THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF

ADOPTION

THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF

ADOPTION

Third Edition

Christine AdamecLaurie C. Miller, M.D.

The Encyclopedia of Adoption, Third Edition

Copyright © 2007, 2000, 1992 by Christine Adamec and Laurie C. Miller, M.D.

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Adamec, Christine A., 1949-The encyclopedia of adoption / Christine Adamec, Laurie C. Miller.—3rd ed.

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CONTENTS

Foreword vii

Preface by Christine Adamec xi

Preface by Laurie C. Miller, M.D. xv

Acknowledgments xix

Introduction—A Brief History of Adoption xxi

Entries A–Z 1

Appendixes 307

Bibliography 364

Index 375

Adoption is a constantly evolving institutionthat changes to fit the perceived needs of chil-dren who need families, whether they are healthynewborns, children in foster care, children fromother countries, or children of all ages with specialneeds. In addition to the “triad” members ofadopted children, adoptive parents, and birthpar-ents, there are many others who are activelyinvolved in adoptions. State and federal legislatorsenact new laws or rewrite old laws to fulfill newneeds or to manage newly recognized problems.Sometimes new laws are made in order to correctunanticipated problems that old laws created, aswith the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA).This federal law was written because the earlierfederal law, the Adoption Assistance and ChildWelfare Act of 1980, had the unanticipated conse-quence of keeping abused and neglected childrenin foster care indefinitely rather than returningthem to their parents or placing them for adoptionwith relatives or nonrelatives. ASFA restored theneeds of children as the paramount concern, as wediscuss in the entry on ASFA.

States also change their adoption laws to reflectcurrent needs of adults; for example, many stateshave changed their laws on issues related toadopted adults who are searching for their birth-parents, providing increased access to adoptionrecords compared to past years. We discuss thesechanges in our search overview.

Medical issues related to adoption also changewith time. Physicians, particularly pediatricians,assist children and their adoptive parents with avariety of medical issues. With increasing numbers

of international adoptions, more doctors arebecoming aware of medical problems that do notcommonly occur in the United States or Canadabut which are common in children adopted fromother countries, such as intestinal parasitic infec-tions and tuberculosis, entries that we cover in thisnew edition. In fact, a new specialty, adoptionmedicine, has been created to deal with such prob-lems, and we have added an entry on adoptionmedicine to the third edition.

Researchers seek to study and uncover the rea-sons behind medical and psychiatric issues relatedto adoption. However, they are often hamstrung byissues of confidentiality and the great expense oflarge and long-term studies and, as a result, mustfrequently consider a population at a single point intime, which may not reflect the ongoing status ofstudy subjects. For example, adopted children whoare evaluated as adolescents might show very dif-ferent results if they were evaluated again byresearchers as adults. Birthmothers who may bedepressed or anxious about a recent adoptiveplacement are not necessarily clinically depressedor anxious for life (although they may be). As aresult, research studies need to be considered incontext and we discuss this issue further in ournew entry on research and problems that need tobe considered, as well as in our revised entry onadoption studies.

Social workers and therapists work to assist chil-dren who have been affected by past problems ofabuse or with current issues with which they strug-gle. However, sometimes because of old and out-dated information, mental health professionals

FOREWORD

vii

perceive adoption itself as inherently pathological,failing to see problems that may have occurredeither before the child’s adoption or subsequent tothe adoption, and that are unrelated to the child’sadopted status. They may also be unaware of newresearch on adopted children, which reflect thatalthough some children are troubled, many do wellwith their adoptive families. These are issues thatwe cover in our updated entry on psychiatric prob-lems of adopted persons.

In this new edition of The Encyclopedia of Adop-tion, we have updated many former entries, and wehave also added a great deal of new information.New and/or revised overview entries are nowincluded on abuse, foster care, international adop-tion, the medical problems of internationallyadopted children, search issues for birthparents oradopted adults, and transracial adoption. In addi-tion, we have included a new overview entry onprenatal exposures, discussing exposures to alco-hol, drugs, and tobacco, all of which can have pro-found effects on the developing fetus and later onthe child.

We have also heavily revised the entry on bond-ing and attachment and have added a new entry onattachment disorder, a serious problem of concernto many adoptive parents as well as to profession-als, such as physicians and therapists. We also dis-cuss abuse and neglect, and the long-term effectson young children. It is important to note thatalthough abuse and neglect take a terrible toll onmany children, some children have overcome theeffects of these early life problems. We cover thistopic in our new entry on resilience.

Many people are interested in medical issues, andas a result we have updated all the earlier entries onmedical topics and have added some major newmedical topics, including new entries on anemia,assisted reproductive technology, early interventionprograms for young children, eating disorders, Heli-cobacter pylori, the human immunodeficiency virus(HIV), infectious diseases, intestinal parasitic infec-tions, language delay, paternity testing, pediatri-cians, rickets, sensory integration disorder, sleepdisorders in newly adopted children, syphilis, andtuberculosis.

Adoption is also a legal entity, and there areimportant legal issues that are of interest to people

who wish to understand adoption. We have addednew entries related to the law, such as the adoptionsubsidy for parents who adopt children from fostercare, the Child Citizenship Act of 2000, and a newentry on fraud in adoption. In addition, we haveadded appendixes on state laws on the placementof children with relatives for adoption (Appendix4) and state laws on the involuntary termination ofparental rights (Appendix 5).

The international adoption scene is one that isconstantly shifting, and we have worked hard toaccommodate the great interest in this topic. Wehave added a new entry on Guatemala, currentlythe third most popular country for Americansadopting children from other countries, after Chinaand Russia. We have also completely updated ourentries on adoptions from China, India, Romania,Russia, and South Korea.

Because of the strong interest in adopted adultsand/or birthparents seeking to locate each other,we have completely revised the entry on search,making it an overview entry, and we have heavilyrevised the entries on open records, mutual con-sent registries, sealed records, and search and con-sent laws. In addition, we have added Appendix 7listing state laws on who may obtain identifyinginformation and/or the original birth certificate ofthe adopted person.

Some other updated topics include: abandonment,abuse, adjustment, advertising and promotion, alco-holism and adopted persons, attitudes about adop-tion, birthfathers, birthmothers, Canada, costs toadopt, developmental disabilities, disruption/dissolu-tion, Down syndrome, drug abuse, early puberty,employment benefits, explaining adoption, fetalalcohol syndrome, foster parent adoption, geneticpredispositions, grandparent adoptions, hepatitis,immunizations, independent adoption, infertility,inheritance, intelligence, international adoption, theInterstate Compact on Adoption and Medical Assis-tance, kinship care, military members and adoption,neglect, open records, orphanages, photolistings,preparing a child for adoption, psychiatric prob-lems of adopted persons, sealed records, searchand consent laws, sexual abuse, special needs, sta-tistics, surrogacy arrangements, teachers andadopted children, termination of parental rights,and videotapes.

viii The Encyclopedia of Adoption

It is important to point out that many adoptiontopics are closely linked, and as a result, we haveprovided extensive cross-references with manyentries to assist readers seeking more information.For example, the subject of abuse is linked to fostercare, since many abused children enter the fostercare system. The topic of abuse itself is also linkedto entries on such topics as abandonment, neglect,and sexual abuse.

In the case of international adoption, we havecross-referenced our overview entry on this topic toother entries on adoption from China, Guatemala,India, Russia, South Korea, Latin American adop-tions, and eastern European adoptions, as well asto our overview entry on the medical problems ofinternationally adopted children.

Readers interested in the adoption of children bytheir relatives will wish to read our revised overviewentry on kinship care as well as other revisedentries, such as on grandparent adoption.

Individuals who have adopted or are interested inadopting a child may wish to read our revised entrieson adoptive parents, birthfathers, and birthmothers,as well as our updated entries on the so-called baby

shortage, costs to adopt, employment benefits, hos-pitals’ treatment of birthmothers, income tax bene-fits for adoptive parents, independent adoption,infant adoption, open adoption and transracialadoption. Readers interested in genetic issues willwish to read our completely revised entry on geneticpredispositions, as well as our revised entry on intel-ligence. Readers who are interested in other optionsto expand a family besides adoption will wish to readour entries on assisted reproductive technologies,infertility, and surrogacy arrangements.

To conclude, the institution of adoption willcontinue to shift and change to meet the needs ofchildren, while reflecting social and cultural prac-tices and beliefs. One thing does not change, how-ever, and that is that children throughout theworld will need parents. We hope that many peo-ple will step up to this rewarding task.

We also hope that the extensive informationthat we provide in this volume will give readersinsight to how adoption works in the lives of manypeople who are affected by it, and they will findthis volume to be useful and thought-provoking.

