As Long as Parents Can Accept Them: Medical Disclosure, Risk, and Disability in Twentieth-Century American Adoption Practice

summary:

This article reviews adoption debates about the disclosure of children’s medical history in the twentieth century, noting shifts in the prescription of how much and what to tell adoptive applicants. I look at how adoption professional debates throughout the twentieth century around the disclosure of a child’s medical history reveal the ways in which these professionals tried to deal with issues of predictability, risk, adoptability, and acceptability when it came to the persistent question of disability in adoptive family making. I consider how this management is similar to and different from histories of reproduction. I argue that as child eligibility gradually expanded to include children labeled disabled, and as adoption moved from a being a parent-centered practice to a child-centered one, professionals more intensely negotiated the management and communication of disability risk as a way to both mitigate the possibility of a failed placement and to facilitate a successful one.