Meaning & use
adoptive family
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Meanings
nouncountable
A family in which one or more children have been legally taken in and raised as the parents' own.
Grammar: Countable: you can say 'an adoptive family' or 'adoptive families'.
Patterns
- an adoptive family
- adoptive families
- grow up in an adoptive family
- belong to an adoptive family
She grew up in an adoptive family after her birth parents could not care for her.
The support group is for adoptive families and children who joined them through adoption.
He says his adoptive family gave him a stable and loving home.
nouncountable
The parents and siblings a person gains through adoption, considered as a group.
Grammar: Often used with 'his', 'her', 'their': 'his adoptive family' means the family that adopted him.
Patterns
- his adoptive family
- her adoptive family
- their adoptive family
- meet your adoptive family
At eighteen she was allowed to search for her birth mother, but she stayed close to her adoptive family.
His adoptive family celebrated the day he officially joined them.
Many people describe their adoptive family as simply their family.
Word forms
| plural | adoptive families |
|---|
Common combinations
- grow up in an adoptive family
- He grew up in an adoptive family and never felt different from his brothers.
- adoptive parents
- Her adoptive parents supported her decision to find her birth relatives.
- belong to an adoptive family
- Children who belong to an adoptive family often need extra reassurance.
- adoptive family support group
- The school runs an adoptive family support group once a month.
- a loving adoptive family
- The agency tries to place every child with a loving adoptive family.
Synonyms and how they differ
- forever family
- An informal term used especially in the US to mean the family that adopts a child permanently; it is warmer and less official than 'adoptive family'.
- new family
- A general phrase that can describe any family you join, not only through adoption, so it is less precise.
Opposites
Word family
- adopt verb
- To take a child into your family by law and raise them as your own.
- adoption noun
- The legal process of becoming the parent of a child who is not born to you.
- adopted adjective
- Describes a child who has been legally taken into a family.
- adoptive adjective
- Describes the parent or family that adopts a child.
Commonly confused: adoptive family or adopted family? adoptive family or foster family?
adoptive family vs adopted family
'Adopted family' is not the usual phrase: 'adopted' describes the child, while 'adoptive' describes the parents or the family. Say 'an adopted child' but 'an adoptive family'.
adoptive family vs foster family
A foster family cares for a child for a time without becoming the legal parents; an adoptive family becomes the child's legal family for life.
Practice
Which sentence uses the word correctly?
Choose one answer.
'Adoptive' correctly describes the family that adopts a child, so 'Her adoptive family helped her...' fits. 'Adopted family' (option C) wrongly uses 'adopted' for the parents, and options An and D use the phrase in grammatically impossible ways.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “adoptive family”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.