Recognising Adoptee Relationships

With a triadic perspective, this autoethnographic narrative explores the temporal, situated nature of interactions between the author as an adoptee with her adult adopted children as well as those between herself and her birth father and mother.

Christine A. Lewis is a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Education at Edge Hill University. She is an adoptee, adoptive mother, and birth daughter. Her research interests include autoethnographic, autobiographic, and narrative accounts of adoption, and estrangement in families. Her recent chapter on family estrangement is entitled "Blood is thicker than water!" (2022).

Part I - An Adoptee's Critical Autoethnography 1. In-between-ness and belonging 2. Autoethnography Part II - Stories of Adoptive Kinship 3. "You're not my real mum!" 4. Recognition as love 5. Darkest February 6. Five years later 7. My lineage