it’s a rescue for adopted children, people are being rescued, that it’s redeeming to be adopted.” Connected to this, participants also described hearing messages that praised their adoptive parents as saviors/doing God’s work for adopting. As an example of this, Veronica stated “numerous times it felt like it was within a conversation around this being a higher plan, a Christian ideal, that my parents must be so great to have adopted me and be raising me as their own and taking me to church.” Also, many participants described messaging that communicated they could have been aborted and were saved or rescued from this fate. Laura described this message by saying “And adoption was also the opposite of abortion. That’s what I was taught growing up. Like that was very clear. Like you could have been aborted, but your mother chose life for you.”
Many participants heard messages that they should be grateful. Kyle captured the connection between the grateful message and several other messages in saying “I would say kind of like that this was God’s design. He always intended for you to be here with us. That somehow this was the plan all along and that I need to be thankful and grateful for that in terms of who I really am.” For some participants, this idea was conveyed with the message that they were lucky. Angelica reported hearing this in a church context “Oh, you’re so lucky to be adopted. Or you’re so lucky that they wanted you, or, like, those things I heard, those were said to our faces.”
Participants also described memorable messages that depicted adoption in a solely positive manner. Several participants reported hearing the message that adoption is beautiful. Ellen said “Adoption is beautiful, always. That was, it was never presented as anything other than a beautiful thing, a beautiful, positive, selfless thing on both sides.”
Participants heard communication that likened their adoption to Christian salvation, such as ‘we’re all adopted by God.’ Emma stated “I think the primary message that I received from church, it was in connection with this general idea of we are all adopted, we are both God’s children and we are adopted into his family…but I think the language around it was then like, we are helpless, we are in need, and someone came to save us.” For some transracially adopted participants this also included the message of we’re all God’s children as a way to downplay racial and ethnic differences between the adoptee and their adoptive family.
Participants also reported hearing messages that their adoptive parents had religious motivations to adopt, which connected their decision to adoptwith a religious sense of duty or calling. For example, Grace heard “everything they believe and taught me to believe is being led by God. And so they talked about my adoption and the way that they felt called to adopt me specifically just because everything lined up a certain way and they felt like that was God’s calling.”
Some memorable messages appeared to connect adoption with specific Bible stories. For example, a number of participants reported being compared with Moses. Sarah gave this example “So the story of Moses was a huge, was a huge proponent of my adoption story, of baby Moses in the basket in the river. It’s a very, very common Judeo-Christian type of a story that is taught to little children. But the thing that was emphasized a lot in my adoption story was that God kept me safe in my journey to America, just like God kept Moses safe in the basket down the river.” Another comparison message reported was that their first family loved you so much they gave you away, with comparisons made between this idea and Biblical stories of Abraham being willing to sacrifice his son, Solomon serving as mediator to two women claiming the same child, or God’s sacrifice of Jesus. The underlying message was that the Bible teaches that love involves sacrifice and this is evidenced by the sacrifices made by their first family. As Sheryl described, “So probably the biggest messages are, um, king Solomon, right? His judgment on splitting the baby. This has even come up as an adult in conversations with my dad…It’s difficult to fathom for me that someone could have loved me so much, they just gave me away.”
Other messages focused on the identity and belonging of the adopted person within the adoptive family. Participants described the message of who you really are/where you really belong. Clara described how this was linked with religion “And the thing they always said is like oh, ‘you look just like your adoptive mom,’ you know? And he would always say like, ‘that’s cuz God knew who your real family was and who you were gonna end up with.’” Connected to this, participants also heard the message carried you/born in my heart, which appeared to be an attempt to emphasize belonging and minimize differences between adopted and biological children. Veronica remembered hearing “not bone in my bone or flesh in my flesh, but like still miraculously my own or something like that. You weren’t born under my heart, but in it.”
While the majority of participants reported hearing multiple messages described above, three participants reported that they had heard no messages related to adoption and religion, despite growing up in Christian households and frequently attending church as a child.
Communicators of Messages about Religion and Adoption
When participants described the memorable messages, they often specified the context and who was communicating the message. The majority of message communicators were the adoptive parents and members of their church community, including Sunday School teachers, pastors, and other church members. This frequency data and additional communicator themes are provided in Table 3.
Interpretations during Childhood
Accepted Messages
When participants reflected on their perspective on the messages as children, many stated that they had accepted the messages that were communicated. Within this acceptance, there was a spectrum of participant’s interpretations from an active embrace to a neutral internalization.
