This study examines the emotional responses of adoption reunion participants over time by a cross-sectional survey. A questionnaire was modeled after an existing reunion guideline, "Relationship Stages in Reunion". Ontario adoption reunion counselors in the public and private sectors use this guideline. This questionnaire was circulated by a Parent Finder's organization (22 respondents), and a provincial government organization (27 respondents). The hypothesis that there is a predictable pattern of emotional response in reunion was not supported. No significant differences were found between those that experienced reunion via either organization. There were some differences in the demographics. Both groups noted a high level of satisfaction with their reunion. This research would have been better tracked by a longitudinal study.

Bibliography: leaves 283-323. / vi, 323 leaves ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Explores the social dynamics of and interconnections between identity, relatedness and kinship. Argues that identity is fundamentally implicated in understandings of, conflict over and practices around relatedness and kinship. To study identity with regard to the exigencies of relatedness and kinship, uses adoption as an ethnographic and conceptual vehicle and argues that the cultural constructions and interplays between the biogenetic and the social in circumstances associated with adoption are both contextual and potent in relation to multifarious claims to and persuits of identity. Identity and questions of agency are understood as sites for creative struggles by individual agents, within a matrix of competing, often contradictory social forces, tendencies and processes. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of Anthropology, 1999

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