Foreword ix

Adoption is a life-changing experience for thekey participants, including the adopted child,the birthparents, and the adoptive parents. Thereare also many others who are affected less directly,such as siblings, grandparents, and other relatives,as well as professionals, including teachers andphysicians. Nearly everyone knows someone whowas adopted, who adopted a child, or who placed achild for adoption, or “all of the above”—althoughsometimes this information is withheld from others.

There is both pain and joy with adoption. Thebirthparent suffers the pain of the loss of the bio-logical child, while infertile individuals must copewith the pain of the unrealized dream of a biologi-cal child. Adopted children must face their loss,which is that the families who are raising them arenot the families of their birth. Even in the casewhen the adoptive parents are clearly wonderfulparents and the birthparents would equally clearlyhave provided very poor parenting to the child,there is still often a feeling of loss and “what if”among adopted children. If all children could bereared by their biological parents, adoption wouldbe unnecessary, but it is unlikely that day willcome. If it did, I personally would rejoice, since themain purpose of adoption is to provide good fami-lies for children who need them.

There is also joy in adoption, which continues tobring hope and love to many thousands of childrenand their families worldwide. Rather than con-demning children to a life with birthparents whoare unable or unwilling to care for them, childrencan instead be raised by individuals who are readyand eager to be parents. The birthparents can feel

assured that their children are with parents wholove and care for them, and for the adoptive par-ents, the child is a precious joy.

Sometimes birthparents willingly choose adop-tion for their children, and in other cases, thechoice is made for them by others, whether thedysfunction that led them to be abusive or neglect-ful parents is due to alcoholism, drug addiction,mental illness or other problems, or a combinationof problems. New families are then formed whenformer foster children join their families as legallyadopted children. Some children travel thousandsof miles to live with their “forever families,”adopted from orphanages and foster care in othercountries. International adoption has become anincreasingly important part of adoption as a whole.

Yet there is still often a great deal of confusionabout whether adoptive families are “as good as”biological families, which was probably a key impe-tus behind the past policy of returning foster chil-dren to abusive homes, again and again. (TheAdoption and Safe Families Act has improved thatsituation considerably.)

In addition, most research studies concentrateon pathology, such as alcoholism, drug abuse, psy-chiatric problems, and so forth. Few studies seek toidentify what is healthy about adoptive childrenand their families, and some researchers seemamazed that so many adoptive families andadopted children function even moderately well.

This should not be a surprising finding, how-ever, given that most adoptive parents intenselydesired to adopt their children, were usually thor-oughly screened before they were allowed to adopt

PREFACEby Christine Adamec

xi

xii The Encyclopedia of Adoption

them, and actively seek to be good parents. Some-times they try too hard and worry too much, andsome adoptive parents take their children to a ther-apist for minor emotional problems. Of course, agood therapist will advise parents when the prob-lem is a normal childhood issue.

At the same time, sometimes adopted childrendo have serious emotional problems, and denyingthat they exist, and hoping that they will magicallygo away, is a harmful strategy for the child. It canbe difficult, although it is possible, to find a thera-pist who acknowledges that the fact of adoptionmay cause pain to adopted children, while at thesame time the therapist realizes adoption itself isnot the sole explanation for every emotional disor-der of a person who happens to be adopted. Weexplore these issues in the entries of The Encyclope-dia of Adoption, Third Edition.

It is also important to consider how adoptedchildren might have developed had they not beenadopted: if the sexually abused six-year-old girlremained with her abusive family, what wouldhave been her likely outcome? Or what of the sin-gle mother who desires to make an adoption planand she is talked out of it—or the single motherwho wishes to parent her child and is talked into anunwanted adoption? What would be the outcomesin these alternative cases? Such events profoundlyaffect and shape the lives of the birthmother andthe child and, when the child is adopted, the adopt-ing parents, as well.

To a certain extent, there are some answers. It isknown that children who remain with abusive par-ents have a worse outcome than children who areadopted. It is known that children who remain infoster care for years and who “age out” of the sys-tem as adults usually have worse outcomes thanchildren adopted as infants or small children.

Yet most studies do not compare the outcome ofadopted children to the likely outcome had theynot been adopted, largely because such studies aredifficult to perform because of confidentiality.Instead, researchers often compare adopted chil-dren directly to nonadopted children, who havenot been exposed prenatally to toxic substances,have not lived in deprived circumstances, have notbeen beaten or starved, and instead who camedirectly home from the hospital with Mom and

Dad. As a result, it is not surprising that sometimesadopted children do not fare as well as childrenborn to the family, in many different measures.Instead, what is surprising is that so often, adoptedand nonadopted children are very close in terms ofpositive outcomes.

When adopted children have serious problems,it is often the events that preceded the adoptionwhich are the primary contributors to the child’sproblems, whether they are prenatal exposures toalcohol and illegal drugs, genetic predispositions topsychiatric problems, the experience of abuseand/or neglect, and other factors that may haveprofound effects on children. Yet, despite even themost severe neglect or abuse, some children areresilient, and being adopted is one means to allowthem to transcend these problems.

This does not mean that adoptive parents them-selves are without flaws. Sometimes adoptive par-ents know far too little about adoption in generalor about the particular child they wish to adopt,even when information is readily available. Theymay assume that love will conquer all problems,which is not a good working premise. They maychange the name of an older child and urge her toforget everything that happened to her beforetoday, assuming that she can or should.

There are many mistakes that adoptive parentscan and do make; however, from my observationsbased on studying adoption for nearly 20 years andspeaking to hundreds of adoptive parents, most dotheir best, and when they have problems, they seekhelp from others who are more experienced,including other adoptive parents, physicians, andtherapists.

However, it should also be mentioned that per-haps once a year, the media report on an adoptiveparent who has abused or even killed a child. Theserare and shocking circumstances happen and theyare real, but the overwhelming majority of adop-tive parents are loving and caring people.

A major problem is that more adoptive parentsare needed. Hundreds of thousands of children infoster care and in orphanages worldwide needadoptive families now. They do not know or careabout rules and regulations or why they must stayin an orphanage or in a series of foster homes. Theyonly know they want a family to love them. Yet in

some cases, they do not know they need a family tocare for them, in the same way that a child who isnearsighted does not know she needs glasses untilglasses are placed in front of her, and suddenlyeverything is acutely clear.

Similarly, some older children have neverknown the love of a family, and it is an alien con-cept. When they experience it, however, the trans-formation to the life of the child can be trulyamazing. No one attains a perfect life with adop-tion, but the changes in opportunities and emo-tional fulfillment can be staggering.

In this book, Dr. Miller and I have attemptedto seek out as much of the current research wecould identify that might be salient and interest-ing to readers who want to know more aboutadoption, whether they seek information on onespecific topic or are intrigued by many differenttopics related to adoption. We have includedmany new medical topics, such as new entries onattachment disorders, hepatitis, prenatal expo-sures, rickets, and many other topics that readersmay find useful.

We could not hope to include every study andevery possible aspect of adoption within one vol-ume, but we have provided an extensive breadth ofsubjects as well as a detailed bibliography for those

who wish to learn even more. The Encyclopedia ofAdoption also provides appendixes with listings oforganizations related to adoption, including privateand governmental organizations.

This book is meant for the general reader, andwe hope that it will also interest the adoptionexpert. As a result, jargon has been kept to a mini-mum, or, when the use of jargon has been neces-sary, clear explanations on what these terms meanand what they imply are provided.

We hope this new edition of The Encyclopedia ofAdoption will not only enlighten readers but mayalso inspire them to look further into this subject,even to launch a study or investigation on someaspect of adoption that needs further exploration.In my view, adoption is a very complicated, imper-fect, and yet wonderful institution. Learning aboutadoption further advances the knowledge andunderstanding among those who are directlyaffected by adoption—adopted individuals, birth-parents, and adoptive parents—as well as thosewithin our society who set the standards for adop-tion and the federal and state lawmakers whomake the rules that we live by. The children areworth every effort that we all can make. They areour future.

—Christine Adamec

Preface by Christine Adamec xiii

Biology dictates that all children need lovingand attentive adult care in order to thrive. Yetuntold numbers of children throughout the worldcannot be cared for by their parents. Poverty,immaturity, lack of emotional resources, sub-stance abuse, mental or physical illness, and deathmay all prevent parents from caring for their chil-dren. In recent decades, death from infection withthe human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) hasplagued millions of families globally, leaving morethan 15 million children without parents. Somechildren without families live on the streets incities throughout the world, others are traffickedas prostitutes or virtual slaves, while still othersare consigned to orphanages or other institutions.In America, more than 500,000 children whocannot be cared for by their parents reside in fos-ter care, too many of them moving from onehome to another throughout their childhoods.Some of these children are adopted, while tens ofthousands urgently need families.

