Adoption Conflict

Fights over the custody of one's child can be mentally exhausting and take so long to conclude.

In fiction, when biological parents — or a single parent — fight with the adoptive parents or a surrogate mother over the custody of a child, it tends to end with the adoptive parents/surrogate mother winning but this isn't an absolute rule.

This happens simply because the adoptive parents/surrogate mother are usually the main characters, thus the story is told from their P.O.V., or they're the ones the audience is meant to root for and sympathize with. Meanwhile, the biological parent need not be awful, but they're usually portrayed in a negative light for abandoning their child even if they were forced to by circumstances beyond their control, which is why they often lose both custody of their own child and the audience's sympathy.

Many times the biological parents were either unfit to be parents and had the children taken from them or were in certain circumstances that forced them to put their child up for adoption or simply abandoned their child and then came back to claim them out of nowhere. Thus, it's easier to sympathize with the parents who are shown putting effort into raising the adopted kid than the parent who suddenly shows up to snatch the kid from their non-biological family and cause the innocent kid to be confused and caught up between the two sides' war. This could also serve as a message that non-biological parents can be as good as biological parents or can even replace them. The adopted child(ren) in question would often be Happily Adopted.

There are also cases when the biological parent wins custody over their child(ren) and the latter is happy and excited to return to their actual parents. In rare cases, however, the birth parents can be portrayed as better than the adoptive parents. If the adopted parent(s) are abusive or otherwise bad as a parent (at least worse than the biological ones would be), however, expect the biological parents to win this conflict.

A court case doesn't need to take place, just a conflict between the two sides qualifies. It also doesn't always have to be a win-lose conflict: several stories end with the child having both their biological and adoptive parents in their lives, with the adults becoming platonic co-parents.

This holds some truth in real life, as these articles can provide evidence. Although the opposite is much more common.

Compare/contrast this trope with Gene Hunting, when an adopted child wants to find/learn about their biological parents, and Adoption Angst, when a child learns that they're adopted and stresses over what happened to their birth parents. Also compare Custody Battle, where there is a dispute over child custody, but it's between a divorcing couple, rather than an adoptive parent and biological parent.

Might lead to a moral/statement of Friends Are Chosen, Family Aren't. May result in Luke, I Am Your Father (especially if the kid has never met their biological parents). If the kid defends their adoptive parents by calling out the biological parents for not being there in the first place, see Calling the Old Man Out and Abandonment-Induced Animosity. For when the bio-parents try to defend their actions, see Daddy Had a Good Reason for Abandoning You. The biological parent may invoke the idea that blood is Thicker Than Water to justify why they should receive the child and/or Not Blood, Not Family as a justification why the adopted person shouldn't have custody.

May lead to Let Him Choose, which is when both sides decide to let the child/pet in the middle of the conflict choose which parent they want. See Taking the Kids when a married couple has a bitter argument, and one of them takes the children with them as they part ways. Might overlap with The Trap Parents, when an orphan gains some parents that don't want the orphan to hang around their old friends.

Since this is usually a conclusion to a major conflict in the story, spoilers will be left unmarked.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Buddy Daddies features Miri, who was abandoned by her mother and is saved by the assassins Kazuki and Rei after they've killed her father in a mission. The two take her in and care for her out of guilt. The trio is engrossed in their happy pretend family until one day Miri's mother visits the duo and demands that they give her her daughter back, especially since she's aware of their dangerous line of work and that she wants to be a better parent to Miri. Kazuki refuses at first, but they reluctantly leave Miri to her by lying to Miri that it's just for a day, but when the Suwa organization Rei works for comes to murder Miri and her mother, the sociopathic Ogino manages to kill Miri's mother before Kazuki arrives and saves Miri. In the end, Kazuki and Rei take Miri back to raise her, and she grows up with the two from this point onwards.

