Apna Banana : Kin-making in Adoptive Families in India

This article examines apna banana , a Hindi phrase translated as ‘making one’s own’, as a lens to understand the making of kinship between the parent and child in adoptive families in India. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with predominantly urban, middle-class adoptive and intended parents who adopt under the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015, it explores how legal adoption is only the starting point for becoming family. The article highlights the cultural specificity in using the term apna banana , which emerged from the parents’ accounts, and its interplay with notions of apna (one’s own) and paraya (the other). The study shows, through parental narratives, that bonding emerges over time through everyday care, shared living, affective labour, and ritual incorporation and is contingent on the child’s acceptance of the parents, highlighting that kinship is not simply ‘given’ but ‘made’ over time. While the parental narratives often conclude with successful incorporation of the child, the study acknowledges the inherent fragility of ties. The parenting journey is described as a roller coaster, indicating that apna banana is not devoid of challenges or crises. Thus, the vernacular phrase apna banana captures the intentional, temporal and affective process through which a child who began as a stranger becomes part of the interlocutor’s family, their own. It foregrounds the cultural and emotional nuances of making families by focusing on how the parents come to make the child their own once the child has been brought home.