Twenty women who were adopted as children voice their construction of mothering as they enter the transition to motherhood through giving birth. The tendency for literature on the psychology of adoption to advocate separation between adult mothers and daughters as well as to blame the mothers is challenged by analysing the participants' experiences through a feminist relational paradigm. Daughtering both their adoptive mother-s and birth mothers is an important part of their transition to motherhood. Participants who searched for their birth mothers during this transition were deter-mined to find this mother with whom they had an ongoing, lifelong relationship in order to hear her story. The adopted women in this study constructed a model of matrilineal continuity which defines the mothering and daughtering connection as not limited to a genetic link, but occurring through active, nurturing relationships. They described the importance of their embodied connection with their babies as a way of healing their feelings of separateness as adoptees.
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