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Introduction A Historical Overview of American Adoption Adoption touches almost every conceivable aspect of American society and culture. Adoption commands our attention because of the enormous number of people who have a direct, intimate connection to it—some experts put the number as high as six out of every ten Americans.1 Others estimate that about one million children in the United States live with adoptive parents and that 2 to 4 percent of American families include an adopted child.2 According to incomplete 1992 estimates, a total of 126,951 domestic adoptions occurred, 53,525 of them (42 percent) kinship or stepparent adoptions.3 Because of the dearth of healthy white infants for adoption, 18,477 adoptions in 2000 were intercountry adoptions, with slightly more than half of those children coming from Russia and China.4 In short, adoption is a ubiquitous social institution in American society, creating invisible relationships with biological and adoptive kin that touch far more people than we imagine. Any social organization that touches so many lives in such a profound way is bound to be complicated. Modern adoption is no exception. That is why it is so important to have a historical perspective on this significant social and legal institution. Newspapers, television news shows, and magazines frequently carry stories about various facets of adoption. Numerous online chat rooms and listservs focus on issues related to the subject. There is a reason for this prominence of adoption. While raising any family is inherently stressful, adoption is filled with additional tensions that are unique to the adoptive relationship. From the moment they decide they wish to adopt a child, couples begin to confront a series of challenges. First comes the problem of state regulation. A host of state laws govern every aspect of legal adoptions: who may adopt, who may be adopted, the persons who must consent to the adoption, the form the adoption petition must take, the notice of investigation and formal hearing of the adoption petition, the effect of the adoption decree, the procedure for appeal, the confidential nature of the hearings and records in adoption proceedings, the E. Wayne Carp issuance of new birth certificates, and adoption subsidy payments.5 Second, since World War II, the entire edifice of modern adoption has been enveloped in secrecy. Records of adoption proceedings are confidential, closed both to the public and to all the parties involved in the adoption: birth parents, adoptees, and adoptive parents. Third, in a nation that sanctifies blood kinship , adoptive families and adoptees are stigmatized because of their lack of biological relationship. With the onset of World War II, a revolution began in the world of adoption that only a historical perspective can explain.A few examples will illustrate this point. In reaction to the stigmatization, rationalization, and secrecy associated with adoption, the adoptee search movement emerged and began to demand the opening of adoption records. Opposing these adoptees, some birth mothers argued that they were promised secrecy when they relinquished their children for adoption and that abrogating that promise constituted an invasion of privacy.6 Since World War II, intercountry adoptions have increased tremendously , but critics have denounced such adoptions as a shameful admission of a nation’s inability to care for its own people, exploitative of its poorest class, destructive of children’s cultural and ethnic heritage, and riven by baby-selling scandals.7 Since the mid–nineteenth century, formal adoption—the legal termination of the birth parents’ (traditionally defined as a heterosexual couple) parental rights and the taking into the home of a child—has been the way Americans have created substitute families. But nontraditional families are becoming more common. Thirty percent of adoptive parents are single mothers,8 and gay and lesbian couples are increasingly winning the legal right to become adoptive parents.9 And as an outgrowth of in vitro fertilization technology, researchers have developed “embryo adoption,” where an infertile couple can adopt a donated frozen embryo, bringing into question the very meaning of the institution of adoption. The embryo is implanted into the uterus of the adopting mother, who then gestates and gives birth to the baby. Embryo adoption obviates the need for legal adoption because many state laws maintain that a woman who gives birth to a child is the biological parent.10 The growth of assisted reproductive technologies, along with almost every aspect of modern adoption—whether the state’s intervention into the family or removal of children from their country of origin—raises...

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