Participants who actively embraced the messages described their desire as children to share about their adoption with others and to use it as a tool to share their faith or support particular causes (e.g., pro-life movement). They enjoyed feeling as though they were the center of attention due to their adoptive status. As Jia described “at the time, I was very proud to be adopted, to be able to say I was actually adopted in real life and not just spiritually. Not that I knew what either of those things meant.” Additionally, Miriam described the embracing of the could have been aborted messages in her pro-life advocacy as a child: “when I was in Girl Scouts and we would put crosses out to represent all of the abortions that happened at school. And that would be service projects and things like that. And I would always be very, especially in grade school, like I was very into helping with this because I was told over and over again that this was sort of like my area of expertise because I was, you know, my parents didn’t abort me.”
Other participants described the messages as feeling comforting during childhood and relying on them to cope with negative feelings related to relinquishment or feeling othered. As Naomi described “I think it felt comforting, right? Because you’re still battling with this, ‘why was I not good enough for my biological mom to keep me?’ kind of thing. Well, it’s because God’s plan was for me to be with this other family.”
On the other end of the spectrum, some participants described a more neutral acceptance or internalization of the messages because it was the only messaging they were hearing about adoption. Elijah said “I just took it at face value as a kid. I mean, I didn’t know, like I didn’t have the wherewithal to question it.”
Compliance/People Pleasing
Many participants articulated that the messages created pressure toward compliance or people pleasing that prevented them from voicing internal disagreement or discomfort they were experiencing about the messages. Some voiced this as coming from a desire to keep the peace and to prevent their adoptive family from feeling hurt. For example, Lin stated “I was definitely a ‘shut up’ kind of kid. I didn’t talk a lot about it, I didn’t wanna upset people. And so I never really critiqued anyone or was vocal about the discomfort of some of the language [about adoption]. Usually when I would hear things like that, I recall a very distinct stomach drop and I still get it today in certain situations, but I would have a very visceral kind of response and then I would just be quiet.” Similar sentiments were expressed by a number of adoptees especially in the context of the divided loyalties they felt between curiosity about first family members and protecting their adoptive family’s feelings.
Others described the pressure to be compliant and please others resulting from a desire to fit into the grateful message and a tendency toward perfectionism to fulfill the messages they were receiving. Kyle described this by saying “The message was ‘we had to rescue you, you owe us.’ And really that’s how I grew up feeling like I owe everyone. I have to earn my keep. I have to earn my way because I need to be grateful that God placed me here.”
Some participants described this people pleasing and compliance coming from a place of fear that they could lose their place in the adoptive family, that their belonging was contingent on obedient behavior and agreement with religious messaging about adoption. As Gabrielle described “there’s a sense of being afraid to ask for what you want and what you need because you always feel like your place is precarious and you don’t wanna make waves, so you kind of settle for whatever is offered, whatever is given.”
Questioning Belonging & Feeling Othered
A wide range of participants described the messages as contributing to a sense of isolation, that they did not belong or felt othered in their adoptive family and/or their church community. For example, Sarah described:
You know the song where it’s ‘Jesus loves the little children, all the little children of the world.’ And [church members] would literally point at me and be like ‘the world.’ And because I was ‘the world’, apparently I wasn’t part of this church, I was brought into this church. So I was like a perpetual foreigner within my own church. And being in that kind of a position as a pastor’s daughter just kind of compounded on it.
For transracially adopted participants, this childhood interpretation also tended to contain elements of racial and ethnic differences that made them feel as though they were the “odd one out.” For many transracially adopted participants this included significant dissonance between religious messaging about adoption and their experience with racial and ethnic microaggressions. For example, Kaitlin said,
having experiences where people would say things to me or call me names and not feeling like I could go to my parents with that because I knew it would make them sad. So trying to protect their feelings…. So there was that struggle of God did this [referring to adoption is God’s plan message] to me, but I’m supposed to love him and thank him for who he made me to be. So there was that constant conflict of he created you in his image and he made you to be perfect. And yet here you are being ridiculed for who you are.
For several participants, this childhood interpretation linked with additional interpretations, such as compliance/people pleasing where they attempted to earn belonging by acting in ways that were consistent with the adoption messages they were hearing.
