The Construction of Paternal Roles in International Adoption Processes: the Role of Intermediary Institutions

This paper tackles international adoption processes as a set of educational practices which involve strategies of transmission/incorporation of culture. This means the construction of relational identities or subjectivities, in particular those of adoptive and "adopting" father and mother. The research has been implemented in Spain with an ethnographic nature. It has been carried out on two different types of space: the first one is that considered as space of "formal education", related to learning activities supported by the relevant institutions in international adoption. The second one has been considered as a space of "informal education". We present a description of the kinds of adoptive parents the Spanish relevant institutions are constructing, and also an account of the principles and assumptions on which the task of identity configuration this institutions do is based. These results are finally inserted in socio-anthropological discussions about: 1) the concepts of culture and education; 2) the expansion of "the educative thing" as a measure of public policy in order to solve social difficulties; and 3) the devaluation of lay wisdom by experts systems.