Fan Works

• The Blood of the Covenant: Kallik has known his whole life that he's adopted, but he views the Southern Water Tribe as his nation and Bato as his father (with Katara and Sokka being his cousins/siblings). As such, he wants nothing to do with the Fire Nation. The Fire Nation royal family, however, disagrees, as they (especially Iroh, Lu Ten, Ursa, and Azula) want "Zuko" back and refuse to take no for an answer (until Iroh and Lu Ten realize that Kallik has every reason to hate the Fire Nation and forcing him back won't help anyone). Whenever Kallik interacts with a member of the Fire Nation royal family (Iroh and Lu Ten in the first part, Azula in the second), they refuse to acknowledge his wishes, try to hurt/arrest his family, and attempt to kidnap him.
• In the Amphibia one-shot fic Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption Lady Olivia and General Yunan, who were Marcy Wu's de-facto guardians during her time in Amphibia, clash with her human parents over who she should stay with after it's revealed that the Wu parents were physically and emotionally abusive. Human authorities and even Marcy's friends are shown to be perfectly on board with Marcy being brought back to Amphibia for this very reason. It probably helps that while Marcy's on a different planet, The Wu's wouldn't be in any position to take her back due to Amphibia being out of the jurisdiction of anyone who could force her to return.
• The Dragon and the Butterfly: The premise of the fic is that Hiccup and Toothless flee Berk before Toothless could show Hiccup the nest and that the two end up in the Encanto. They are practically adopted by the Madrigal family, especially after Hiccup and Mirabel become a couple. Stoick, Gobber, and the Viking teens eventually come to the Encanto looking for Hiccup. He claims that the Madrigals can't keep Hiccup from him because he's his biological father...leading to every single Madrigal calling him out for his emotional abuse and neglect of Hiccup (which he'd told them about). Agustin even tells him, to his face, "You won't lay a finger on my boy!"
  • Made more complicated later when Valka visits the Encanto for the first time, as Julieta is furious that she abandoned Hiccup as a baby, telling her that Hiccup is her son because Valka didn't want him.
• Harry Tano: An interesting inversion. 4-year-old Harry is adopted by a stranded Ahsoka Tano (even adding her last name onto his). While all of the main characters (including the goblins and Lily Potter) see Ahsoka as Harry's mother, many other characters refuse to (either due to it being an adoptive relationship or because they refuse to see the Togruta as a person). A good indicator of whether or not someone sees Ahsoka as Harry's parent is if they regularly call him Harry Potter-Tano.
• If Wishes Were Ponies:
  • A variant. Dumbledore, after sending Harry off to live with the Dursleys and never checking on him believes that Harry is still with them when he begins attending Hogwarts and that he's fully willing to join Wizarding Society when he comes of age and doesn't know why he's so close with Princess Twilight Sparkle, her friends, and the CMC. He only learns after Harry's arrival at Hogwarts that a) the Dursleys were criminally abusive to Harry and left him with multiple emotional issues, b) Harry ran away from them fifteen months before the events of the story and wound up in Equestria, c) Twilight has been Harry's foster parent ever since (being an infinitely better parent than the Dursleys ever were), and d) Harry hates the wizarding world for abandoning him, trusts precious few humans, and is only attending Hogwarts because the Equestrian princesses asked him to. Even after learning all of this, it takes the entire school year before he's willing to admit that Twilight is Harry's family.
  • Averted with the Dursleys themselves, who never wanted anything to do with Harry, were happy when he disappeared, and were perfectly fine with handing over custody of Harry to someone else (not even caring to see who it was).
• Peter Parker Needs A Hug: MCU Peter is a variant; while he's grateful to Bruce for taking him in after he spent several months trying to survive on his own (which was difficult when he was seventeen with no records, money, friends, or family), he's slow to fully accept Bruce as a mentor/father figure because he's worried that he'd simply be replacing Tony, May, and every other mentor he's had. It takes a talk with Jason, and later Bruce himself, before Peter realizes that, more than anything, Tony and May would want him to be happy.
• The Spectacular Spider-Man: Lost in Gotham: Averted; Peter tells the Bats fairly early in the story that he's being raised by his aunt, and tells May in a dream about how Bruce and the Bats adopted him when he ended up in Gotham. Neither adult has any problem with the other, accepting that they are both equally important to Peter. May even thanks Bruce for taking Peter in when he needed it most, while Bruce welcomes May with open arms when she visits the DC universe.
• The Two Seers: Because Abuela threw 5-year-old Mirabel out for getting the same gift as Bruno, Bruno ends up raising her in the walls from young childhood to early adulthood. As such, Mira views him as her father, resenting her abuela and birth parents for throwing her out. As such, when the other Madrigals discover that Mirabel and Bruno had been there all along, Mira chafes at any attempt from her biological mother to bond with her and only tolerates Agustin because he genuinely apologized for what happened years ago. It takes numerous apologies and a lot of time before Mira's willing to see them as family again, though she prefers to refer to Agustin and Julieta as her Tio and Tia rather than her parents.
• When Did I Become a Parent?: Timon fears that this trope is in play when he meets Sarabi, as he believes that he and Pumbaa were poor foster parents for Simba. However, his fears are in vain, as Sarabi is merely grateful that they protected her son until he was an adult, and that they helped bring him home.

