Putting one’s best foot forward: Finnish prospective adoptive parent’s strategic interaction in statutory pre-adoption services

Abstract

In an inter-country adoption process, the private issue of becoming a parent takes place within a regulated institutional setting and process with professionals acting as gatekeepers along the way. This qualitative study based on 19 narrative interviews scrutinizes the strategic interaction used by prospective adoptive parents to navigate the controlling institutional setting of statutory pre-adoption services. This social interaction with the professionals is analysed as power negotiations and discussed by utilizing Goffman’s conceptual framework of expression management and stage play. The study shows that prospective adoptive parents, whose primary aims differ from those of the professionals, play on different teams than the professionals. Therefore, they utilize expression games through information, emotion, and team management in order to put their best foot forward in the pre-adoption services. But along the inter-country adoption play the audience shifts and the professionals often join the same team as the future adoptive parents. Further, the article discusses the consequences of this on the relationship between the professionals and prospective adoptive parent as a client within a global inter-country adoption scene.