Folkloric finalities? Exclusions of oppositional mothers in adoption law and folk tales

This chapter offers analysis of recent developments in adoption case law from within several regions of the United Kingdom (UK), and argues that some of this jurisprudence on non-consensual maternal relinquishments - those which are enabled via court orders to dispense with the mother’s consent - call to mind certain folkloric tropes. Folk and fairy tales often portray gendered, demonising stigmas. These can frame some mothers as dangerously other, by way of their ‘oppositional’ attitudes and behaviours, in the wake of their apparent abandonment of their maternal identity and status. Once excluded from the sacred spaces and norms of the familial, these exiled mothers are generally precluded from bringing any form of challenge or appeal against the decisions that have most affected them, in law as in much of the folklore. Reunion, so certain tales warn us, carries a high risk: its prevention generally requires the removal, loss, or veiling of original maternal identities. The many and varied finalities of adoption (Bainham, 2009) – particularly from the perspective of the ‘voluntarily’ surrendering mother – are therefore often profound.