Political Representations of Adoption in Australia, 2005–2007

Abstract

Australia has one of the lowest rates of adoption in the western world. Adoption is commonly seen as having done more harm than good, with the antidote to that harm being the “romance” of reunion of adopted children, often as adults, with the mothers who relinquished them. In the popular Australian imaginary, the trope of “coming home” has been mobilized with great effect by indigenous Australians to frame their experiences of separation from birth family into institutions of adoption, and this trope has come to characterize adoption in general. This trope registers adoption as invariably entailing loss, removal from roots, and pain. Problematically, the “coming home” trope also idealizes the birth family, occludes the role and experiences of the adoptive family, and perpetuates potentially limiting essentialism in our understandings of “family” and the role of the mother in particular. This article examines the “climate of apology” surrounding understandings of adoption in contemporary Australia and the impact of successive government inquiries: Bringing them Home (1997), Overseas Adoption in Australia(2009) and The Winnable War on Drugs (2009). It analyses and critiques the rhetoric employed to justify state intervention in family life, the state’s understandings of the “best interests of the child” and the class implications of the consequent endorsement of adoption once again as a preferred social and political option.