Thank you for sharing, Angela. As an adoptee and adoption researcher, I'm always encouraged to see thoughtful research in this field. At the same time, I'm reminded that statistics can describe us, but they cannot represent us. Numbers reveal patterns, but lived experience provides the meaning behind them. I hope we continue to create spaces where adoptees contribute not only as research participants, but also as researchers, presenters, and partners in shaping our collective understanding.
I've never heard of this organization and I'm glad to be introduced to it through your post, so thank you! I'm curious whether any of the research presented centers around or includes step adoptees? (I'm guessing probably not...)
Thank you for introducing this organization and event to me along with some of its presenters, Angela. Your questions posed here will linger in my thoughts.
Thank you for the report on these movements and continued tensions within adoption-related research!
As you might recall, I'm an adoptive dad. I'm also very invested in telling my story, in using my way with words to connect from my own vulnerability and particularity to the experiences of other people. I want to thoughtfully present opportunities for meaning and beauty and empathy and, when it's relevant, subtly teach people about the complexities of adoption.
But I'm also writing from all these positions of power. I'm a male, white, American, and, yes, adoptive father, so your penultimate section demands attention from me, especially this line: "Yet adoptees have long grown accustomed to reading interpretations of our lives written largely without us."
I don't quite know how to wrestle with that beyond doing the thing you point to earlier and being reflective and clear-eyed and honest about how I'm telling my story. That is, I do think my story, of adopted kiddos who return to their biological family, is likely one that doesn't actually get told by many adoptive parents (as a culture, we rarely like to narrate our "failures"), but I still need to be intentional about how I'm telling it and what parts are mine to tell.
Or maybe it doesn't matter how reflective I am or whether I occasionally try to center adoptee voices (like our interview with you); as an adoptive dad writing about my experience, I'm by definition contributing to the wrong end of the ledger.
Andrew, I really appreciate how thoughtfully you're wrestling with this (and of course I know who you are!).
I don't think the question is whether adoptive parents should never tell their stories. Rather, I think it's important to ask: Whose story am I telling? That's where ethical storytelling becomes such a helpful framework. Your experiences, emotions, decisions, and growth are yours to tell. Your children's internal experiences, motivations, and interpretations are ultimately theirs to tell—especially as they grow into adulthood.
Of course, in adoption those boundaries are incredibly blurry because our stories are so deeply intertwined.
Adoptive parents conducting research on adoptees is another story...this is what I was trying to grapple with.
I decided to follow through with the essay I'd been writing. It's risky in that I think someone could charge me with the thing you warned about--I'm writing my adopted daughter's story, her experience and her potential motivations. But I'm also foregrounding my fraught role as the storyteller, and I'm doing it to get my audience to empathize with both me and my daughter at the same time.
And in part because of our dialogue, the essay is also about what it might mean or not mean to tell stories ethically. Anyway, I hope you don't mind that I put one of your excellent lines here up against Anne Lamott. :)
And I suppose you had your own version of figuring this out when you wrote about your biological mom and dad in your book!
I agree with everything you've said here. And yet--
Right now I'm in this pretzel of sorts where I'm trying to tell a small r reconciliation story, but to get there, I first have to walk this high wire of showing an emotionally hard thing I experienced without the reader coming to blame my kid, which is what I think will happen if I tell the thing only from my point of view or even a neutral point of view. And so I'm experimenting with imagining and writing my child's "internal experiences and motivations," not to take their story from them, form it for them, or claim any authority on their experience but to serve as a necessary--but imaginary--counterweight to my narrative control of the story. I feel like I have a roadmap and the skills to do this ethically, but it also feels easy to misjudge and slip and find myself doing a parallel thing to those adoptive parent researchers.
All that to say, I really do appreciate having this in my head as I navigate that...
Thank you for sharing, Angela. As an adoptee and adoption researcher, I'm always encouraged to see thoughtful research in this field. At the same time, I'm reminded that statistics can describe us, but they cannot represent us. Numbers reveal patterns, but lived experience provides the meaning behind them. I hope we continue to create spaces where adoptees contribute not only as research participants, but also as researchers, presenters, and partners in shaping our collective understanding.
