“SOMEWHERE OUT THERE”

Abstract

This article describes the process of parental claiming expressed in multiple interviews conducted with 35 infertile couples waiting to adopt a child. Parental claiming is the special kind of emotional and intellectual work that adopting couples do prior to placement to make someone else's child “somewhere out there” their own. It involves creating an object to claim, undermining the primacy of blood ties, and transforming someone else's child into the right child for them. This kind of work is particularly important to social actors who aspire to statuses to which they know they are not clearly entitled.