Films — Animated

• Kung Fu Panda 3: The third movie is about Po finally meeting his biological father, Li, and together, they bond as Li takes Po to the Panda village where he lives. Po's adoptive father Ping gets quite jealous of Li, as he's worried that Li will take his son away from him, and that Po will forget about who raised him. Thankfully, that never happens. As the movie progresses, Ping eventually realizes that Po views both of them as his dads and that they can work together to support their son.
• Mr. Peabody & Sherman: It's shown early in the movie that Mr. Peabody found Sherman abandoned in an alley when he was a baby and decided to keep him. He went through the legal process of adopting Sherman and did everything he could to make sure Sherman had everything he needed (even building a time machine to help Sherman learn about history). Despite this, there were some (namely Grunion from the Department of Child Disservices) who thought he was an incompetent parent simply because he was a dog raising a human. Part of Peabody's motivation throughout the film is to show Grunion that he is a competent parent and keep her from taking Sherman away.

Films — Live-Action

• Annie (1982): Zig-zagged. When it's believed that they've found Annie's birth parents, Warbucks (while sad to see her go) is willing to let Annie go with them, despite the fact that he was preparing to legally adopt her. But, when Annie's friends arrive and tell him it was all a con, he sends every cop in the city after her abductors and doesn't stop until she's rescued, proving to everyone how serious he is about Annie's safety and becoming her parent. The conflict part, of course, comes from the fight to save her from her fake parents.
• The Art of Racing in the Rain: After the death of Denny's wife, her parents try to get custody of his daughter Zoey, partially out of actual love for her and partially because they disapproved of Denny and Eve's marriage. Much of the conflict in the latter half of the movie comes from Eve's parents trying to get the judge to rule Denny an unfit parent, with them even trying to make it look like Denny assaulted Eve's father. Denny presses on (partially through encouragement from Enzo), refusing to give up. In the end, Eve's mother realizes that they're taking things too far and admits that the assault charge was a lie. Seeing as how this was the only thing they had to label Denny inadequate, the judge rules in his favor and he's given back full custody of his daughter.
• Gifted: The main plot of the film is Frank and his mother fighting each other for custody of his genius niece after the death of her mother. Frank wants to keep custody because he wants her to have a normal childhood in spite of her intelligence, while his mother is a mathematician who pressured her late daughter into becoming a mathematician and wants to do the same to her granddaughter. The grandmother becomes her own worst enemy in the fight, as some of her actions (namely trying to put down the little girl's beloved cat) led to Frank learning that the grandmother was regularly seeing the little girl for math lessons, which went against the court's orders. He ultimately wins back custody by showing his mother that his late sister solved a math problem that had left the world stumped for years, and that her will stated her mother could only publish it (getting the prestige she wanted) if she gives up her attempts to take custody.
• Guyana: Crime of the Century: Johnson receives news from Susan that one of the children whom he adopted, John Paul Stern, has gotten his custody won back by his biological parents thanks to the state court of California, and the case has been brought to the US embassy in Georgetown. Johnson reacts furiously and says that Johnsontown is his land and his jurisdiction. He blames the CIA and the US Government for this issue, citing it as a means to conspire against him and his church.
• Instant Family: Pete and Ellie decide to adopt three siblings from foster care who grow attached to them (except Lizzie until the end). Their birth mother was deemed unfit to take care of the kids for taking drugs and setting the house on fire by accident, and she went to jail. She gets out of jail and is ready to take custody of her kids after making some effort just to go back to drugs again, and refuses to take her kids back because she knows she can't be a good parent. Eventually, Pete and Ellie win custody of the kids, much to their delight.
• Liar Liar: The primary conflict of the film is where Max will live. While Max adores Fletcher, Audrey is fed up with him. Fletcher frequently breaks promises to his son in favor of trying to become a partner at his law firm. She is seeing Jerry, and plans to move across the country to Boston with him.
• Losing Isaiah: Khaila, an African-American prostitute and junkie, leaves her infant son, Isaiah, covered up in a pile of trash while she goes looking for another hit. When she returns, he's missing. A few years later, after she's clean and getting an education, she finds a lawyer who helps her track him down, pro bono. The boy had been made a ward of the state and was adopted by Charles and Margaret Lewin, a Caucasian couple with a teenage daughter. Khaila sues for custody, claiming since she never signed anything, the Lewins have no right to her son. They fight hard to keep him, saying it would be cruel to disrupt his life at such an early age, but the judge returns the boy to his mother. Isaiah has to be pried, screaming, from Margaret's arms, is cold and withdrawn to Khaila, and constantly cries for his previous family. Realizing how much they mean to her son, Khaila eventually contacts Margaret and invites her back into Isaiah's life.
• In the Indian movie Mimi, the titular character is offered to be the surrogate mother of the baby of a white couple. When a pregnant Mimi goes to the doctor, the doctor tells her that the unborn baby has Down syndrome causing the couple to abandon the child. Mimi is disheartened but carries the child to the term. When Mimi finally gives birth to Raj, it's revealed that a mistake was made and that he's actually healthy. The couple comes again and demands to take Raj back, or else they'll take legal action. However, the couple changes their minds and decides to adopt a child called Tara and leave Raj to Mimi and her family.
• In the Lifetime Movie of the Week What Makes a Family, a lesbian couple gives birth to a baby girl via in vitro. Four-and-a-half years later one of the women falls ill and passes away, resulting in a custody fight between her widow and her parents (who disapproved of their daughter being gay) ending with the judge ruling in Janine's favor thanks to a video will making it clear that their daughter would remain in her custody.