Adoption is the legal means by which a childpermanently joins a family. An astonishing one infive Americans is directly touched by adoption,according to a survey conducted by the Evan B.Donaldson Institute in 1997. Our friends, cowork-ers, relatives, and close family members are them-selves adopted or are connected to adoption insome other way. They may be birthparents, birthsiblings, birth grandparents, or other relatives.They may be adoptive parents, grandparents,aunts, uncles, cousins, siblings, friends, and neigh-bors. In recognition of the far-reaching nature ofadoption, Adam Pertman aptly subtitled his recent

book Adoption Nation “How the Adoption Revolu-tion is Transforming America.”

Although the Donaldson survey found that 90percent of Americans viewed adoption positively and95 percent agreed it serves a useful purpose, someresponses were not so favorable. Half of the respon-dents stated that adoption is not quite as good as hav-ing one’s own child, 25 percent said it is sometimesharder to love an adopted child, and nearly 33 per-cent doubted that children could love adoptive par-ents as much as they could love birthparents.

This attitude reflects our Western cultural biasabout adoption. In other parts of the world, forexample, the Pacific Islands, adoption is considereda particularly revered form of family. In Tahiti,25–40 percent of all children are adopted, and fam-ilies hope, as quoted by author Elizabeth Bartholet,“to establish between parents and natural childrenrelationships which coincide as nearly as possiblewith those between parents and adopted children.”

However, in other nations, misconceptionsabout adoption abound. In some countries, adop-tion is considered a shameful secret, or an act to bespurned. Occasionally, popular opinion becomesaroused when sensational, shocking, and false sto-ries appear that children are adopted by rich West-erners to be used as servants.

In the United States and other countries, adop-tion practice has been tainted at times by charges ofbaby-selling, “false advertising,” and massivelyinflated costs. Clearly, for the benefit of children inneed of families, and all parties involved, adoptionpractice wherever it occurs must be held to thehighest ethical standards.

xv

PREFACEby Laurie C. Miller, M.D.

Regardless of difficulties, adoption goes on, dri-ven by the desire of adoptive parents for children tolove and by the recognition of the need of childrenfor families. Parents choose to adopt for many rea-sons—best summarized by the Persian poet KahlilGibran: “Your children are not your children—theyare the sons and daughters of life’s longing foritself.” Adoptive parents can be married or single,heterosexual, gay, or lesbian, young or old, fertileor infertile, first-time or experienced parents. Theyshare a willingness to jump through endless hoopsto get a child—sometimes even involving laws ofother countries, exotic diseases, and travel to unfa-miliar places. The desire to adopt does not discrim-inate—it can strike almost any adult, and oneadoption may not be enough to satisfy the urge!

All child development experts agree that chil-dren need families. Experiments conducted byHarry Harlow and others demonstrate convincinglythat young primates need responsive parenting inorder to grow and thrive. For children whose ownfamilies cannot care for them, adoption provides apositive alternative, allowing many children togrow up healthy, happy, and loved.

Surprisingly, there are few definitive statisticsabout domestic adoption. However, statistics arereadily available about international adoptionthrough the Department of State. Internationaladoption has increased dramatically in the past 10years, from 8,195 in 1994 to 22,728 children in2005.

Many of these adoptions are “visible,” that is,children who are placed with ethnically and raciallydifferent parents. The rise in these visible place-ments has greatly increased awareness about adop-tion. Indeed, Pertman writes, “Across the UnitedStates today, it is getting increasingly difficult tofind a playground without at least one little girlfrom China, being watched lovingly by a whitemother or father.” In some parts of the country,every school, every grade, and every classroom hasinternationally adopted children. Indeed, an adop-tive father recently told me of his delight when theanticipated difficulties of a search for an “adoption-friendly” day care for his Russian-born son quicklyvanished. In the first day-care center he visited,there were three international adoptees out of thefive children in his son’s age group.

The most common countries of origin for inter-national adoptees have been China, Russia,Guatemala, Korea, and Ukraine, which togetheraccount for 82 percent of the 167,174 childrenplaced with American parents in the past 10 years.Parents in other nations, including Canada, Spain,England, Italy, France, Australia, New Zealand, andScandinavian countries also adopt children fromabroad.

Until recently, adopted children and familieshave been ignored by physicians, except for thosewith research interests in the field, or those whoseclinical practices brought them into proximity withmany adopted individuals. Over the past severalyears, a burgeoning interest in adopted childrenhas arisen among pediatricians, triggered in part bythe visibility and urgent medical issues of theincreasing number of internationally adopted chil-dren arriving in the United States.

Some of these issues are related to medical prob-lems specific to the country of origin, including“exotic” infectious diseases such as malaria orintestinal parasites. However, more commonly, theissues reflect the suboptimal care of the children inearly life, including prenatal exposures (drugs andalcohol), malnutrition, micronutrient deficiencies,toxic environmental exposures (lead), and mostimportantly, emotional and physical neglect.

Recognition of these problems in internationaladoptees has also increased the awareness of themedical needs of American children residing infoster care—a group with specialized health-careissues which for too long has been sadly neglectedfor the most part by the medical community. Pedi-atricians are recognizing the need for these chil-dren to have a “medical home” during their time infoster care and the need for continuity of care forthose who are later adopted. In 2000 the AmericanAcademy of Pediatrics formally recognized a Sec-tion of Adoption and Foster Care, a group of pedi-atricians interested in promoting the care of fosterand adopted children.

This long overdue step places adopted and fosterchildren on the national pediatric agenda forhealth policies. Among the many issues con-fronting the Section are the development of appro-priate diagnostic codes for necessary medical careof foster and adopted children (necessary for insur-

xvi The Encyclopedia of Adoption

ance, billing, and reimbursement), support of legis-lation (such as the Adoption and Safe Families Act,or ASFA), which expedites adoptions, improvedcoordination of care and medical record keepingfor foster children, compliance with medical provi-sions contained within the Hague Convention onIntercountry Adoption, promotion of high-qualityresearch on health and developmental issues foradoptees, and many other activities devoted toserving the best interests of these children.

Research on adoption has expanded as aware-ness of the special issues of this population hasbecome more widespread. For many years,researchers took advantage of adoption as a natural“experiment” to test hypotheses about nature andnurture. Such investigations yielded valuableinformation about genetic and environmental con-tributions to behavior, health, and mental andphysical disorders. Although this important workcontinues, in recent years the focus of adoptionresearch has expanded to address the health andwell-being of adoptive children and families, andthe factors which promote favorable outcomes.Research by Joyce Maguire Pavao and others hasimproved understanding of “normative crises” inadoptive families, shedding light on normal,expected stages of adjustment for children and par-ents. Such research is directly applicable to the livesof adopted children and families and may aid pro-fessionals who deal with these individuals in theirdaily practice.

This book provides an overview of many of theissues faced by adoptive families, adopted chil-dren, birthparents, foster children, and adoptionprofessionals. It contains valuable informationfor high school and college students as well asprofessionals—teachers, therapists, physicians—who encounter people touched by adoption intheir work. Christine Adamec and I have assem-bled a compendium of detailed information, ref-erences, and resources. This book will be a usefulguide to those with long and close familiaritywith adoption, or to anyone new to this fascinat-ing and wonderful world.

It is worth noting that the United Nations Decla-ration on the Rights of the Child addresses theneeds of children without parental care. TheUnited States is the only UN member state to have

signed this document but not ratified it, as of June2005. (UN member Somalia has neither signed norratified the convention.) The Declaration assertsthat all children are entitled to “grow up in a fam-ily environment, in an atmosphere of happiness,love and understanding.” Sadly, this goal is a longway from being achieved. Untold thousands ofchildren reside in institutional care throughout theworld. In many countries, domestic adoption pro-grams are virtually nonexistent.

In our own country, too many children languishin foster care and despite changes to laws to facili-tate their adoption, large numbers are caught in“legal limbo” which while admirably attempting topreserve the rights of their birthparents does so atthe expense of freeing the child for adoption. Somewould-be adoptive parents are dissuaded from pur-suing adoption due to perceived legal complexitiesand the fear of the birthmother “changing hermind”—a statistically unlikely event, despite thenoisy publicity about the few episodes that dooccur. Although progress has been made in facili-tating, supporting, and expediting adoption, muchmore remains to be done. All must remember theurgency of the mission to provide loving and per-manent homes for all children in need. As theChilean poet Gabriela Mistral wrote:

Many things we need can wait.The child cannot.

Now is the time his bones are being formed,his blood is being made,

his mind is being developed.To him we cannot say, “tomorrow,”

His name is “today.”

SourcesU.S. Department of State. Bureau of Consular Affairs,

Travel.State.Gov. Available online. URL:http://travel.state.gov/family/adoption/adoption_485.html. Downloaded June 15, 2005.

Bartholet, E. Family Bonds: Adoption, Infertility, and the NewWorld of Child Production. Boston: Beacon Press, 1993.

