Names in adoption law and policy: representations of family, rights and identities

Tools

Pilcher, J. ORCID: 0000-0002-1864-1362 and Coffey, A., 2022. Names in adoption law and policy: representations of family, rights and identities. Families, Relationships and Societies. ISSN 2046-7435

Preview

Text
1620323_Pilcher.pdf - Post-print
Download (871kB) | Preview

Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1332/204674322X16651391589015

Abstract

Names have heightened importance in adoption, affecting the identities of individuals who are adopted and adoptive family-making. In this article, we use critical discourse analysis to gauge how names, and especially children’s forenames, are addressed in the specificities of legal and policy texts governing and guiding the milieu of people affected by adoption in England. We argue that the inclusions, omissions, and opacity of content on names we uncover are outcomes of underlying representations of ‘family’ within the texts, whereby ‘family surnaming’ is constructed as the pre-eminent naming issue in adoption, above children’s forename-based identity rights. Our focus on names in adoption advances sociological understandings of the power of names in representing family relationships and individual identities, and of how official discourses of law and policy can privilege some types of relationships over others, and the rights of some family members over others.

Item Type:

Journal article

Alternative Title:

Names in adoption law and policy

Publication Title:

Families, Relationships and Societies

Creators:

Pilcher, J. and Coffey, A.

Publisher:

Policy Press

Date:

11 November 2022