Troubling adoption : heartbreak and hope /
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | eBook |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Bristol :
University of Bristol Press,
2026.
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Connect to the full text of this electronic book |
Table of Contents:
- Front Cover
- Troubling Adoption: Heartbreak and Hope
- Copyright Page
- Table of Contents
- List of figures
- Acknowledgements
- 1 What is adoption?
- Introduction
- An urgent and contradictory moment
- Transnational adoption: colonial legacies and the adoption-industrial complex
- Adoption in the UK
- Why families struggle: is adoption a solution or part of the problem?
- How (far) to trouble? Abolition, re/form and radical re-imagining
- Conclusion and outline of the rest of the book
- 2 The role of archives in adoption narratives
- Introduction
- Thinking with archives
- Adoption archives: paper/work and people
- 'Live' archives: life story and letterbox
- Re/creating archives: feelings, fabulations and embodiments
- Conclusion
- 3 Developing alternative knowledges and ways of knowing
- Introduction
- Knowing and not-knowing: live, feminist and queer methodologies
- Artistic collaboration with Vincent Dance Theatre
- Art of Attachment workshops
- Breathe, Trust, Connect: introducing the service
- Ethnography with Breathe, Trust, Connect
- Power and emotions: researching with playfulness, acceptance, curiosity and empathy
- Use of creative methods at BTC
- Art of Attachment film installation analysis
- Conclusion
- 4 Re-thinking attachment theory and adoption
- Introduction
- Attachment and brain science
- Critical responses
- Thinking differently with and about attachment
- The Art of Attachment: thinking emotionally about attachment
- Desire for absent attachments
- Making life bearable: the ambivalence of damaged attachments
- Taking steps: 'a bit of hope'
- Conclusion
- 5 Telling adoption stories in new ways
- Introduction
- Translating and trans/forming stories
- Words that get in the way
- The Power of Words
- Telling hopeful stories, or storying hope in different ways
- Embodied and movement-based ways of telling stories
- Conclusion
- 6 The emotional complexities of adoption
- Introduction
- Establishing safety: the interconnections between emotional and practical support
- Time and space, rhythm and pace
- Emotional regulation and relational connection
- Clinical supervision for staff: being a therapeutic service
- Supporting colleagues doing front-line work: the role of empathy
- Conclusion
- 7 Interdependence in adoption policy and practice
- Introduction
- 'Ideal' families: power and responsibility?
- The case for support for all families based on need
- 'Unsupportable families' or failures in provision of support? A social model
- State as poor parent: the impact on families and social workers
- Interconnection and dependencies between birth and adoptive families
- Conclusion
- 8 A manifesto for change
- Introduction
- Reform and abolition revisited
- A manifesto for troubling adoption
- 1. Safeguard everybody
- 2. Take emotion seriously
- 3. Challenge and change the stories
- 4. Support all based on need
- 5. Re-imagine families