Anger and Annoyance
Roughly a quarter of the participants described experiencing anger or annoyance as children in response to hearing the messaging. For some, it was in response to the pressure to be grateful or feel lucky for being adopted. As Nina reported, “it was one of those things like growing up, it really ground my gears. Like people would be like, you should feel so lucky. And it’s like, yes, I do. In the same manner, being adopted means not knowing my history.” For others, it was in response to the general spiritualization of their adoption. For example, Sheryl described: “When I was a teen, I started to get really irritated. That’s the point when I was like, tell me the facts instead of telling me about God. Like with my adoption. Get him out. Like, I want the facts.” Other participants, like Clara, described their anger or annoyance in response to hypocrisy that they perceived within the church related to adoption messaging:
So, but especially like, one thing that I’ve always heard, especially in church, cuz like since my church was a little more political, they would talk about abortion a lot and they would always say like, why would you ever abort your baby when they could be put up for adoption? And like, the older I got, the more uncomfortable that made me feel. So kind of having to listen to that kind of narrative, but also starting to realize like, wait a second, where’s all the adopted kids then in this church?
For some transracially adopted participants, anger or annoyance was in response to microaggressions or other racist incidents they experienced that were at odds with the messages they were hearing about adoption. Last, several adoptees experienced anger or annoyance when their adoptive families used religious messaging about their adoption to share private aspects of their adoption story.
Shame and Guilt
Participants described feeling shame and guilt related to messages surrounding their adoption. For some, the shame centered around their feeling as though they did not fit in with their adoptive family or community and that the messages brought unwanted attention to their adoptive status. As Natasha articulated “I always had felt like something was wrong with me or I was just weird and I come to find out in adulthood that I was totally normal and that was just like, oh my gosh. I felt like a whole person for the first time. I felt seen.”
For another group of participants, shame came as a result of behavior they engaged in as children that didn’t seem to fit the mold of what it meant to be a ‘good Christian’ or did not live up to the messages they were hearing about being special or chosen. Katherine described this experience by saying “I think it furthered feelings of shame, it all kind of snowballed on top of each other. Cause it was like, you know, I’m so lucky, I’m so grateful. Like, what a blessing God put me here. And then to like be told that I’m misbehaving or this or that, like ‘how dare you,’ it just snowballed on this feeling of like, shame.”
Participants also described experiencing shame for not fulfilling the expectation of others to feel grateful or lucky. A subset of participants described their sense of shame over their curiosity about their first family and how this would appear ungrateful to others. Emma reflected:
So when I was about, again, the age of 14, I started questioning like, why do, if we’re supposed to tell others about God, why can I not tell my biological family like the ones who brought me into the world about Him? And so with that experience, I just felt a lot of helplessness and also shame in wrestling with this question and confusion, and trying to figure out how to talk to my parents about it. Because I thought that I would come across as ungrateful for the family that I was brought into.
Didn’t Engage
A smaller group of participants described hearing the messages as a child but not engaging them. For example, Angelica described “I didn’t see them as a kid. Like I heard them, but I didn’t interact with them.” Several participants who reported experiencing abuse in their adoptive families also described this lack of engagement, but framed it in the context of numbing and focusing on survival. When Mitchell was asked to describe his childhood interpretation of God’s plan messaging he stated “I was really numb inside. So I probably didn’t react. Like for me, all these different traumas compounded to the point where I didn’t have feeling.”
Interpretations during Adulthood
Gloss Over Negative Aspects of Adoption/Trauma
Participants said their memorable messages about adoption and religion glossed over trauma, grief, and loss. These interpretations highlighted adoptees’ perception that the message-providers invalidated or ignored the fact that the adoptee had suffered abandonment, rejection, trauma, separation, loss, and, at times, racial/ethnic strife because of their adoption. For example, in interpreting chosen messaging, Andrea said, “The sub-messaging is that I was chosen and wanted by you because I wasn’t chosen and wanted by someone else.” Similarly, Gabrielle wanted message-providers to acknowledge that “adoption is just, it’s trauma, it’s traumatic, and there’s no way around that.” These and other gloss over interpretations highlight participants’ disappointment that no one acknowledged or allowed them to grieve their adoption trauma.
