Adoption: Cultures of Ambivalence Past, Present—and Future?

Adoption is a familiar and well-publicized topic today. However, despite attention in the media, courts, and schools, and regardless of the success of advocacy rights efforts, adoption remains culturally speaking second choice and second best, very much shaped by views of the biogenetic family as the norm, such that the predominant attitude toward adoption, as evidenced in American literature and culture, is ambivalence. But this essay envisions a more tolerant future for adoption as family norms become more flexible.