Moving Through Life as an Adoptee: Adoptee Consciousness Model

Guest Author: Alyssa Habschmidt, M.A.

Adoption is not a one-time event but a lifelong identity for adoptees. To help explain the many underlying currents and nuances of how adoptees move through their lives, scholars JaeRan Kim, Susan Branco, Grace Newton, Paula O’Loughlin, and Stephanie Kripa Cooper-Lewter developed the Adoptee Consciousness Model (2022).

Consciousness models offer marginalized groups ways to develop awareness about how the larger society views them and how societal norms affect their identity. The Adoptee Consciousness Model was developed to increase awareness of issues adoptees face throughout their lifetimes.

The model is depicted as a spiral with five stages referred to as “touchstones” that represent different aspects of adoptees’ awareness or consciousness. It is not a linear or fixed set of stages with a “final” or “desired” outcome. Adoptees may move between these touchstones multiple times over their lives. Most do not remain in just one period of consciousness throughout their lifetime.

The 5 touchstones include:

1) Status Quo

Adoptees in the status quo are committed to believing the dominant narrative of adoption that promotes only the positive perspectives about adoption. Many adoptees in the status quotouchstone do not, or will not, question individual or structural factors that facilitate adoption.

Examples of status quo:

●Adoptees may say things like, “Adoption is a blessing and I love to celebrate my ‘gotcha day’ with my family. I’m so grateful for being adopted!”

●They may become easily offended or defensive if adoption is not framed as positive.

2) Rupture

A rupture is when adoptees encounter information or experience an event that disrupts the status quo, causing them to re-think what they know or who they are.

Examples of rupture:

●They discover that their adoption information is inaccurate, false, or unethical.

●If their adoption had been kept a secret, and they finally learned of it.

●For transracial adoptees, realizing they are seen as people of color, despite internal identification of their family’s insistence on seeing them as White.

●For transnational adoptees, learning their adoptive parents did not obtain citizenship for them.

3) Dissonance

Dissonance is the tension between wanting to acknowledge the complexity of adoption but being

afraid to do so. It’s feeling torn between multiple identities and struggling to see multiple aspects

of adoption.

Examples of dissonance:

●Adoptees suppress an emerging understanding of the complexities of adoption out of concern for being seen as “angry” or “ungrateful.”

●They are fearful of being critical of adoption because they still love their adoptive family.

●They desire to be in contact with birth/first family but feel it will be disloyal and/or hurtful to their adoptive parents.

●Transracial adoptees of color want to be in spaces with other adoptees of color but are uncomfortable or afraid because they feel internally “white.”

●Adoptees, themselves, don’t know how to talk about adoption. Despite wanting to connect with other adoptees, they are uncomfortable or afraid to do so.

●They feel angry or frustrated when hearing adoptees talk about adoption as trauma.

4) Expansiveness

Expansiveness is the experience of sitting in the paradox and learning to accept and understand that multiple perspectives can be true at the same time. Expansiveness is a time of reflection and reincorporation of multiple selves.

Examples of expansiveness:

●Adoptees engage in creative expressions to integrate new awareness into an identity and tell their story on their own terms.

●They often use art, music, writing, and social media to express themselves. This is also a time when many begin formal education or research to deepen their knowledge about adoption.

●Adoptees may start to explore their racial and ethnic heritage through travel, language, and seeking community spaces.

5) Agency

Agency is the way adoptees promote empowerment for themselves and other adoptees.

Examples of agency:

● Adoptees shift from the personal impact of adoption to a sense of responsibility to the larger community.

●They focus on challenging systemic oppression in adoption practices and the dominant narrative.

●They commit to advocacy and activism for adoptees, first families, and other populations impacted by adoption.

●They focus on the process of forgiveness - for what they did not know and get from others because the system was set up to harm and conceal the truth.

If you are navigating adoption in your life, reach out here. At PBA, we work with children, individuals, and families to support and navigate the complex emotions and  life experiences that come up with adoption.