Whereas many gloss over interpretations focus on message-providers glossing over the challenges inherently associated with being adopted, some interpretations centered on glossing over more sinister harm or abuse present in the adoptive home. In these interpretations, adoptees felt that positive messages about adoption were misaligned with the reality of their lived experience of physical or emotional abuse. For example, several adoptees claimed that the messages linking adoption and religion were problematic because God would not have put them in a harmful or abusive situation. Ellen said, “How can this be at all what God wants? How can this be what God wanted for me?… How can this be God’s plan for me if my mother is hitting me?” As a whole those messages that gloss overadoptees’ struggles, to varying degrees, are painful reminders that their message-providers failed to validate the difficulties or abuse these adoptees have endured.
Implied Negative Views of First Family/Culture and Search Desires
In adulthood, participants reflected that the messages they heard growing up conveyed that their first family and culture were less than or were in conflict with their desires to search for their first families or visit their first countries. For example, participants had come to see saved/rescued messages as implying that their first/birth country was not a good place. Melissa specifically notes, “I mean, I was told it and I didn’t wanna be a prostitute in this unknown, dark, scary land. There was no other cultural education for me. So it was just kind of, Korea was honestly a black hole.” Similarly, for some participants these messages conveyed that they should strive to not ‘end up like the birth family.’ Laura recalled being socialized to not becoming pregnant like her birth mom: “You know, and they corrected their sin by giving you life. But, you know, beyond that, it was, they should be ashamed of everything that happened kind of thing.”
Participants also reported that messaging was used to discourage them from contacting their first families. Specifically, messages implied that no one else could provide them with a home the way the adoptive parents could and that the adoptee was a part of the adoptive family for a reason, thus implying that a search for the birth family would be negative for the adoptee. Miriam discussed how her adoptive parents’ who you really aremessaging prevented her from reaching out to her first family:
You know, I was clearly their kid and not anybody else’s. And that’s partially why I waited so long to contact, even after I had found out about my birth parents and then found them, and like my extended birth family. I waited a couple of years because I didn’t know if I, I knew I wanted to know about them, but I just felt really torn about it because, part of me didn’t really know what I could possibly gain from it… I thought it was just gonna be heart wrenching, not pleasant stuff because like, there was so much good with my adoptive family, and I clearly already belonged here, so why rock the boat?
Non-Specific Negative
Some participants provided non-specific negative interpretations to messages linking adoption and religion. In these interpretations, adoptees expressed either an emotional/visceral response or disbelief of the message. Regarding the emotional/visceral response, when asked how they think about certain messages as adults, adoptees often expressed a general discontent or emotion of disgust, anger, or sadness. Participants used expressions such as “creepy” (Kyle), “infuriating” (Andrea), “really messed up” (Natasha), “I struggle with that, personally” (Melissa), “it stabs me in the heart” (Lin), and “just ugh!” (Elijah). For example, Kyle said messages of could have been aborted, “cause me trauma” and Natasha said she “rolls [her] eyes” at messages of we’re all adopted by God.
Other adoptees explained that their overall negative interpretation of a message linking adoption and religion was due to their disbelief of the message. These adult adoptees hold different beliefs about religion and/or adoption from their message providers. For example, Eleanor called them “total hogwash,” and Gordon sees them as “manipulation” and “lies that everybody was telling one another.” Some participants explained that they perhaps believed in God or were Christian, but did not believe in the religious beliefs underlying some of these messages (e.g., “divinity doesn’t work like that,” Mitchell). In sum, non-specific negative interpretations centered on adoptees’ general dislike or disbelief in messages connecting adoption and religion.
Centers Adoptive Parents/Good Works
As adults, adoptees reported feeling as though the memorable messages centered on the good deeds of the people adopting them. Often, the messages adoptees recalled were embedded within the ideas that their adoptive parents should be praised for adopting. For example, Stacy stated her distaste for her parents’ attitudes about adoption, “The older I got, the more I felt like it wasn’t so much about me, but about them and their, the way that they look to other people.” Jia explained that when she became old enough to understand the Savior messages, she started to question it: “Your family is so great to have adopted you.’ It’s just that overall ignorant message that people don’t realize they’re giving.” Keeping up appearances regarding adoption is often why adoptees felt their parents centered the religious motivations as well as themselves and the good deeds they were doing by bringing adoptees into their homes. Elijah explains: “Like, that’s about them…that’s about making them comfortable and that’s putting this enormous burden on me.”
