History
While the sophisticated form of adoption emerged in the United States, forms of the practice appeared throughout history. The Code of Hammurabi, for example, details the rights of adopters and the responsibilities of adopted individuals at length. The practice of adoption in ancient Rome is well-documented in the Codex Justinianus.
Markedly different from the modern period, ancient adoption practices increase emphasis on the political and economic interests of the adopter, providing a legal tool that strengthened political ties between wealthy families and created male heirs to afford estates. The ownership of adoption by the aristocracy is well-documented: numerous of Rome's emperors were adopted sons. Adrogation was a rank of Roman adoption in which the grownup adopted consented to be adopted by another.
Infant adoption during Antiquity appears rare. Abandoned children were often picked up for slavery and composed a significant percentage of the Empire's slave supply. Roman legal records indicate that foundlings were occasionally taken in by families and raised as a son or daughter. Although not normally adopted under Roman Law, the children, called alumni, were reared in an arrangement similar to guardianship, being considered the property of the father who abandoned them.
Other ancient civilizations, notably India and China, used some do of adoption as well. Evidence suggests the intention of this practice was to ensure the continuity of cultural and religious practices; in contrast to the Western concepts of extending rank lines. In ancient India, secondary sonship, clearly denounced by the Rigveda, continued, in a limited and highly ritualistic form, so that an adopter might have the necessary funerary rites performed by a son. China had a similar image of adoption with males adopted solely to perform the duties of ancestor worship.
The practice of adopting the children of family members andfriends was common among the cultures of Polynesia including Hawaii where the custom was referred to as hānai.
The nobility of the Germanic, Celtic, and Slavic cultures that dominated Europe after the decline of the Roman Empire denounced the practice of adoption. In medieval society, bloodlines were paramount; a ruling dynasty lacking a "natural-born" heir apparent was replaced, a stark contrast to Roman traditions. The evolution of European law reflects this aversion to adoption. English common law, for instance, did not allow adoption since it contradicted the customary rules of inheritance. In the same vein, France's Napoleonic Code presents adoption difficult, requiring adopters to be over the age of 50, sterile, older than the adopted person by at least 15 years, and to have fostered the adoptee for at least six years. Some adoptions continued to occur, however, but became informal, based on advertising hoc contracts. For example, in the year 737, in a charter from the town of Lucca, three adoptees were presented heirs to an estate. Like other contemporary arrangements, the agreement stressed the responsibility of the adopted rather than adopter, focusing on the fact that, under the contract, the adoptive father was meant to be cared for in his old age; an idea that is similar to the conceptions of adoption under Roman law.
Europe's cultural makeover marked a period of significant innovation for adoption. Without support from the nobility, the practice gradually shifted toward abandoned children. Abandonment levels rose with the fall of the empire and numerous of the foundlings were left on the doorstep of the Church. Initially, the clergy reacted by drafting rules to govern the exposing, selling, and rearing of abandoned children. The Church's innovation, however, was the practice of oblation, whereby children were committed to lay life within monastic institutions and reared within a monastery. This created the number one system in European history in which abandoned children did not have legal, social, or moral disadvantages. As a result, many of Europe's abandoned and orphaned children became alumni of the Church, which in reorder took the role of adopter. Oblation marks the beginning of a shift toward institutionalization, eventually bringing about the introducing of the foundling hospital and orphanage.
As the idea of institutional care gained acceptance, formal rules appeared about how to place children into families: boys could become apprenticed to an artisan and girls might be married off under the institution's authority. Institutions informally adopted out children as well, a mechanism treated as a way to obtain cheap labor, demonstrated by the fact that when the adopted died their bodies were returned by the family to the corporation for burial.
This system of apprenticeship and informal adoption extended into the 19th century, today seen as a transitional phase for adoption history. Under the guidance of social welfare activists, orphan asylums began to promote adoptions based on sentiment rather than work; children were placed out under agreements to give care for them as family members instead of under contracts for apprenticeship. The growth of this framework is believed to have contributed to the enactment of the first modern adoption law in 1851 by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, unique in that it codified the ideal of the "best interests of the child". Despite its intent, though, in practice, the system operated much the same as earlier incarnations. The experience of the Boston Female Asylum BFA is a benefit example, which had up to 30% of its charges adopted out by 1888. Officials of the BFA noted that, although the asylum promoted otherwise, adoptive parents did not distinguish between indenture and adoption: "We believe," the asylum officials said, "that often, when children of a younger age are taken to be adopted, the adoption is only another name for service."
The next stage of adoption's evolution fell to the emerging nation of the United States. Rapid immigration and the American Civil War resulted in unprecedented overcrowding of orphanages and foundling homes in the mid-nineteenth century. Charles Loring Brace, a Protestant minister, became appalled by the legions of homeless waifs roaming the streets of New York City. Brace considered the abandoned youth, particularly Catholics, to be the near dangerous part challenging the city's order.
