Naturally, all adoptions are about creating real kinship relationships, but the term “kinship adoption” refers to members of the extended birth family assuming a parental role. Most often, the kinship adopter is a grandmother. The next most common kinship adopter is an aunt. (The term kinship adoption is not referring to the common situation of a stepparent adopting his/her partner’s child. This process is usually referred to as “second parent adoption”.)
There are many advantages to kinship adoption. The most obvious advantage is that, if the relatives are known to the child, the move will be much less traumatic than children who are placed with strangers after being taken from their birthparents because of abuse or neglect. The children may be in a familiar setting with people they associate as comforting.
The birthmother has the comfort of knowing where her child is and who he or she is with. The extended family retains contact with their grandchild, niece or nephew. The child has access to medical and social history. He or she can develop a nuanced view of his birthparents, recognizing both positive and negative aspects of their lives and assuring himself that he was not, as children often believe, responsible for the birthparents’ decision not to parent him. A child who feels rejected by his birthparents may be comforted to think that others in his family of origin wanted him enough to adopt him.
Kinship adoption is often left out of discussions of adoption. (Even I fell into this trap with my earliest blogs on types of adoption!) Two of the books I recently reviewed offer resources for family members of birthparents. The Post-Adoption Blues includes numerous vignettes and advice from grandparents and aunts, both married and single, raising their relatives’ children. After Adoption: Direct Contact and Relationships relates the experiences of grandparents, aunts and uncles who have maintained contact with children adopted into other families, even if the birthparent is not involved in the children’s lives.