Perpetuate Racist Ideas
For some adoptees, messages linking adoption and religion perpetuated racist ideas. Adoptees with these interpretations described their memorable messages as centering on three discourses: colorblindness, White saviorism, and racism in adoptive families and/or churches. Some participants noted that adoption-religion messages perpetuated colorblind ideologies by ignoring race (e.g., Mitchell’s transracial family never discussing race) and seeing everyone as equal without attending to BIPOCs’ unique experiences and challenges. Laura remembered saying, “my parents taught me not to see color” and hearing, “God doesn’t see color, we don’t see color as a family” in her childhood. Similarly, Stacy characterized her parents’ adopted by God messages as, “We love everyone. That was just the thing that they said over and over again. They didn’t acknowledge the differences or experiences because in their mind, it doesn’t matter. And that was how the church taught us as well.”
Within the colorblind ideology exists a “Whitewashing of Jesus,” wherein participants would point out that Western Christian iconography consistently depicts Jesus as White. Camryn highlighted the disconnect between the message “we were made in God’s image” and the fact that she looked nothing like the White Jesus she always saw. Cindy wondered, “[my parents], they understand geography, but we had that White Rembrandt Jesus in our house.” Whitewashing Jesus perpetuated the message that adoptees of color did not fit into their adoptive parents’ religion.
Notions of White saviorism were also present in adoptees’ interpretations involving racism. Adoptees noticed that messages linking adoption and religion often centered in White people needing to “save” people of color from their unfortunate circumstances, and being praised for doing so (e.g., “how wonderful you are to have taken this child!,” remarked Gabrielle). Adoptees sometimes internalized messages that because the church helps people who look like them, that they must also be ‘poor, unfortunate sinners’ as well. Sarah said, “I always saw my birth country as a country to go on Mission.” Mitchell’s and Sheryl’s families and others would “adopt” international children or participate in Operation Christmas Child, which showed them that people of color, like them, needed help from White people. Some internalized messages that they were “elevated” by being adopted by White people. For example, Gabrielle described this in the context of specialmessages: “There was just very much a sense of, you are one of the good ones, so you are OK. We don’t mean you. When we’re talking about these people that we belittle and despise, you’re special because you belong to us. You get a pass.”
Finally, some adoptees reflected negatively on messages of religion and adoption by pointing out that their adoptive families – and especially adoptive parents – or churches held racist views. For example, Mitchell saw a disconnect between his female adopter’s messages about being grateful he was adopted and her racist views and behaviors (e.g., calling him ethnic slurs). Mitchell and others such as Cindy and Carrie were angered by their adoptive parents telling them to “brush it off” (Carrie) when being called ethnic slurs at school or church. Camryn endured racist comments from her adopted brother and mother, such as “are you considered pretty among your people?” As a whole, some adoptees felt messages that connected religion and adoption perpetuated racism in their homes and churches.
Benefit of the Doubt and Reconciling Views about Adoption and Religion
The way in which some of our participants made sense of the messages they heard growing up led them to take a more accepting stance, either of the message-providers or the message content itself. Some adoptees gave their parents the benefit of the doubt upon making sense of the messages, while others agreed to an extent with certain messages they received. Individuals who gave the message-providers the benefit of the doubt did so as a way to make sense of some of the messages they received, believing that they had good intentions for the messages they passed on. For example, Laura believed that, “They were doing the best they could with the info they had back then,” while Nina explained: “I could see how they want to tell a perfect story.” Similar sentiments were expressed by Elijah, who mentioned, “It was all couched in very loving terms…I give him credit for even saying anything.” In making sense of messages she heard as a transracial adoptee, Julie said: “My parents grew up in a white dominated society and didn’t know any better.”
Although some adoptees gave the benefit of the doubt, a subset of participants also somewhat or fully agreed with particular messages they were told. In our coding, we characterized these interpretations as reconciling, in that participants were resonating with or ‘holding on to’ aspects of messages from childhood as adults. For example, Kyle said, “Adoption is beautiful. It can be beautiful.” For Eleanor, she recognized the power in the message of ‘you could have been aborted’: “Being born in the 80s, I could have been aborted.” Adoptees also came to understand their place within the family, not only agreeing with the messages but also applying the message to their narratives and sense-making processes as a whole. For example, Grace explained: “At the end of the day, I’m in this family and it’s a great fit. So I think originally it [God’s plan] was a great belief. Like, this was the family for me since Day One.” Similarly, other sentiments such as this were echoed by Fatima, “The same God who has been rescuing me in my healing and bringing healing, I don’t know if I would use the word rescuing, but bringing healing and inviting me to healing and has healed is the same God that wants that for their hearts too.”
