ADOPTION AS DEVIANCE - SOCIALLY CONSTRUCTED PARENT-CHILD KINSHIP AS ASTIGMATIZED AND LEGALLY BURDENED RELATIONSHIP

The adoptive relationship between a child and adoptive parents lacks t he serial legitimacy of consanguinity, is often an ambiguous linkage f or both parents and child, and in some regards may be accorded less th an full legal validity and community acceptance as well. Because the a doptive relationship is socially marginal and stigmatized, and legally handicapped or ''burdened,'' it is, in effect, a deviant relationship . In America, the motivation to adopt has historically shifted from in strumental and economic to expressive and emotional. The public reacti on to adoption has often tended to be critical and stigmatizing. The s tigma of adoption derives from several sources, including: (a) the sti gmatized motivational context of adoption, (b) the deviance of secrecy and deception, (c) the deviant origins of the adopted child, (d) invi dious comparison and disvalued identity, (e) the dysfunctional behavio r of some adoptees, (f) the legal inequities of adoption as social dis valuement, and (g) the decision of some adoptees to search for biologi cal parents. The process of adoption itself would appear to contaminat e and stigmatize the contrived parent-child linkage, essentially rende ring it a deviant relationship.