Literature

• In the YA novel I Thought My Soul Would Rise And Fly, freed slave Nancy (Patsy's fellow house servant) has spent most of her life as the personal servant of Mrs. Davis. When Mary Ella, Nancy's mother, is freed by the Emancipation Proclamation, she makes her way to the Davis plantation to get her daughter. Mrs. Davis (more out of her own self-interests than love for Nancy) refuses to release her, while Nancy (who's been gaslighted into being loyal to the Davises) refuses to go. The issue is taken to court, where the magistrate rules in favor of the Davises, stating that, even with the Proclamation freeing the slaves, Nancy is a "bound servant" until she turns eighteen. Nancy is initially happy about this until Patsy calls her an idiot to her face.
• Silas Marner makes this trope Older Than Radio. Long after the theft of his savings, Silas comes home to discover a young girl who broke in to get warm on a winter night. He adopts and raises Eppie, only finding out when she's grown that she's the love child of the wealthy Godfrey Cass. Silas and Godfrey agree to let Eppie choose whether to be adopted as Godfrey's heir. She chooses to remain with Silas, and Godfrey accepts her choice and then pays to renovate the Marners' house when her new husband Aaron moves in with her and Silas.
• A Series of Unfortunate Events: A violent version. Throughout the series, the orphaned Baudelaire children are bounced from one distant relative/foster home to another (largely because of the schemes of Count Olaf). Olaf wants to take custody of the children and then kill them so he can have their large inheritance, and he either kills or manipulates the various caretakers they end up with (especially the good ones) in an effort to become their legal guardian.