Donner, W. W. “Sharing and compassion: Fosterage in Poly-nesian society,” Journal of Comparative Family Studies 30,no. 4 (1999): 703.

Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute. Benchmark AdoptionSurvey: Report on Findings. New York: Evan B. DonaldsonAdoption Institute, 1997.

Preface by Laurie C. Miller, M.D. xvii

Harlow, H. F., and S. J. Suomi. “Nature of love—simplified,”American Psychology 25 (1970): 161–168.

Miller, L. C. The Handbook of International Adoption Medicine.New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.

Pavao, J. M. The Family of Adoption. Boston: Beacon Press,1998.

Pertman, A. Adoption Nation: How the Adoption Revolution IsTransforming America. New York: Basic Books, 2000.

xviii The Encyclopedia of Adoption

Without the assistance of many talented andknowledgeable professionals, this interdisci-plinary compendium of sociological, psychological,psychiatric, legal, and medical information wouldnot have been possible. We owe a great debt ofgratitude to many people.

First, we would like to thank the many dedicatedresearchers who have so carefully studied thenumerous complex aspects of adoption and the top-ics related or important to the field of adoption.Some of them have spent years of their lives dedi-cated to uncovering information that has helpedand will continue to help adopted individuals,adoptive parents, birthparents, and the wide varietyof adoption professionals who seek to assist theentire triad. We are convinced that their profes-sional studies, books, and magazine featuresdeserve to be read in their entirety by many people.We hope that readers of this volume will be encour-aged to explore more freely many of the materialswe have only begun to tap. We hope our book willencourage many readers in their further studies andanalyses of the fascinating topic of adoption.

There are also many people we would like tothank individually. Our thanks to the followingpeople: Robin Hilborn, publisher of Family Helperin Ontario, Canada (www.familyhelper.net); JoeKroll, executive director of the North AmericanCouncil on Adoptable Children in St. Paul, Min-

nesota; and Liz Oppenheim, director of interstateaffairs, American Public Human Services Adminis-tration, Washington, D.C. Thanks also to AaronBritvan, an adoption attorney in Woodbury, NewYork.

Although we deeply appreciate the assistance ofthese individuals, as well as the assistance of manyothers, we alone are responsible for any errors of factor interpretation or for any inadvertent omissions.

Christine Adamec would like to thank, above allpeople, her husband and best friend, John M.Adamec Jr. His unflagging conviction of the impor-tance of this topic and his total support have beenimmeasurable.

She would also like to thank reference librariansMarie Mercer of the DeGroodt Public Library inPalm Bay, Florida, and Mary Jordan at the CentralLibrary Facility in Cocoa, Florida, for their exten-sive assistance in locating books and journal articlesneeded to update this edition.

Dr. Miller offers her grateful appreciation to col-leagues Wilma Chan, Linda Tirella, and KathleenComfort Salas for their enormous contributions tothe International Adoption Clinic in Boston, Mass-achusetts. Their passion and compassion foradopted children and their families is inspiring toall. Many thanks also to her husband, David Sher-man, for his encouragement and support of thisand many other projects.

xix

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Adoption, the lawful transfer of parental obliga-tions and rights, is not solely a practice of the20th century but is a very old and constantly evolv-ing institution. Societies have formally sanctionedthe adoption of children, or closely similar arrange-ments, for more than 4,000 years, since the Baby-lonian Code of Hammurabi in 2285 B.C.—andprobably before recorded history. Adoption is alsomentioned in the Hindu Laws of Manu, writtenabout 200 B.C. Perhaps the earliest known adoptionis mentioned in the Bible, which describes theadoption of Moses by the Pharaoh’s daughter.

The ancient Romans supported and codifiedadoption in their laws; in fact, Julius Caesar contin-ued his dynasty by adopting his nephew Octavian,who became Caesar Augustus. The ancient Greeks,Egyptians, Assyrians, Germans, Japanese, and manyother societies all practiced some form of adoption.

Adoption satisfied religious requirements insome cases; for example, in the Shinto religion,ancestral worship and the performance of certainreligious rituals were perceived as necessary andimportant reasons for the institution of adoption.Adopted individuals could still carry on the familylineage and rituals when the family did not havebiological children.

Despite a disparity of motivations in culturesworldwide for institutionalizing adoption formallyor informally, the common denominator among

them all was that adoption functionally satisfiedthe needs of society or the family.

Although the adopted person usually benefitedfrom the adoption, such benefit was peripheral andwas generally a happy accident. This underlyingsocietal view sharply contrasts with views towardadoption today, when the needs and interests ofthe child are usually considered the primary reasonand purpose for adoption as an institution. This isnot to say that the benefits of adoption to societyare not important. For example, many individualsbelieve that orphanage-raised children may be lesseffective as adults than are adopted children.

Today, most cultures worldwide provide for chil-dren needing families, although they may not pro-vide the legal family membership that is inherentin adoption.

Most Western societies (with the exception ofEngland) base their adoption laws on the originalRoman code or the later Napoleonic code. Mostexperts agree that U.S. adoption law has combinedaspects of Roman law with its own U.S. adaptations.

Adoption is a far newer institution in Europe,which has followed the lead of the United States.The first adoption law in England was the Adop-tion of Children Act of 1926. The Swedes enactedtheir first Adoption Act in 1917, and in 1959,adopted children in Sweden became full-fledgedfamily members by law. Modern adoption lawscame into being in West Germany in 1977.

xxi

INTRODUCTIONA BRIEF HISTORY OF ADOPTION

by Christine Adamec

It is critically important to understand thatadoption laws and practices should be evaluatedbased on their functionality and the existing condi-tions of the time rather than on our contemporaryvalues only. How adoption was and is now per-ceived in society and how adoption was and is nowactually practiced has depended on a myriad of fac-tors: social, economic, and political conditions;societal attitudes toward orphans and deprivedchildren; out-of-wedlock births; minimum stan-dards of parenting; views on parental rights andchildren’s rights; views on the importance of prop-erty and inheritance, as well as other issues in thesocial order; the perception of the overridingimportance of blood ties; and religious and moralvalues. This essay will only be able to touch on keyissues within several periods in past history and inmodern times.

Historical Adoption Practices

Babylonian adoption laws stated, “If a man hastaken a young child from his waters to sonship andhas reared him up no one has any claim against thenursling.”

There are also biblical references to adoption; forexample, Moses’ mother, in an attempt to save herchild from death by the Pharaoh’s decree, placedhim in a reed basket at the edge of the Nile River.Found by the Pharaoh’s daughter, Moses was laterformally adopted by her. (His birthmother servedas his nurse during Moses’ infancy.)

The ancient Romans practiced two types ofadoptions: “adrogatio” (or “adrogation”) and“adoptio” (or “adoption”). Adrogation usuallyreferred to the adoption of an adult male, whobecame the legal heir of the adopter.

Adrogation was fairly common in ancient Rome,according to author John Boswell. Its purpose wasto enable a childless man to ensure the continuityof his family name and also to provide someone tocarry out religious rituals and memorials after hisdeath.

In contrast, adoption was the process by whicha minor child became a legal heir and dependent ofthe adoptive parent, with the agreement of his orher biological father. According to the law at thattime, and based on the Laws of the Twelve Tables(mid-500s B.C.) the birthfather would perhaps sell

his son up to three times and his daughter orgranddaughter once, after which he could notreclaim the children. Unquestioned family alle-giance was expected whether the person wasadopted as a child or an adult.

The “paterfamilias” (male family head) hadgreat power and could literally condemn his chil-dren to death. He could also sell them or abandonthem (apparently girl children were more likely tobe abandoned) with no negative social or legal con-sequences accruing to such acts.

In Roman law, only men were allowed to adoptuntil A.D. 291. Thereafter, women were allowed inspecial circumstances to adopt, for example, in theevent of the loss of a biological child.

It is unclear whether the ancient Hebrews rec-ognized adoption, although some experts havecontended that St. Paul referred to adoptionsamong Hebrews in his writings, while otherexperts contend that his examples referred toadoptions among the Romans or Galatians.

Laws slowly changed and evolved. Under thereign of Byzantine emperor Justinian (A.D.527–565), the adoptive parents, the person to beadopted, and the head of the birth family all wererequired to formally appear before a magistrate inorder for an adoption to be legally recognized (aprecursor of the “consent” aspect of Western law).

Some societies attached military significance tothe act of adoption; for example, in ancient Ger-many, military ceremonies occurred at the point ofadoption, with weapons placed in the hands of theadopted person. In ancient France, the adoptedperson swore to defend the adoptive family.

The English law of inheritance, with its heavyemphasis on bloodlines, became prominent in theWestern world, and little or no provisions weremade for a family name to “live on” throughadopted children.

