Family Matters: Secrecy and Disclosure in the History of Adoption (review)

In his 1998 book, Family Matters, Wayne Carp modestly claims he is not writing a history of American adoption. His is the story of a specific aspect of that institution: the creating, storing, and releasing of records. At the same time, he is too modest. Family Matters in fact tells a history of American adoption and, as well, a history of records, documents, and data in American history.

Thorough and systematic, Carp shows himself to be the “perfect historian.” His sources are impeccable, abundant, wide-ranging, and (almost always) germane to the argument he is making in the book. He is blessed with access to the records of the Children’s Home Society of Washington and with a keen eye for tidbits of information in unusual places. The book also displays the drawbacks of such a thoroughly conventional historical approach, lacking the verve of a theoretically-grounded argument and (sometimes) of a persuasive engagement with the material. The “balance” Carp is praised for in blurbs admirably removes his book from the ranks of propaganda and rhetoric where adoption too often finds itself. But “balance” can also be taken as a reflection of his caution about interpretive techniques, about cultural analysis, and about the subtle textual (and often inconsistent) meanings of the material he draws on.

There are several arguments in the book. Each is derived from Carp’s absorption in the data rather than from a theoretical perspective on kinship, family, child placement, or record-keeping. The first is an organizing argument about the oscillating and comparatively recent development of secrecy in American adoption; the second (and most important) is the significance of distinguishing between “secrecy” and “confidentiality” and among the several sets of records that are part of an adoptive transaction. The third, and least explicit, argument is that the history of American adoption is one of individuals—prominent and less prominent, who determine the evolution of core issues through the particular decisions they make. This last represents a classic social history element, but it is relatively subdued.

“The distinction between confidentiality and secrecy is crucial to understanding why natural i.e. birth parents and adult adoptees have been refused access to their adoption records” (p. 102). Not just splitting hairs, Carp reminds readers that confidentiality protects the privacy of individuals, whereas “secrecy” deprives a person of (presumably) valuable information about her or himself. The transmutation of confidentiality into secrecy—protection of clients into controlling client access to materials—propels the chronological narrative. Following the course of the transmutation, as well as reminding readers of the different kinds of records under consideration, together constitute the book’s most important achievement. Protesting “closed” records, participants in adoption are referring to Court records, documents kept with a state Department of Vital Statistics, and agency records. All are crucial to the American adoption process, a highly formalized transaction, as Carp recognizes. Some protestors ignore the differences among records, while others isolate one form of record from another. As the tracker of change, Carp does not blur these boundaries. Nor does he ask why others might.

Carp paints the story of the transmutation from confidentiality to secrecy onto a complex background: the changing role of social workers and the changing intellectual context of social work; the political and social upheavals of the 1960s—including civil rights movements and (because of the secrecy/disclosure issue) Watergate; the role of the media and other forms of publicity in the evolution of new practices and new policies among other phenomena.

Carp defines secrecy as the deprivation of information to someone who wants or needs it. In this respect, he is in line with members of the adoption reform movement (ARM), who also claim being deprived of information is equivalent to being trapped by a veil of secrecy. But in his solution, a liberal, humanistic, and balanced solution, he leaves many ARM members behind. Carp supports mutual consent and voluntary registries, where those who want...