Fostered Kinship and Parenthood

A Psychic Journey Through the Bond

Becoming a parent, for someone who was adopted, is not simply a developmental milestone—it is a genuine psychic journey, where the very foundations of the bond, origin, and transmission are replayed.

The adoption experience, far from being a closed event, unfolds within a subjective temporality that reactivates repeatedly, especially during pivotal moments in adult life. Parenthood, as a psychic function, summons mnemonic traces of abandonment, origin fantasies, identifications with parental figures—whether present, absent or idealized—and representations of the self as a subject capable of transmitting.

Psychoanalysis, through the works of Guyotat, Soulé, Golse and Lebovici, proposes a plural reading of filiation structured around several axes: biological, symbolic, psychic, and narrative. Adoption, as a singular mode of inscription within a lineage, brings each of these axes into question.

The biological axis, often overvalued in societal representations, can become a point of tension for the adopted subject, who faces an opaque or fantasized origin. A patient, pregnant with her first child, shares emotionally: “I don’t even know where I come from, so how will my baby know where they come from?” This concern reveals anxiety around transmission and a latent identity disturbance, reactivating the question of origins.

The symbolic axis, instituted through law and social rituals, grants formal legitimacy to the bond, but does not guarantee its psychic integration. A patient expresses in session: “Yes, I was adopted. I had a loving family… but I always felt something was missing. There was no shared blood, and that made me question whether I truly belonged.” This illustrates how the legal and social framework, although solid, may not fulfill the internal resonance necessary for filial bonding.

It is in the psychic axis—encompassing affective experience, imagination and narcissism—that the true appropriation of the bond plays out. It is less about knowing who the “biological parent” is, and more about how the subject can represent and embody their own capacity to transmit and to love. A young adopted mother confesses: “I’m afraid I’ll be like the one who left me. It feels like there’s a flaw in me, a failure in my ability to mother.” This fear of repetition expresses a deep anxiety linked to the initial abandonment, now projected onto her emerging maternal function.

Lastly, the narrative axis, more recently theorized, allows the subject to tell their story, to articulate their journey, and thereby to construct a coherent narrative identity. Parenthood becomes an opportunity for symbolic reconfiguration, rewriting one’s individual history through the language of transmission.

When the adopted subject begins to envision parenthood, these axes often reemerge, sometimes in conflict. The desire for a child may stem from a drive toward repair, a quest for legitimacy, or an identificatory movement. It may also be hindered by repetition fantasies, anxieties about reproducing abandonment, or difficulty imagining oneself as an origin. One man, adopted and undergoing assisted reproduction, says: “I need a child to prove that I belong to a lineage too—that I can create real bonds.” Beneath this desire lies an effort to reclaim the power to generate kinship, occasionally tinged with urgency.

Parentification—the process by which the subject psychically becomes a parent—may be delayed, fragmented or obstructed. Bydlowski’s concept of psychic transparency aptly illustrates this vulnerable phase, where unconscious content surfaces with traumatic intensity. A pregnant patient, in her eighth month, reports recurrent nightmares in which she abandons her newborn at the maternity ward. She says in session: “It’s like I’m reliving what I went through—only this time I’m the one doing it.” This dream demonstrates how trauma resurfaces, seeking symbolization.

Clinically, some adopted adults invest parenthood as a space of reclamation, creativity and transformation. An adoptive mother explains: “I created my own rituals with my daughter. They don’t resemble anything I received, but they’re ours.” Others confront it with ambivalence or inhibition. A patient says: “I can’t imagine being a father. I feel like a fraud, like I don’t have the right tools.” The bond with the future child becomes a space for possible elaboration, but also a site of potential repetition.

Here, the clinician’s role is vital: to support symbolization, accompany narrative construction, and allow the subject to think of themselves as a parent without needing to justify their legitimacy. It is not about declaring the link valid, but about welcoming it in all its complexity, history and uniqueness.

Adoptive parenthood—whether experienced by adoptive parents or by adopted adults becoming parents themselves—serves as a true laboratory of the bond. It forces us to think of filiation beyond biology, to question the foundations of desire, and to embrace the richness of multiple belonging. It reveals, subtly but powerfully, that parental bonds are not decreed—they are built, negotiated, imagined and narrated. And in this construction, the adopted subject, far from being deficient, may become a craftsman of connection, capable of weaving a singular, creative, and deeply human filiation.