The concept of primogeniture—a practicewhereby the eldest son would inherit the familyproperty and, in turn, his eldest son would inheritfrom him—was core to the English, Germans, andother Europeans.

According to law professor C. M. A. McCauliff,“There could be no question of adoption in Eng-land so long as the heir at law held sway. Thenotion of any heir outside a natural orderly succes-sion was repugnant to English society.”

xxii The Encyclopedia of Adoption

Legitimation, an issue of concern for centuries,was seen as a particularly important issue to theChristian church. In A.D. 335, Emperor Constan-tine, a Christian, ordered that children born tounmarried parents who later married would auto-matically become legitimate children. This legiti-mation law was ultimately abolished in 1235 inEngland, after which legitimation was to be deter-mined by a jury on a case by case basis.

Legitimation was especially important in Englandbecause it was bound up in inheritance and rights.Since there was no legal way to adopt a child, legit-imation was the only route for a child born out ofwedlock to be considered an heir.

Children who needed parents were cared for byrelatives, friends, or others who “took pity onthem.” Or they fended for themselves, living asthieves, prostitutes, or beggars. Abandoned chil-dren were also at risk of being kidnapped by indi-viduals who would put out their eyes or cut offtheir feet, mutilating them so they could be moreeffectively used as beggars.

It is also important to remember that the BlackDeath claimed the lives of many thousands of peo-ple in the 14th century. Thus survival was the pri-mary goal at that time, and many people couldonly afford to care for children related to them.Consequently, many children who were orphanedquickly died.

The Elizabethan Poor Law of 1601 formally pro-vided for poor people in England, requiring parentseither to care for their children or indenture themto others. This law was also the basis for the localsystems of public charity in the colonies that laterbecame the United States. Local overseers of thepoor provided local relief for orphans. Althoughthere were people in Europe who wished to legallytie children to their families through adoption,there were no provisions for such status to beattained.

In some areas, the situation for unwed mothersand their infants became very desperate.

C. M. A. McCauliff described a horrifying prac-tice of unscrupulous “baby farmers,” partially quot-ing the Report of the Select Committee on the Protectionof Infant Life:

In Victorian England, unwed mothers were practi-cally forced to give up their babies, who were then

sent to baby-farming houses where they were fed“a mixture of laudanum, lime, cornflour, water,milk and washing powder . . . with rare exceptionsthey all of them die in a very short time.”

According to author Diana Dewar, baby farmerstook out insurance policies on children’s lives andensured their rapid demise so they could collectpayments. These people also reassured unsuspect-ing single mothers that their children would beplaced with loving families; however, many babyfarmers would subsequently sell the children to thehighest bidders.

Not everyone was indifferent to the plight of thechildren, and some individuals decided to takeaction. Nineteenth-century British social reformerThomas Coram, horrified by the sight of abandoneddead babies in the streets, started a foundling hospi-tal. Handel, the famous composer, donated all theroyalties for his work Messiah to the hospital.

Because people in Britain could not adopt chil-dren and have parental rights and obligationstransferred to them (as adoptive parents), manychildren who were orphaned or whose parentscould not care for them were placed in fosterhomes or almshouses.

The concept of parens patriae, wherein the gov-ernment acts as a parent, enabled the governmentto take such actions. This aspect of British commonlaw has been incorporated into U.S. law and is partof U.S. child protection statutes and of the IndianChild Welfare Act, allowing the state to removechildren from abusive or neglectful families.

The concept of the dominance of parental rightsprevailed prior to the establishment of adoptionand child protection statutes. Many 19th-centuryindividuals in Britain (as well as in other countries)who were otherwise interested in fostering chil-dren were fearful of doing so because they could besubjected to blackmail threats from birthparentsdemanding money in exchange for allowing thefoster parents to rear the child. (Recall, if you will,the attempt at blackmail by Eliza Doolittle’s fatherpresent in the movie My Fair Lady for an exampleof practices common at the time or read Oliver Twistby Charles Dickens to gain a feel for the hopeless-ness and helplessness of children during this era.)

In addition, unscrupulous relatives couldreclaim the child and literally sell him to tramps,

Introduction xxiii

prostitutes, or anyone. It must be remembered thatchildren were not revered or protected as they arenow by statute and were often conceptualized asproperty rather than persons. Yet many kind indi-viduals would have eagerly adopted children hadthat legal option been available and had they beenassured that the integrity of their family would notbe disrupted by birthparents or others.

It was not until 1851 that the first modern adop-tion statute worthy of the name was passed, and itwas in the state of Massachusetts: “An Act to Providefor the Adoption of Children.” Adoptions were, how-ever, taking place with regularity in Texas, Louisiana,and other localities long before 1851. Although mostlaw in the United States is based on British commonlaw, the United States was the pioneer in modernadoption. When the English passed their first adop-tion laws in 1926, they based them on U.S. adoptionlaws, specifically New York adoption laws.

Prior to the Massachusetts adoption statute, nojudicial review or court appearance was required toadopt a child. As a result, it was considered to bethe first modern adoption law that formally (and,by today’s standards, very minimally) took intoaccount the interests of the child. It is interesting tonote that the adoption statute in Massachusettswas barely noticed by the press, and few, if any,people envisioned the impact of this statute onother states or noted that Massachusetts was apacesetter in adoption law.

The institution of adoption cannot be fully dis-cussed without also providing a brief historicaloverview of the institutions of foster care, or “plac-ing out,” as well as the institution of the grouphome, also known as the almshouse, “poor house,”and orphanage.

To date, the argument continues, not just in theUnited States but worldwide, as to whether institu-tional care or foster care is preferable for childrenwho cannot remain with their birthparents andwho need temporary care. This essay will alsoinclude a brief overview of these institutions.

Orphaned Children and Adoptionin the United States

Informal adoptions were the norm in the colonialdays of early America, long before the passage ofthe Massachusetts law.

Governor Sir William Phips of Massachusetts wasallegedly the first recorded adoptive father in theoriginal thirteen colonies. He adopted a child in 1693.The word adoption appeared in Governor Phips’s will,as well as in the act of the colonial legislature thatallowed for the legal name change of the son.

In fact, it was fairly common for colonial legisla-tures to pass special bills recognizing the adoption ofa child. Some historians have hypothesized that leg-islators became weary of passing so many bills forindividual cases, bills that increased to such a greatextent they bottlenecked other legislation. As aresult, the legislators may have eased their legisla-tive load by legalizing what was already common.

Laws prior to the 1851 Massachusetts adoptionlaw, for example, in Texas (1850) and Mississippi(1846), have not been considered adoption laws byexperts because such laws simply enabled individu-als to leave their estates to nonrelatives in a similarmanner in which property deeds were registered.

The groundwork for a philosophy favoringadoption had been laid well ahead of this time byThomas Jefferson, who detested the concept of pri-mogeniture and dedicated time during his earlypolitical career as a member of the Virginia Houseof Delegates to eliminate primogeniture in Virginia,ultimately succeeding in 1783. It is interesting tonote that some British parents, still shackled by thebonds of primogeniture, sent their second or later-born sons to Virginia subsequent to Virginia’s liftingof primogeniture.

Another status granted to children during thecolonial era of the United States was that of god-child, and often the godchild did assume the nameof the godparent. In addition, godchildren fre-quently inherited from godparents, although suchan inheritance had to be stipulated in the will ofthe godparent.

According to Kawashima, one man left hisestate to his wife and ordered that after her deaththe property would be left to a goddaughter,“except for one cow, which was given to the othergoddaughter.”

In his 1694 will, New Yorker William Moncombequeathed half his property to his godson, and theother half was divided among his three children.

Some colonists informally fostered orphanedchildren, treating them as adopted children. These

xxiv The Encyclopedia of Adoption

early “foster families” frequently developed greataffection for the children, and in some cases, thechildren inherited property when the “master”died; for example, as early as 1769, William Russellof Georgia provided a dowry of 300 pounds toAnna Hunter, a child who resided with him, to bepaid “on the day of her marriage or when shebecame of age.”

Another key problem of the period was that ille-gitimacy was seen as evil and a shocking rip in thefabric of socially acceptable behavior and norms.Many people believed that if they solved the prob-lem of the out-of-wedlock mother and child byarranging for another family to raise the child, theywere condoning her “sin” and “making it easy” forher. Instead, it was believed she should be forced toraise her child, whether she wanted to or not, anopinion that continues to be held by some individ-uals today.

The effect on the child of pressuring the motherinto parenting (or seeing the child reside in anorphanage and contributing money toward thechild’s support) was not of concern to society atlarge because the child was illegitimate and manypeople presumed the child was probably “bad,” too.The severe shunning that Hester Prynne faced inthe book The Scarlet Letter gives an idea of theprevalent view toward women who bore childrenout of wedlock and their children.

