Date
12-16-2025
Department
School of Behavioral Sciences
Degree
Doctor of Education in Community Care and Counseling (EdD)
Chair
James Kasten
Keywords
adoption, foster care, adoptive mothers, trauma, adoption dissolution, family permanency, placing mothers, placing adoptive mothers
Disciplines
Counseling | Social Work
Recommended Citation
Hart, Aimee Moore, "Lived Experiences of Adoptive Mothers Who Dissolved Their Adoption of a Child: An Interpretative Phenomenological Study" (2025). Doctoral Dissertations and Projects. 7812.
https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/doctoral/7812
Abstract
The purpose of this interpretative phenomenological analysis research study was to understand the lived experiences of adoptive mothers in the United States who had relinquished their parental rights and legally dissolved their adoption of a child. The theory guiding this study was the theory of being and time. Through the theory of being and time, each adoptive mother was viewed holistically, as inseparable from her personal history, her current state of being, and her interpretations of space and time. This interpretative phenomenological analysis utilized Internet-based, in-depth, individual interviews of adoptive mothers to answer the question: How do adoptive mothers in the United States describe their lived experience of relinquishing their parental rights and legally dissolving their adoption of a child? Interview data were analyzed using a double hermeneutic approach to produce an overall account of the convergence and differentiation of patterns experienced by adoptive mothers dissolving the adoption of a child.