In Conflict with Commodification in Adoption
Some adoptees interpreted messages about religion and adoption as in conflict with commodification in adoption, or failing to address that adoption involves people being a product to exchange or sell. Commodification interpretations centered around hurt or anger about adoption as feeling transactional and cold. These participants felt like “a pawn” (Natasha), “a playmate” (Pamela), or “an object” (Mira), rather than an accepted and legitimate member of society and their family. Aaron suggested, “A lot of people talk about adopting kids like getting a designer dog, right?… I remember hearing that, like, ‘oh, I’ve always wanted to have an African kid.’” Commodification interpretations were cynical, disgusted, and angry with the nature of adoption.
Within this theme of commodification, some participants interpreted memorable messages of adoption and religion with revulsion toward adoption as ‘big business.’ These adoptees mentioned the finances of adoption and used language of ‘bought and sold,’ such as Elijah: “[we] were sold, to a degree, a bill of goods.” Some mentioned that finances dictated how their adoptive parents chose to adopt (e.g., international adoptions are generally more expensive than public domestic adoptions) and how this conflicted with God’s plan messages. Sheryl described ideas of adoption commodification in the context of chosen by God messages: “They’re called by God. Yeah. Yeah. But it is gross, you know, especially like with the finances of it. I always think of the church as like a business because it is, and money was always a part of it too. My dad was very, he’s fine. He has money. I mean, they could afford me, and I was like, 20 grand.” Sheryl’s and other adoptees’ commodification interpretations foreground the finances of adoption and center on adoptees’ discomfort or disgust of adoption as “big business.”
Child vs. Adult Interpretations
In comparing the progression of sense-making that our participants discussed related to their child and adult interpretations, participants who had heard messages linking adoption and religion (n=38) appeared to fall into one of the following three groups. The majority of participants (n=24) reported accepting most of the messages as a child, but had more negative and complicated interpretations of the messages as an adult. The next most common group (n=10) were participants who reported having negative relationships to the messages as children and continued to feel negatively toward them as adults. Last, four participants appeared to accept the messages as children and continue to uniformly express reconciling interpretations of most of the messages as adults. Of note, some participants expressed reconciling interpretations of a single message as an adult, but otherwise expressed negative interpretations of the rest of the messages they had heard, thus we categorized them in the first group described above.
Discussion
We sought to add to the growing literature examining adoption and religion by expanding the focus beyond the experiences of adoptive parents. In our study, adopted adults shared memorable messages that linked religion and adoption, identified the primary communicators of the messages, and discussed their progression of sense-making in reference to the messages over time. These findings add to the literature in adoptive family communication by taking into account the religious undertones of many adoption-based messages in adoptive families, an understudied force in adoptive family dynamics. They also contribute to the broader literature and theorizing on memorable messages by not only identifying the messages received by adoptees but also identifying participants’ progression of sense-making related to these messages. This is especially relevant given that research outside of adoption has documented that sense-making about memorable messages is a better predictor of well-being than the message content itself (Kranstuber, et al., 2012).
Message Content
Our results revealed that the majority of our participants heard a range of memorable messages throughout their childhood, most often from either adoptive parents or members of their church community. Many of these messages align closely with what has been described by research examining the religious motivations and meaning-making process of adoptive parents (Firmin et al., 2017a; Firmin et al., 2017b; Smolin, 2012; Merida & Morton, 2011). For example, Firmin et al. (2017b) found that Christian adoptive parents discussed the theological concept of spiritual adoption as becoming more concrete through their experiences as adoptive parents. Paralleling this, our participants identified messages focused on theological ideas or Bible characters relevant to adoption (comparisons with Moses, all adopted by God, adoption is beautiful). Firmin et al. (2017a) also described the theme of adoption as ministry whereby adoptive parents were motivated to adopt in order to provide spiritual influences to a child they perceived was lacking this exposure. This corresponds to messages our participants reported receiving (i.e., saved/rescued, saviors/doing God’s work, religious motivations to adopt, grateful).
Similarly, there is also overlap with research findings regarding adoption entrance narratives conveyed to adoptees (Harrigan, 2010; Hays et al., 2016; Yook & Kim, 2018). In particular, Hayes et al. (2016) described the theme of fate/meant to be through their interviews with adoptive parents and Baxter et al. (2014) identified adoption as a worthwhile struggle guided by destiny in their examination of written narratives of adoptive parents. This aligned with our participants’ reports of God’s plan, chosen, and who you really are messages. Given that adoptive parents were identified as the primary communicators in the current study, this correspondence with other studies focused on adoptive parents’ reports lends further support for the accuracy of our participants’ recollections of memorable messages heard in childhood.