In later years, states began to create laws requir-ing investigations of the prospective adoptive par-ents. Michigan’s 1891 statute was the first to ordersuch an investigation (the precursor to today’shome study) to further protect the child.

However, it should be noted that child protec-tion laws were not passed until many years afterthe adoption statutes of Massachusetts and otherstates were legislated. It was not until an incidentoccurred in 1874 in New York City, in which MaryEllen Wilson was severely beaten and abused byher parents, that any type of formal action wastaken to protect children.

Outraged neighbors were unable to convinceanyone to intervene to help Mary Ellen. Finally,the New York Society for the Prevention of Crueltyto Animals intervened to protect children, and theNew York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty toChildren, the first organization in the world to pro-

tect children from abuse, was subsequently formedin 1874.

The Rise and Fall of the Almshouse

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, not onlyunwed parents but poor people in general wereoften regarded with disdain and contempt. “Out-door relief” was the early precursor to today’s Tem-porary Aid to Needy Families (TANF) and referredto cash or items such as food that were given topeople who remained in their home rather thanresiding in an institution. Such relief was adminis-tered by the town or county in most cases; forexample, the towns generally administered out-door relief in New England, and the system ofoverseers was first introduced in Boston in 1691. Inother areas of the country, the county managedoutdoor relief.

In addition to almshouses or outdoor relief, therewere also two other methods of dealing with thepoor: one was literally selling the poor, and theother was selling their labor. According to historianMichael B. Katz, the labor of the individual was lit-erally auctioned off to the highest bidder in a formof slavery of the poor. Understandably, many peo-ple considered such practices to be unfair and inhu-mane. Children were also routinely apprenticed orindentured to families, some of whom were kind,some of whom were not.

There were also numerous problems of settle-ment (determining which town or city was finan-cially responsible for poor individuals) in the 19thcentury and early 20th century. Sometimes over-seers of the poor actually transported poverty-stricken individuals to other towns to avoid afinancial liability.

Some social reformers believed outdoor reliefwas bad for the character of the individual andcould ultimately encourage a class of individualsdependent on public welfare. In addition, outdoorrelief was perceived as bad for children, the men-tally ill, and other categories of helpless individuals.Outdoor relief has always cost much less than insti-tutionalization; however, social reformers believedthat almshouses and later other institutions, suchas orphanages, would be far better for the individ-uals as well as for society.

Introduction xxv

As a result, the rise of the almshouse (poor-house) began in the mid-18th century. Yet althoughthe almshouse was seen as the ultimate answer forindigent people by social reformers of the day, out-door relief continued on throughout the almshouseera; for example, at the height of the almshouse erain 1880, there were an estimated 89,909 individu-als residing in almshouses in New York, contrastedto 70,667 individuals receiving outdoor relief.

Supporters of almshouses stated that individualswould no longer be auctioned off nor would theyreceive outdoor relief and be allowed to be indo-lent. The settlement problem would be solvedbecause the institutions would be county-run. Itwas also believed the almshouse would be a placewhere better character would be ingrained andwhere individuals would not wish to stay too long.

The almshouse social experiment, initially run-ning an almost parallel course in England, was notthe ideal solution envisioned by early socialreformers such as Josiah Quincy, author of theQuincy Report in 1821, or by Douglas Yates, authorof the Yates Report of 1824. Many children suf-fered greatly, and too many died.

Infants were particularly at risk, primarilybecause they had to be breast-fed before the adventof safe formulas for infants. Wet nurses sometimeswere used to breast-feed babies, although this solu-tion was often unsatisfactory, due to unsanitaryconditions and other problems.

According to author Homer Folks, 514 infantswere nursed in a New York City almshouse in1849, and of these, 280 died. “Boarding out” ofinfants with foster parents was begun again in1871. (It had previously been a policy, then wasdiscontinued.) Said Folks, “It was so successful inreducing the death rate that in 1900 and 1901 itwas extended to include all foundlings comingdirectly under the care of New York.”

When the child was weaned from the breast, heor she was usually returned to the almshouse,despite any affection and love that may have devel-oped between the foster mother and the child.

Although the goal of those who recommendedalmshouses was the creation and maintenance ofclean and safe facilities, almshouses were far moreoften crowded and disease-ridden institutions,rampant with dangerous and then-fatal diseases

such as cholera or pneumonia as well as numerouschronic diseases. Nor were they safe: somealmshouses housed juvenile delinquents and seri-ously mentally ill individuals (and the indigentelderly) in the same facility that held the childrenof paupers.

The children were often not educated, nor werethey sent to public schools because of the fear theywould spread contagious diseases to the other chil-dren. As a result, they could neither read nor writenor were they trained for any trade, perpetuatingthe horrors of poverty into their adulthood.

Concerned citizens and child advocates becamevocally opposed to almshouses in the mid-1800swhen a variety of reports were written condemn-ing almshouses. In 1856, a state Senate committeein New York issued a denunciation of thealmshouse system. In 1857, commissioners of thepoor in Charleston, South Carolina, described dis-mal conditions at an almshouse, which was“swarming with vermin.” In addition, althoughalmshouses had been perceived as a means toencourage idle individuals to work, often peopleliving in almshouses could not find employment,either because of youth or infirmity or because of alack of available jobs.

As a result, although the almshouses had ini-tially been created because of concerned citizens’strong convictions that they would be far prefer-able to outdoor relief, the reality did not resemblethe dream.

Finally, by the end of the 1800s, manyalmshouses were no longer operating, and childrenwho could not remain with their parents wereinstead housed in orphanages or placed with fosterfamilies. Institutions were created to care for thementally ill, aged, and juvenile offenders, thus sep-arating the many categories of the poor that hadformerly been housed together.

Several states led a movement away fromalmshouses and toward placing children in orphan-ages or with families; for example, in 1883, Ohiopassed a law banning children over age three inalmshouses, unless they were separated from indi-gent adults. Ohio dropped the age limit allowed inalmshouses to one year in 1898.

According to the 1880 census, there were 7,770children in almshouses throughout the United

xxvi The Encyclopedia of Adoption

States. Author Homer Folks estimated the numberto have declined to about 5,000 by 1890.

It is important to note that some prominentpoliticians and child welfare experts today are call-ing for a return to orphanages to care for theincreasing numbers of abandoned, neglected, orabused infants and children born to drug-addictedmothers. Proponents of modern-day orphanagesinsist that such facilities are not or would not beDickensian scourges but instead would be cleanand safe homes. Of course, it could also be arguedthat 19th-century orphanage advocates clearlyenvisioned clean and safe facilities and did not wishfor children to suffer from a lack of bonding toparental figures or from a failure to thrive.

In the 19th century and early 20th century,orphaned children or the children of poverty-stricken parents were often “put out” or appren-ticed, often to childless couples.

If a family died and there were no living rela-tives or persons named in a will who would carefor the child, then the court was required to bindthem out to a responsible person.

Children who were indentured did not usuallyassume the name of the masters nor were theygiven any legal rights or inheritance rights. In addi-tion, the responsibility of the master usually endedwhen the child reached adulthood and was given$50, a Bible, and two suits of clothes. Childrenwere not legally protected from abuse or overworkat the hands of the master, either.

Indenture was later decried by many as a formof slavery, although this practice persisted for someyears even after the abolition of slavery.

The indenture system ultimately fell out of favorby the early 1900s, at about the same time thatsociety decided against housing children and adultstogether in almshouses. Wrote Homer Folks, “Thebound child has often been alluded to as typifyingloneliness, neglect, overwork, and a consciousnessof being held in low esteem.”

Placing Out: The Orphan Train

Experts estimate over 10,000 homeless childrenroamed the streets of New York City in the mid-1800s, living on the ill-gotten gains from crimesthey committed. Police reports in New York City in

1852 revealed that in 11 wards, 2,000 homelessgirls ages eight to 16 were arrested for theft. Thingsonly got worse: According to author Francis Lanein his 1932 doctoral dissertation for the CatholicUniversity of America in Washington, D.C., therewere 5,880 commitments of female children forvagrancy in 1860.

Part of the problem was that there was almostno need for “honest labor” of children in the largecities, which was why the children had turned todishonest labor. (This was prior to the child labormovement, and at this time, everyone worked.)Large numbers of immigrants streamed into themajor cities of the Northeast, such as New YorkCity, between 1847 and 1860.

There was insufficient demand for the labor ofthis huge influx of adults, let alone children. At thesame time, the midwestern and western farmerssuffered a severe labor shortage.

Social reformers such as Charles Loring Brace,founder of the New York Children’s Aid Society,saw almshouses and indenture as the problem, notthe solution, and Brace initiated the Orphan Trainmovement in the mid-1850s. Brace believed thatsending children to distant families would solvetwo problems: the family’s desire for a child andthe child’s need for a family.

