Abstract
It was investigated how a biological mother was psychologically located in a family where her child had been adopted with the help of a non-profit organization that promoted child adoption. Following the organization's policy, the adoptive parents initiated and maintained an ongoing dialog with their adopted child regarding his/her origins and biological mother. In Japan, such a disclosure is rare and not commonly made among adoptive families. The organization respected the right of a biological mother to meet her child and arranged meetings of the two whenever the adoptive family agreed. Again, such an arrangement is unusual, and not commonly found in Japan.
Four couples who adopted their child through this organization and followed its policy were interviewed in this study. The interview focused on (1) the way in which a biological mother was referred to in the everyday life of adoptive family, (2) the written communication between a biological mother and an adopted child and a gift that was sent from her to her child, and (3) the experiences acquired during the meeting of an adopted child with his/her biological mother. As a result, we found a social norm developed i.e. the biological mother was respected by the adoptive family and thus she was regarded as if she were a transcendental figure like a goddess in the family.
Having assumed that a transcendental figure can be effective by the nature of abstractness, or remoteness from those who follow it, we reasoned and interpreted that frequent meetings with a biological mother would not be as effective as infrequent meetings. These meetings would occur only at milestones of the child's life such as the entrance into elementary school. Furthermore, we discussed and hypothesized an implication of this study for a nuclear family. Compared with the adoptive family above, an ordinary nuclear family is generally characterized by self-containedness within a direct parental relationship because it is rare to have a transcendental figure outside the family as far as child-raising is concerned. It might be that the presence of an external transcendental figure could play an important role in preventing the escalation of a vicious cycle like child abuse.
