Families without children and adoption in the family

Especially in rural areas of Turkey, it is a routine, if not common, occurrence for a married couple to be childless. However, since childlessness triggers many other issues (property, tradition, family ties, masculinity) within the family and in the neighborhood, childless families often adopt children from poor relatives or ensure that they give birth to a child themselves. This issue, which is relatively common in rural areas of Turkey, has not been addressed sociologically and this study aims to fill this gap in the literature. Accordingly, the methodological rationale of this study is based on the problematic of the research sample revealing their problems from their own perspectives, hence the qualitative research method of in-depth interviews was preferred. The data obtained from the documents were analyzed through content analysis and discourse analysis. Secondly, the data obtained from these documents were synthesized with Erving Goffman, Herbert Blumer, Michel Foucault and Marshall Sahlins and transformed into findings. These findings are basically evaluated and classified with Sahlins' familiy&kinship relations, Blumer's symbolic interactionism, Foucault's concepts of power, biopolitics, dispositif and heteretopia. Keywords: Infertility, adoption, kinship, family, power, bio-politics