An estimated 150,000 children from the North-east traveled to the Midwest, West, and South tofoster or adoptive homes from 1854 until themovement ended in about 1929, when the GreatDepression hit the entire United States very hard,especially farmers. (Some of these children werenot placed by the New York Children’s Aid Society,Brace’s organization, but were actually indenturedby other agencies.)

From 1854 to 1929, these homeless childrenwere placed on trains and taken to rural sites con-centrated in the Midwest and West in search ofrural homes where the children could live andwork. The children ranged from as young as aboutone year old to age 16 or 17.

Limited follow-ups of the children revealed thatthen, as now, the children who adapted the mostreadily were usually the younger children, and theolder teenagers faced the greatest difficulty inadjusting to a radically different environment.

Introduction xxvii

Most of the children were poor, and some hadbeen involved in minor or serious infractions ofthe law. Many also had siblings and were sepa-rated from them for life as a result of the move. Yetmost of the children (including two later gover-nors—Andrew Burke of North Dakota and JohnBrady of the Alaska Territory—and other promi-nent citizens) made successful new lives for them-selves, leaving behind them severe poverty anddesolation.

Brace was initially supported in his movementby organizations within the Catholic Church andother groups. The Sisters of Charity of St. Vincentde Paul and the New York Foundling Hospital, forexample, were both actively involved in theOrphan Train movement. The movement was alsoknown as the “Placing Out” program and precededadoption as we know it today. (It is unknown howmany of the children received de facto familymembership.)

The children left the train at each stop and werechosen or not chosen by people who came to thestation to see them. The children were “put up” onplatforms for all to see, which is supposedly thesource of the phrase “put up for adoption.”

Critics questioned whether all the homelesschildren Brace sent off on the orphan trains werereally without parents or relatives and challengedwhether or not sufficient checking and safeguardswere made of parental rights. Notice to birthpar-ents was not required, and consequently, therewere parents who might (and did) object to theirchildren being “placed out.”

In addition, most of the homeless children werefrom Jewish or Catholic immigrant parents, yetlarge numbers were placed by Brace in Protestanthomes. Laws were subsequently created in manystates, including New York, that mandated orstrongly suggested religious matching, so that chil-dren of Catholic parents would be placed only withCatholic adoptive parents, Jews with Jews and soforth.

Critics also said Brace made insufficient investi-gations of the foster or adoptive homes and littlefollow-up or documentation. In Brace’s defense,communications and transportation systems of hisera had little resemblance to our society today: hecould not just pick up the phone and contact some-

one in the Midwest nor could he send or receivefax messages or e-mail.

Modern Adoption

Adoption in the early 20th century was very differ-ent from adoption in the United States in the 21stcentury. Most adoptions were still informal ratherthan legal, and adoption agencies did not becomeprominent until after World War II. Indeed, thefirst professional conference on adoption was heldby the Child Welfare League of America in 1955.(The Child Welfare League of America was formedin 1921 and was first led by C. C. Carstens, formerdirector of the Massachusetts Society for the Pre-vention of Cruelty to Children.)

Many would-be adoptive parents could see nobenefit to a legal adoption other than to provide foran inheritance, and there were no state or federallegal requirements to adopt or formally foster achild whom they were rearing. Children needingparents were primarily cared for through orphan-ages (“orphan asylums”) or by foster parents.

Confidentiality of the identities of the birthpar-ents and adoptive parents was not commonly prac-ticed, babies and children were bought and sold,and the whole concept of adoption was questionedby many as to whether or not it served a socialgood. Unwed mothers routinely advertised theirchildren for sale in newspapers, and there was lit-tle or no protection for the children.

The economic climate of the early 1930s mustalso be taken into account: the Great Depressionhad forcibly ejected numerous people from theironly means of livelihood, and poverty was ram-pant.

Society at large continued to view children bornout of wedlock as liabilities, and the word illegiti-mate was often placed on birth certificates. Thephrase strangers of the blood was used commonly toconnote children raised by other than their biolog-ical parents or to connote the people who rearedthem. The word bastard was a value-laden insultagainst children born to unwed parents and wasused with great effect.

Sometimes the birth certificate of a person bornout of wedlock was a different color. Social reform-ers such as Edna Gladney of Texas believed labeling

xxviii The Encyclopedia of Adoption

children from birth as “illegitimate” was a form ofname-calling that was horrendously unfair toinnocent children, often haunting them for life.She successfully fought to have references to ille-gitimacy removed from birth certificates in Texas in1933. Said Edna Gladney in 1933, “There is nosuch thing as an illegitimate child. There are onlyillegitimate parents.”

Unaware that moral values are received by chil-dren via parenting, child welfare experts andprospective parents worried a great deal abouteugenics and genetics and whether or not the “ille-gitimate” child would or could ever turn out to beall right.

Still, lawful adoptions did occur and were sanc-tioned by the state in which the adoptive parentsresided. Some states required a social investigationof the adopting parents, but many did not. Manyadoptions were arranged by the parties themselves(birthparents and adopting parents); others werearranged by physicians, attorneys, and other inter-mediaries.

According to a 1927 analysis by Bostonresearcher Ida Parker of 810 adoptions, about two-thirds of the adoptions in Massachusetts had notbeen arranged by agencies but were instead inde-pendent adoptions.

When adopted, infants were not placed immedi-ately in adoptive homes but were held back formonths, primarily because society at large believedit was important to ensure they were not “defectivechildren.” At this time, children born out of wed-lock were still regarded as potentially abnormaland hence the great caution.

In addition, many individuals continued tobelieve that women should care for their infants,whether they wanted to or not. Five states, Mary-land, Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio, and SouthCarolina, actually passed laws requiring birthmoth-ers to parent their infants for a minimum of threeto six months.

Another change was the institution of confiden-tial adoptions. States began to pass laws requiringthe sealing of the birth certificates of adopted chil-dren in the 1930s. The basis of the emphasis onconfidentiality or anonymity and privacy was notonly to protect the privacy rights of the adoptedchild, birthmother, and adoptive family from the

prying and curious eyes of outsiders but also tostress that the adoptive family would completelyassume the parental rights and obligations inregard to the child. In World War II, a heightenedinterest in confidentiality resulted from the needfor married women who were pregnant outsidetheir marriage to be able to be guaranteed privacy.The U.S. Children’s Bureau at that time saw thisconfidentiality as part of their role as feminists.

An element of protection for the security of thefamily is inherent in these laws as well in that thebirthparents might intrude or make later monetaryor other demands on the adoptive parents or theadopted child if their identities were known.

The majority of states have retained confiden-tiality in adoptions today, although some groupsactively seek to open all identifying adoption infor-mation. These groups, most notably the Adoptees’Liberty Movement Association (ALMA), state thatthe rights of the adopted adult should be of primaryconcern. This group believes an adopted adult’sdesire for information from the original birthrecord should take precedence over a birthparent’sdesire to withhold such information or to retain hisor her privacy. They do not, however, believe abirthparent has a corresponding automatic right tothe new amended birth record with identifyinginformation about the adoptive parents andadopted child.

A variety of important social reforms occurred inthe 1930s. By 1913, 20 states had passed lawsauthorizing pensions for indigent women, primar-ily widows. Historian Michael Katz says these lawswere used as a basis for the Aid to Dependent Chil-dren portion of the 1935 Economic Security Act,itself a basis for today’s Temporary Aid to NeedyFamilies (TANF).

Child labor laws were passed, limiting the use ofchildren in the factories. Interestingly enough, theremoval of children from the workplace, alongwith theories of child psychology by popular psy-chologists such as G. Stanley Hall, led to an evengreater enhancement of the value of the child.According to Katz, “A seismic shift in the perceivedvalue of children underlay the new child psychol-ogy.” As a result, by the late 1930s, adopting a childfor his or her labor was no longer seen as a valid oracceptable motive. The shift to wanting to adopt a

Introduction xxix

child because of a desire to become a loving parenthad begun.

Starting in about the 1950s, society began toaccept and broadly sanction the idea of adoptinginfants, and infant adoptions flourished until the1970s. In 1951, an estimated 70 percent of the chil-dren adopted in 21 states were under the age ofone year. Unwed mothers were urged or pressuredto choose adoption over single parenthood.

Prospective adoptive parents did not need towait many years before being able to adopt infants,and the system appeared to be in approximateequilibrium insofar as the number of infants need-ing families and the number of couples desiring toadopt infants was roughly equivalent.

From about the 1950s to the 1970s, most adop-tion agencies and adoption intermediaries, such asattorneys or physicians, concentrated on placinghealthy white infants with adoptive families. Thenumber of nonrelative adoptions increased fromabout 33,800 nationwide in 1951 to 89,200 in1970.