Angela love your voice! Your intention and perspective ! So glad you are there representing in Portugal at the conference ❤️
Thank you so much, Jaynee!
I've never heard of this organization and I'm glad to be introduced to it through your post, so thank you! I'm curious whether any of the research presented centers around or includes step adoptees? (I'm guessing probably not...)
I don't think I saw any presentations on that topic. You can see the full list of speakers and presentations here: https://icar9.exordo.com/programme/sessions/2026-07-06
Outstanding reflections and questions on an important conference. So glad you were part of it.
Thanks!
Thank you so much for sharing this. It was encouraging to hear about the conversations being had and questions being asked!
Thank you for introducing this organization and event to me along with some of its presenters, Angela. Your questions posed here will linger in my thoughts.
https://independent.academia.edu/RobertHafetz
Thanks for sharing this link to your work, Robert!
Thank you for the report on these movements and continued tensions within adoption-related research!
As you might recall, I'm an adoptive dad. I'm also very invested in telling my story, in using my way with words to connect from my own vulnerability and particularity to the experiences of other people. I want to thoughtfully present opportunities for meaning and beauty and empathy and, when it's relevant, subtly teach people about the complexities of adoption.
But I'm also writing from all these positions of power. I'm a male, white, American, and, yes, adoptive father, so your penultimate section demands attention from me, especially this line: "Yet adoptees have long grown accustomed to reading interpretations of our lives written largely without us."
I don't quite know how to wrestle with that beyond doing the thing you point to earlier and being reflective and clear-eyed and honest about how I'm telling my story. That is, I do think my story, of adopted kiddos who return to their biological family, is likely one that doesn't actually get told by many adoptive parents (as a culture, we rarely like to narrate our "failures"), but I still need to be intentional about how I'm telling it and what parts are mine to tell.
Or maybe it doesn't matter how reflective I am or whether I occasionally try to center adoptee voices (like our interview with you); as an adoptive dad writing about my experience, I'm by definition contributing to the wrong end of the ledger.
I need to think about this more.... :)
Andrew, I really appreciate how thoughtfully you're wrestling with this (and of course I know who you are!).
I don't think the question is whether adoptive parents should never tell their stories. Rather, I think it's important to ask: Whose story am I telling? That's where ethical storytelling becomes such a helpful framework. Your experiences, emotions, decisions, and growth are yours to tell. Your children's internal experiences, motivations, and interpretations are ultimately theirs to tell—especially as they grow into adulthood.
Of course, in adoption those boundaries are incredibly blurry because our stories are so deeply intertwined.
Adoptive parents conducting research on adoptees is another story...this is what I was trying to grapple with.
I decided to follow through with the essay I'd been writing. It's risky in that I think someone could charge me with the thing you warned about--I'm writing my adopted daughter's story, her experience and her potential motivations. But I'm also foregrounding my fraught role as the storyteller, and I'm doing it to get my audience to empathize with both me and my daughter at the same time.
And in part because of our dialogue, the essay is also about what it might mean or not mean to tell stories ethically. Anyway, I hope you don't mind that I put one of your excellent lines here up against Anne Lamott. :)
https://the17pointscale.substack.com/p/when-is-a-story-ok-to-tell?r=195lr
And I suppose you had your own version of figuring this out when you wrote about your biological mom and dad in your book!
I agree with everything you've said here. And yet--
Right now I'm in this pretzel of sorts where I'm trying to tell a small r reconciliation story, but to get there, I first have to walk this high wire of showing an emotionally hard thing I experienced without the reader coming to blame my kid, which is what I think will happen if I tell the thing only from my point of view or even a neutral point of view. And so I'm experimenting with imagining and writing my child's "internal experiences and motivations," not to take their story from them, form it for them, or claim any authority on their experience but to serve as a necessary--but imaginary--counterweight to my narrative control of the story. I feel like I have a roadmap and the skills to do this ethically, but it also feels easy to misjudge and slip and find myself doing a parallel thing to those adoptive parent researchers.
All that to say, I really do appreciate having this in my head as I navigate that...