Live-Action TV

• Boston Public: Danny Hanson, one of the teachers at Winslow High School gets temporary custody of his 5-year-old niece when his sister is sent to rehab. While he knows the situation is only temporary, his wife is thrilled with having a little girl in their home, and even throws her a birthday party, which is ruined when Hanson's sister arrives and a loud argument breaks out about the girl's future. Although Hanson and his wife are given custody of his niece, their marriage begins breaking down, and the girl is given back to her mother. However, they make plans to work on their marriage and get his niece back, but the series was cancelled before that was resolved.
• Bull: In one episode, a conflict arises between two couples over the custody of a baby boy named Joseph. One couple had been trying for years to conceive but couldn't, finally managing to have a baby via in vitro with donated sperm. The sperm was donated by the other couple. After Joseph is born, the other couple decide that they want their baby, and sue the other couple for custody. The legal battle is difficult, with both sides having genuine grievances and showing that they are serious about the safety/well-being of Joseph. Bull's team manages to Take a Third Option by suggesting that the wife of the couple that birthed Joseph would donate an egg to the other couple so they could have a baby via in vitro. In exchange for having a chance at a baby of their own, the other couple would drop their charges and allow the other couple custody of Joseph. What's more, Bull suggests that the four adults become co-parents for Joseph and his sibling-to-be, allowing all four of them a presence in both childrens' lives. While everyone agrees that this is far from the easiest solution, the ending implies that the four parents are going to try and make it work.
• Call the Midwife has a recurring subplot about the Turners' foster-daughter May and whether they will get to formally adopt her. It's portrayed sympathetically all around; Patrick and Shelagh love May and she's very happy with them, but her biological mother Ms. Tan, while aware that she's not in a good situation to take care of May and willing to let her stay with the Turners, is reluctant to surrender her link to her daughter and let them be her legal parents as well as her de facto ones.
• Downton Abbey: Lady Edith Crawley becomes pregnant but her lover is killed in the Beer Hall Putsch, so she has the baby, Marigold, in secret. To keep her close by, Edith has her adopted by the Drewes, her family's tenant farmers, without telling them the identity of the child's parents. Mr. Drewe figures it out and allows Lady Edith to regularly visit the baby, but Mrs. Drewe is suspicious of Edith's unexplained attachment to the child, when, as a noblewoman, she could easily adopt any baby she wanted. Edith is forced to finally reveal the truth, and, while distraught, Mrs. Drewe allows Marigold to go with her real mother. Sometime later, she regrets this and tries to kidnap the child but has neither her husband's support nor any legal recourse, so, after returning her to Edith, she and her husband leave Downton.
• Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman: "Cooper vs. Quinn: Part 1" and "Cooper vs. Quinn: Part 2" has Mike being sued by Brian and Colleen's biological dad Ethan Cooper, his fiancée Lilian's wealthy father wanting grandchildren and Ethan needing the kids to claim Lilian's inheritance.
• Family Law (2021) has tackled this trope a few times:
  • In "I Now Pronoun You", Abby is hired by her daughter's transgender friend Chloe because her grandfather is blocking her from transitioning, and thanks to an old legal arrangement from Chloe's late biological father, her grandfather has legal custody instead of her other dad, who supports her transition.
  • In "All Happy Families", Lucy wants shared custody of the daughter that she was going to have with her ex-wife Maggie before they divorced. Maggie argues that Lucy should not receive custody because the daughter was born after they separated, but under Canadian law, Lucy is technically a co-parent because the daughter was conceived while she and Maggie were still together. In the end, Lucy wins partial custody, but Maggie flees the country, taking their daughter to Florida.
• Good Times: Willona becomes an adoptive mother to Penny Gordon Woods (played by a young Janet Jackson) after her own, highly abusive mother runs out after being confronted with her crimes. The abusive mother later returns, trying to reclaim custody, but Willona was prepared for her and tricks her into confessing her crimes on tape to make her back off.
• Lab Rats: The season one finale reveals that Donald is actually the Rats' uncle, while his brother Douglas is their biological father. Despite this, the Rats tell Donald that they view Donald as their father, since (unlike Douglas) he saw them as children rather than weapons. One of the reasons why Douglas continues to stalk and attack the family is partially out of resentment that Donald took his kids. However, Douglas (after realizing the Krane means to kill Adam, Bree, and Chase) admits to Leo that he never truly wanted to hurt the Rats, that more than anything he just wanted his kids back. This is ultimately what leads to his Heel–Face Turn and Donald letting him be part of the family again (with the kids referring to him as an uncle). From his Heel–Face Turn on, any conflict he and Donald have about who's the kids' actual father is Played for Laughs.