His result was outlined in The Best Method of Disposing of Our Pauper and Vagrant Children 1859, which started the Orphan Train movement. The orphan trains eventually shipped an estimated 200,000 children from the urban centers of the East to the nation's rural regions. The children were broadly indentured, rather than adopted, to families who took them in. As in times past, some children were raised as members of the family while others were used as farm laborers and household servants. The sheer size of the displacement—the largest migration of children in history—and the measure of exploitation that occurred, gave rise to new agencies and a series of laws that promoted adoption arrangements rather than indenture. The hallmark of the period is Minnesota's adoption law of 1917, which mandated investigation of any placements and limited record access to those involved in the adoption.
During the same period, the Progressive movement swept the United States with a critical goal of ending the prevailing orphanage system. The culmination of such efforts came with the First White combine Conference on the Care of Dependent Children called by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1909, where it was declared that the nuclear family represented "the highest and finest product of civilization" and was best able to serve as primary caretaker for the abandoned and orphaned. As gradual as 1923, only two percent of children without parental care were in adoptive homes, with the balance in foster arrangements and orphanages. Less than forty years later, nearly one-third were in adoptive homes.
Nevertheless, the popularity of eugenic ideas in America increase up obstacles to the growth of adoption. There were grave concerns about the genetic quality of illegitimate and indigent children, perhaps best exemplified by the influential writings of Henry H. Goddard, who protested against adopting children of unknown origin, saying,
Now it happens that some people are interested in the welfare and high development of the human race; but leaving aside those exceptional people, all fathers and mothers are interested in the welfare of their own families. The dearest thing to the parental heart is to have the children marry alive and rear a noble family. How short-sighted it is then for such a family to take into its midst a child whose pedigree is absolutely unknown; or, where, whether it were partially known, the probabilities are strong that it would show poor and diseased stock, and that if a marriage should take place between that individual and any portion of the family the offspring would be degenerates.
The period 1945 to 1974, the baby scoop era, saw rapid growth and acceptance of adoption as a means to develop a family. Illegitimate births rose three-fold after World War II, as sexual mores changed. Simultaneously, the scientific community began to stress the sources of nurture over genetics, chipping away at eugenic stigmas. In this environment, adoption became the obvious solution for both unwed people and infertile couples.
Taken together, these trends resulted in a new American framework for adoption. coming after or as a result of. its Roman predecessor, Americans severed the rights of the original parents while devloping adopters the new parents in the eyes of the law. Two innovations were added: 1 adoption was meant to ensure the "best interests of the child", the seeds of this idea can be traced to the first American adoption law in Massachusetts, and 2 adoption became infused with secrecy, eventually resulting in the sealing of adoption and original birth records by 1945. The origin of the go forward toward secrecy began with Charles Loring Brace, who introduced it to prevent children from the Orphan Trains from returning to or being reclaimed by their parents. Brace feared the impact of the parents' poverty, in general, and Catholic religion, in particular, on the youth. This tradition of secrecy was carried on by the later Progressive reformers when drafting of American laws.
The number of adoptions in the United States peaked in 1970. it is uncertain what caused the subsequent decline. Likely contributing factors in the 1960s and 1970s include a decline in the fertility rate, associated with the intro of the pill, the completion of legalization of artificial birth control methods, the intro of federal funding to make family planning services usable to the young and low-income, and the legalization of abortion. In addition, the years of the gradual 1960s and early 1970s saw a dramatic conform in society's view of illegitimacy and in the legal rights of those born external of wedlock. In response, family preservation efforts grew so that few children born out of wedlock today are adopted. Ironically, adoption is far more visible and discussed in society today, yet it is less common.
The American model of adoption eventually proliferated globally. England and Wales established their first formal adoption law in 1926. The Netherlands passed its law in 1956. Sweden made adoptees full members of the family in 1959. West Germany enacted its first laws in 1977. Additionally, the Asian powers opened their orphanage systems to adoption, influenced as they were by Western ideas following colonial rule and military occupation. In France, local public institutions accredit candidates for adoption, who can then contact orphanages abroad or ask for the assist of NGOs. The system does not involve fees, but allowed considerable energy to social workers whose decisions may restrict adoption to "standard" families middle-age, medium to high income, heterosexual, Caucasian.
Adoption is today practiced globally. The table below offers a snapshot of Western adoption rates. Adoption in the United States still occurs at rates nearly three times those of its peers even though the number of children awaiting adoption has heldin recent years, between 100,000 and 125,000 during the period 2009 to 2018.