Naming parents after adoption - are they still a ‘mum’ and ‘dad’? Recognition, rights and a sense of retained parental identity after a child is adopted from care

This paper sets out the findings from a doctoral study in Northern Ireland about how birth parents of children who have been adopted from public care, and lawyers involved in adoption, experience the use of the terms mum and dad after adoption. While adoption legally removes them as parents, birth parents can retain a sense of parental connection to the child albeit that the role and status associated with their parental identity has changed. The ambiguity and contested nature of their sense of parenthood after adoption is reflected in how parental labels are used in the context of post-adoption contact. Using the theoretical lens of Honneth’s theory of recognition and drawing on Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, this paper explores the implications of naming practices in open adoptions where there is ongoing interaction between birth and adoptive families, supported or facilitated by social workers. The qualitative study involved semi-structured interviews with 5 birth parents and 12 lawyers and used interpretative phenomenological analysis for birth parent interviews and thematic analysis for lawyer interviews to interpret this phenomenon. The paper argues for an individualised, nuanced and sensitive approach to interactions with birth parents around their use of the term ‘mum’ and ‘dad’ after adoption.