• Law & Order: In "Breeder" a pregnant woman agreed to give away her baby for adoption to not one but three couples. After Debbie gives birth, the D.A.'s office wants to charge her for grand larceny. The couple that end up with the baby initially testify in her defense; but later, they recant. They claim that Debbie repeatedly threatened to abort the pregnancy to get money, and her boyfriend is now demanding they pay him not to contest the adoption.
• Law & Order: SVU:
  • In "Stolen", the squad gets a lead on a 12-year-old case where a woman was murdered and her newborn baby was kidnapped. When they find the boy, he's living with a loving family who adopted him, not knowing he was kidnapped. A custody battle ensues between the adopted family and the biological father.
  • "Underbelly" has Rhonda Vanner suing to regain the custody of her daughter Chantal from her foster parents, claiming she's now sober and clean. However, she was still neglectful, letting her boyfriend abuse Chantal until the latter ran away and ended up as a prostitute under the pimp who would eventually murder her.
  • "Surrendering Noah" sees the criminal of the week suing Olivia to get the custody of his son Noah. Johnny Drake, the criminal, dies shot while trying to escape in the courtroom, leaving Olivia as Noah's adoptive mother.
  • In season 6’s “Birthright”, a shady fertility doctor has been found to be stealing embryos and implanting them in non-related mothers without permission of either the donor or the recipient. After one such donor kidnaps a 6-year-old girl she believes (and is correct) is her biological child, it leads to a custody battle between the child’s biological mother and the parents who birthed her and raised her. Novak ends up harassing this poor child to tears on the stand, in the hopes that one of the mothers will prove she loves the child more by dropping the case to make it stop.
  • In season 19, Benson briefly has her adoption of her son Noah challenged by his maternal grandmother Sheila, citing the fact that the state did not do enough to find a family to take him when his mother died and a recent investigation of child abuse against Benson (a misunderstanding) as evidence she is an unfit mother. When this ultimately fails, Sheila kidnaps Noah with the intention of raising him in New Hampshire. This goes about as well as you’d think kidnapping an NYPD captain’s child would, and she is arrested, nixing any chance in the future of seeing Noah, let alone getting custody.
• Bebe Chow from Little Fires Everywhere abandoned her baby May Ling at a fire station due to being impoverished. Later Linda and Mark McCullough adopt her and change her name to Mirabelle. After a brutal court battle, the McCulloughs win custody of the baby, leaving Bebe devastated. Both the novel and the TV series ended with Bebe stealing May Ling from the McCulloughs' house at night and returning to China with her.
• Once Upon a Time:
  • While it never becomes an official legal battle, Season 1 centers around a conflict between Henry Mills' birth mother Emma Swan, who gave him up as a teen, and Mayor Regina Mills, his adoptive mother who, while being the one to raise him, was also a Corrupt Politician who subjected him to emotional neglect. While Emma initially intends to just give Henry back after he seeks her out, Regina's coldness causes Emma to become concerned and stick around for him. Complicating the matter is the fact that Regina is actually the Evil Queen from Snow White, who cursed the entire town of fairytale characters, including Henry's biological grandparents, to live in an amnesic time loop, a curse that Emma is destined to break, so the custody battle is also framed as a battle of good vs evil. In addition, because Henry was the only one unaffected, Regina attempted to gaslight him, which only made Henry resent her more for making him feel crazy.
  • Discussed in Season 1 when Henry's psychologist threatens to testify against Regina at a potential custody hearing unless she stops interfering with his sessions.
  • After Emma wakes Henry with True Love's Kiss, breaking the curse, the conflict extends to Henry's biological grandparents, Snow White and Prince Charming. Henry goes to live with the Charmings, but Regina's attempts to make up for her evil deeds and prove her love to Henry start to show Regina in a better light. After Regina works with the Charmings to save Henry and wakes him from another curse with True Love's Kiss in Season 3, by Season 4 the trope is subverted, as the Charmings accept Regina's redemption and Henry splits his time between the two households amicably for the rest of the series.
• Wishbone: In "Golden Retrieved" (a Compressed Adaptation of Silas Marner), Wishbone, as Silas, adopts a young girl who broke into his home seeking shelter on a winter night. He names her Eppie. After a Time-Passes Montage, landowner Godfrey Cass reveals that Eppie is his long-lost daughter and offers to adopt her. They put the question to Eppie, who thanks him for the offer but stays with Silas since he's the only father she's ever known. Godfrey is disappointed but accepts her decision.