During this period, there still existed strongsocial disapproval of premarital or extramarital sexand out-of-wedlock pregnancies. Unmarried preg-nant women were often expected to keep theimpending birth a secret and either wait out theirpregnancies at a maternity home or visit a “sickaunt” until the child was born. Illegitimacy was astigma and a problem: there was even a NationalCouncil on Illegitimacy.

It should be mentioned that, in all these changesand activities, primary concern by society overallcentered on white people, and few provisions weremade for black orphans and orphans of other racialor ethnic minorities until the late 19th century.These minorities usually raised such childrenwithin the extended family or community, andchildren born out of wedlock were not as stigma-tized in their social groups.

However, the Colonial Orphan Asylum, foundedin 1836, was the first orphanage for black childrenand the predecessor of the Harlem-Dowling chil-dren’s service agency in New York City, which stillexists today.

Authors Patricia Turner-Hogan and Sau-FongSiu said some black children were placed inalmshouses and were indentured; however, the

social welfare available to poor black children waslimited and often even more harshly administeredthan the dismal situation faced by the white chil-dren of the time.

Black children were generally excluded from themainstream charities as part of a general pattern ofracial discrimination, a pattern that persisted untilthe landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision ofBrown v. Board of Education in 1954. As a result,blacks began to develop their own child welfare.Not until the 1960s and the civil rights movementdid blacks become prominent in child welfare ser-vices. To this date, black children are overrepre-sented in foster care, and they are often the last tobe adopted.

Some blacks continue to believe the child wel-fare system is not sufficiently responsive to theneeds of blacks and other minority children andadults.

There is also great controversy and debate todayover whether or not whites should be allowed toadopt black or biracial children in transracial adop-tions. Opponents argue that insufficient efforts aremade to recruit African-American adoptive par-ents. Supporters of transracial adoptions contendthat carefully screened white parents are far supe-rior to long-term (and often a succession of several)foster care arrangements for black and biracial chil-dren. Assisted by advocates and researchers such asElizabeth Bartholet, Senator Metzenbaum made ahistoric breakthrough with his legislation banningracial discrimination in adoption—the MultiethnicPlacement Act.

In the 1970s, the emphasis on adoption began toshift again as social reformers became very alarmedat the burgeoning numbers of children living inprivate or group foster homes, usually for theirentire childhoods. Policymakers became concernedabout the rising costs of maintaining thousands ofchildren in foster homes. Studies indicate as manyas 500,000 children were living in publicly sup-ported foster homes in 1975.

Some studies revealed that many foster childrenwent in and out of numerous placements, andresearchers concluded this instability was very badfor children. There was also an apparent unwittingfederal disincentive to place children in adoptivefamilies. If the children remained in foster care,

xxx The Encyclopedia of Adoption

their foster families would receive monthly pay-ments, the child would remain eligible for Medic-aid, and the state would also receive federal funds.If the child was adopted, the adoptive family wouldusually become fully responsible for all costs asso-ciated with the child, and Medicaid benefits wouldend. (Some states, such as New York, offered theirown state subsidy to adoptive parents.) Congressalso passed legislation giving tax credits to adoptiveparents.

Social workers, foster parents, and others made acall for what came to be known in the 1980s as“permanency”: to either return the children to theiroriginal families (“reunification”) or, if that was notpossible, to sever parental rights so the child couldbe adopted. (Other alternatives included placing thechild in a group home or institution or allowing thechild to remain in foster care.)

The culmination of this concern was the Adop-tion Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980, afederal law that mandates a judicial review of thestatus of a foster child after 18 months in foster care.

Child advocates later charged that, because ofindifference on the part of the Department ofHealth and Human Services and Congress, the lawwas not monitored adequately or properlyenforced. One result to this inadequacy was thepassage of the Adoption and Safe Families Act of1997.

Still, the 1980 act did result in the adoption ofmany children who would not otherwise havebeen adopted, and it is hoped that many more fam-ilies will be identified for the children who still waitfor families and that such children can be priedloose from the bureaucratic quagmires where theyare entrapped.

Another impetus to the adoption of childrenwith special needs has been the continuance ofMedicaid coverage in some cases. (Children placedthrough public agencies are the primary beneficia-ries.) Adoption subsidies have also been created toprovide monthly payments for some families whoadopt some children with special needs, again,mostly children from public agencies. These legisla-tive and legal actions were taken to encourage theadoption of foster children.

The concept that an older child could be suc-cessfully adopted and thrive in an adoptive family

was a novel idea to many social workers and mostof the general public in the late 1970s and early1980s. (The emphasis and successful experience ofchild welfare experts in the early 20th century withthe adoption of older children had been ignored orforgotten by most.)

It should be noted that, as more children areadopted at an older age, it is possible that increas-ing numbers of these children and their familieswill need some help with child or family adjust-ment. Whether the children will exhibit behaviorproblems because they were adopted or because ofdamage that occurred prior to the adoption is amatter of intense debate and a likely subject forfurther study.

Another development was the change in contra-ceptive use and effectiveness, particularly the vari-ety of contraceptive choices and especially theincreased use of the birth control pill, whichenabled women to have more control in avoidingpregnancies.

It became increasingly acceptable for singlewomen and even young girls to engage in premar-ital sexual intercourse with the result that somenumber of them would become pregnant, bear,and rear children.

This change in attitude became so pervasive insociety that whereas adoption was earlier consid-ered the presumed solution for a pregnant singlewoman, many individuals in the 1970s and to datebegan to believe that single parenting was a farpreferable answer to adoption for both the motherand her child.

Yet some women continue to choose to adoptchildren from the United States and other coun-tries. Most adoption agencies today pride them-selves on seeking families for children more thanon finding children for prospective parents. It mustalso be noted, however, that adoption agenciesarrange an estimated half of all infant adoptions ofchildren born in the United States today while theremaining 50 percent of infant adoptions arearranged or facilitated by private intermediaries.

Home studies (also known as parent preparationor preadoptive counseling) of adopting parents arealways required prior to any adoptive placement,while home studies may not be initiated until afterplacement of the child in an independent arrange-

Introduction xxxi

ment. States license agencies to make adoptiveplacements, and agencies in turn are responsible tosociety for their work. In some states, private,licensed social workers may do the home study.

In addition, counseling of the adopting parentsand birthparents occurs with far more frequency inagency adoptions than in independent adoptions,which leads to the primary criticism leveled byagency practitioners against independent adop-tions. There appear to be an increasing number ofindependent intermediaries today who require orurge counseling prior to an adoptive placement,both in response to this criticism and also out of adesire to do better adoption work.

One change that has taken place over the pastdecade is that many professionals have begun toargue that “open adoptions” (disclosure of theidentities of birthparents and adoptive parents toeach other) should be standard practice. Supportersof open adoptions frequently cite adoptions thatoccurred in the early 20th century and prior to theinstitution of confidentiality, sealing of birthrecords, and so forth.

Some professionals believe open adoptions aremore “humane” for adoption triad members, argu-ing, for example, that adults who seek to locatetheir birthparents will not have difficulty when theadoptions are open because they will know theidentity of their birthparents.

Other professionals have responded to competi-tive pressures from lawyers and other adoptionintermediaries who offer open adoptions and havebegun to offer open adoptions or “semi-open”adoptions. Most adoption agencies and intermedi-aries continue to arrange adoptions with choices,such as the birthmother choosing the religion of theadopting couple, with the majority retaining theconfidentiality aspect. (Open adoption is discussedat greater length within the text of this book.)

In addition, most agencies seek genetic andmedical information from birthparents so thisinformation can be provided to adopting parentswho need this information to provide optimalappropriate care for the child and to help the childattain his or her full potential. Upon reachingadulthood, the adoptive parents will pass on theinformation to the adopted person, who can thenplan for necessary preventive and other medicalcare for himself or herself and any offspring.

Another change that has taken place is in thearea of birthfathers’ rights. Prior to Stanley v. Illinoisin 1972, no consideration was given to the desiresof a birthfather not married to a child’s birth-mother. If the birthmother chose adoption for“her” child, then the adoption could go forth.

After the Stanley decision and several other sub-sequent U.S. Supreme Court decisions, statespassed a variety of laws designed to protect thepaternal rights of the birthfather. Today, a crazyquilt of laws nationwide provide for what actions,if any, must be taken by the state to obtain consentfrom the birthfather.

The sometimes overlapping and conflictingrights of the adoptive parents, birthparents,adopted person, and relatives will undoubtedlycontinue to be debated, legislated, and fought incourt battles nationwide as states and the federalgovernment struggle to achieve an equitable bal-ance for all parties.

Changes and Trends through theTwenty-first Century

Adoption is an evolving institution and one which,it is hoped, fits the needs of the children who needfamilies, whether they are infants or older childrenand whether they are children from orphanages inother countries, foster care in the United States, orare in the hospital just days after