This overlap in findings also provides support for the CSM model. The model claims that narratives and memorable messages are both important sense-making devices (Koenig Kellas & Kranstuber Horstman, 2015). Past research has investigated memorable messages as existing embedded in narratives (Horstman et al., 2023) or as narratives (Cooke-Jackson et al., 2015), but this is the first known study that has identified memorable messages as aligning with past work on narrative content. This suggests support for the CSM model position that memorable messages operate similarly to narrative as “narrative-like devices.” CSM work should continue to disentangle memorable messages and narratives to see how they operate in unique or overlapping ways to better support well-being.
In addition to these connections identified in research on adoptive parents’ religious meaning-making, our results also echo messages and interpretations raised in the adoptive microaggressions literature. This research has described adoptees’ experiences of unintentional and intentional harmful interactions with others based on misinformed and biased interpretations of adoption, which have led adoptees to hear that they are lucky, rescued, and should be grateful (Baden, 2016; Janus, 1997; Smit, 2002). Of note, research with elementary-age samples (Zhang et al., 2019) identified microaggressions that these young adopted children reported hearing from peers and adults, including shameful/inadequate birth parents, adoptive parents as altruistic rescuers, and adoption as win-win. These findings correspond both with specific messages our participants described hearing, such as adoption is beautiful, saviors/doing God’s work, as well as interpretations such as gloss over, perpetuated racist ideas (i.e., White Saviorism), and centered adoptive parents. Zhang et al. (2019) noted in their analysis that while many children reported experiencing these statements or questions as microaggressive incidents (child reported feeling bad, hurt), a portion of their sample reported these same experiences but were not bothered by them and did not have awareness of them as microaggressions (Zhang et al., 2019). This finding is consistent with some of the accepted interpretations that our participants described having as children, even if they had come to think of these messages differently as adults.
Adoptees’ Interpretations of Messages
While research with adoptive parents’ religious meaning-making generally conveys positive views of linking religious themes with adoption experiences (Firmin et al., 2017a; Firmin et al., 2017b), the current study with adult adoptees adds greater nuance. Participants explained that they had a range of interpretations of these messages as children. Most commonly, participants reported accepting the messages as children, either wholeheartedly or neutrally. As children, our participants were likely at a developmental stage where they were thinking more concretely about adoption and, for many, their understanding of the forces leading to their adoption was limited (Brodzinsky et al., 1998). At the same time, many participants remembered feeling uncomfortable with messaging linking religion and adoption, which led to feeling othered in their home or church community, experiencing shame, or engaging in active attempts to please others because they felt they could not share their discomfort with the messages they were hearing. Additionally, a smaller subset of our participants remembered feeling angry or annoyed with messages, especially as they reached adolescence. These interpretations echo core adoption themes of intimacy/belonging, shame, and fear of rejection that have been described more broadly (Roszia et al., 2019).
As our participants reached adulthood, the interpretations of the messages largely shifted towards more critical appraisals, including among participants who remained Christians and/or had close relationships with their adoptive family. The most common adult interpretation was that messaging that portrayed adoption in a solely positive light glossed over the difficult aspects of the adopted person’s experience. In contrast to these negative appraisals a smaller group described their adult interpretations of the messages as more accepting. This included participants who wanted to give their adoptive parents and church community the benefit of the doubt or who had reconciled particular messages with their personal narrative and identity. Generally, these positive views tended to be expressed by participants who reported feeling connected to God throughout their life and saw their adoption as a way that God was taking care of them. Also, several participants had adopted children themselves and this dual experience of being an adopted person and adoptive parent led them to ‘make space’ for certain messages, such as adoption being part of God’s plan.