Video Games

• Yakuza 3: In a game that's all about familial bonds without blood relations (a topic that Japan still places great importance on), one of the intro chapters has Kiryu meeting Ryudo Family Patriarch Nakahara and his adopted daughter Saki. Saki is a girl who's been stricken mute after the trauma of seeing her biological father hang himself and who can only communicate through her sketchbook. While Nakahara has taken good care of her, it appears that she's willingly returning to be with her abusive biological mother, leaving the older Patriarch depressed. Kiryu immediately goes after her, finding out that the Tamashiro Family stole Saki to use as a bargaining chip for the deed to Kiryu's orphanage while coercing Saki's mother to get involved. Saki's mother is no saint either, where she was not only an abusive alcoholic, she was happy to unload Saki off to Nakahara, leaving after the entire ordeal. Saki on the other hand sees Nakahara as her father, even drawing him in her sketchbook with "Daddy" written in it. The sight of Saki's drawing is enough to move Nakahara to tears.
• Persona 5: Not parents, but family. Sojiro Sakura has a conflict with the remainder of his adoptive daughter, Futaba's, blood family. Futaba has been moved around abusive blood family members (who blame her for her mother committing suicide), wanting to keep her for what she brought upon her family. Sojiro, who was close friends and in love with Futaba's mother, strives to keep her in a healthy environment. Sojiro's confidant, (and by extension, the 24th episode of the animation), focus on Ren helping solve the tension of Futaba's uncle trying to use the custody of Futaba to his advantage.

Western Animation

• Futurama: Kif became pregnant due to an incident in which Leela grabbed his hand after Amy had initiated a "receptive state" that made him fertile. This means, while Kif considers Amy the mother (his "smizmar" as he says), Leela is the biological mother of the children. "Children of a Lesser Bog" has Amy become insecure and jealous when the children emerge, as while they do get along with Amy, they are naturally drawn to Leela, especially when she becomes their babysitter. However, Leela supports Amy's status as the mother and is herself confused about her role in the situation. Eventually, the Grand Midwife puts Amy to a challenge to "prove" she is the children's true mother...and the challenge amounts to Amy simply admitting that she truly loves them.
• The Powerpuff Girls (1998): "Custody Battle" revolves around Mojo Jojo and HIM battling over the custody of the Rowdyruff Boys, the girls' spear counterparts, as it was Mojo who created them in "The Rowdyruff Boys", but it was HIM who resurrected them after the girls' kisses destroyed them in "The Boys Are Back in Town". To do this, Mojo and HIM try to prove who is the more evil villain. In the end, the boys decide not to choose either of them because they want to be the ones to defeat the girls.
• The Simpsons: In "Burns' Heir", in need of an heir, Mr. Burns chooses Bart to inherit his wealth and legacy. Marge convinces Bart to spend time with Mr. Burns, but after Burns allows Bart to do and have whatever he wants, Bart decides to live with him. Wanting to get their son back, Homer and Marge hire Lionel Hutz and sue Mr. Burns to return Bart, but due to Hutz's side hustle as a cobbler and overall incompetence, Mr. Burns' Army of Lawyers convinces the court that Bart is Burns' biological son.
• South Park: In "It's Christmas in Canada", Ike's birth parents come to visit the Broflovskis (Ike's adopted family). Gerald and Sheila aren't too pleased to see them since they think it might be devastating to Ike. Ike's biological parents want Ike back due to a new law stating that all Canadian children must be returned to their home country. Sheila and Gerald become depressed without Ike, so Kyle decides to go on a The Wizard of Oz-style journey to Canada to overthrow the law and retrieve his brother. In the end, he gets Ike back when the Canadian Prime Minister is revealed to be Saddam Hussein, and all his new laws are declared invalid.

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