Close relations? The long-term outcomes of adoption reunions

There has been a number of studies of outcomes of adoption reunions, most of which have focused on relatively ‘fresh’ reunions. Very few studies have looked at long-term outcomes. Fewer still have discussed reunions and kinship with controversy over firstly the longevity of reunions, and secondly, what such reunions might engender regarding the relative kinship statuses of adoptive and birth families (Leinaweaver 2018). This paper critically discusses the existing literature on reunions and kinship and then reports on the long-term outcomes of 200 ‘matches’ on the Adoption Contact Register for Scotland between 1996 and 2006, presenting qualitative detail from the seventy-five respondents who completed questionnaires and sent in stories. The paper invites us to think about how adoption can form an adoptive family and deform a birth family, and how adoption reunions re-form both and everyone included, but will especially focus on what a coming together of two people separated by adoption means for the way they frame their relationship with each other and with those around them.