This progression of sense-making over the lifespan corresponds closely to work describing critical consciousness within marginalized groups (Freire, 1970). In this framework, adoptees may become “awakened,” realizing deeper and more complex aspects of their experience and coming to terms with their adoption process (Lifton, 2009). Related to this, Branco et al. (2022) recently introduced the adoptee consciousness model which contains five touchstones describing different phases of an adoptee’s journey. First, status quo, in which adoption is seen as a rescuing act and many adoptees feel special, grateful, or lucky to be adopted. This would characterize many of the childhood accepting interpretations that our participants described. The second touchstone, rupture, is when adoptees find information that conflicts with the status quo, such as information about their adoption, birth family, or even face microaggressions. We saw this echoed in many of our participants’ descriptions of adolescence and early adulthood where additional information about their adoption or first family came to light, conflicting with memorable messages they had received during childhood. In the third touchstone of dissonance, adoptees encounter tension between their beliefs and experiences and feel many emotions such as anger, sadness, fear, or pain along with struggles in belonging. Our largest group of participants, those who had accepted messages as children and had grown more critical of them as adults, frequently described current or past experiences of this feeling of tension and accompanying emotions.
The fourth and fifth touchstones focus on allowing the adoptee to move forward with their identity integration. The fourth touchstone is expansiveness in which adoptees embrace a “both/and” aspect of their adoption, integrating all aspects of their identity. We saw examples of this within our own data as several participants described ways that they had come to embrace their own religious, racial/ethnic, and adoptive identities, even in the context of separating themselves from religious messaging about adoption from their childhood. The last touchstone, forgiveness and activism, is characterized by choosing to acknowledge the inherent injustices in the larger systems of adoption and includes engaging in the process of forgiveness when needed and the ability to respond with empathy and respect toward other adoptees with dissimilar beliefs.
The findings surrounding the adoptee consciousness model reflect narrative theorizing and the CSM model, in particular (Bruner, 1990; Koenig Kellas, 2018; Koenig Kellas & Kranstuber Horstman, 2015). Narrative theorizing posits that humans construct their identity by creating a story of self that incorporates and grapples with others’ stories – and messages – about and to them (McAdams, 1993). Our participants’ memorable messages were often touchstones of their adoptive identity journey, as represented in the adoptee consciousness model. For example, as children, adoptees may have identified with the story that they were a part of God’s plan (status quo touchstone), but later saw that line of thinking as oppositional to their agnostic beliefs (dissonance touchstone). Adoptees thus “storied” and “re-storied” their adoptive and spiritual identities to account for this shift in understanding (White & Epston, 1990). Memorable messages seemed to mark their journey toward adoptee consciousness. In summary, our results provide further support for Branco et al.’s (2022) approach while adding a narrative lens to understanding how important messages from others may fuel adoptive identity development.
Limitations, Future Research, and Practical Implications
Several limitations within the current study should be acknowledged. First, participants were selected via convenience sampling and joined the study through self-selection. This may have resulted in a sample who felt more strongly regarding religious messaging about adoption and/or who experienced a higher degree of this type of messaging as a child. Second, our sample was largely raised by White, heterosexual adoptive parents thus different messages might have been experienced by adoptees raised in homes headed by adoptive parents of color.
Although the current study is a valuable first step in identifying memorable messages about adoption and religion, much more research is needed. Larger scale, quantitative studies following up on some of the initial findings in this qualitative study would also be helpful to examine the ways that adoptive and demographic variables intersect with messages and interpretations. Future research should also investigate first/birth parents’ accounts of their relinquishment to understand how religion colors decision-making and sense-making from their points of view. Participants in the current dataset referred to their birth/first parents’ religious sense-making and that should be further explored. Last, prospective longitudinal studies beginning with adopted youth would further clarify the progression of sense-making that adoptees experience.
Practically, the current study has implications for the ways that Christian faith communities engage in and discuss adoption and interact with adopted people. This includes the ways that Christians speak to and about adopted people and, more generally, communication about efforts to help vulnerable families and children. There are also practical implications for Christians to consider ways to revisit their theology/ideology of adoption, seeking out and integrating adult adoptees perspectives, especially those whose interpretations challenge preconceived or historical beliefs about the connection between adoption and Christianity.
For Christian adoptive parents, it further underscores the importance of open communication within family systems as well as the work that prospective adoptive parents and adoptive parents may need to do within their faith communities to educate others about adoption to better align impact with intention. Most significantly, communication that intentionally allows room for the adopted person to process loss, grief, and trauma, that supports curiosity that adopted individuals have about their first family/culture, that avoids implicit or explicit denigration of their first family/culture, and supports healthy racial and ethnic identity development appears crucial given the negative impact of the religious messages that our participants expressed.
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[1]For example, ‘God’s special gift,’ ‘we felt called to adopt,’ ‘adoption is the gospel,’ ‘we want to adopt because God adopted us’
[2] “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”