ADOPTION

Adoption is an institution as old as civilization. It may be defined as a social transaction through which a person belonging by birth to one family or kinship group acquires, through legal means, a new family or new kinship ties.

Historical Background

In its broadest sense, the term "adoption" may be used to describe the taking in, nurturing, and rearing of biologically unrelated children in need of protection and care. The terms "adoption" and "fostering" are used interchangeably in some countries, but in the United States adoption, in contrast to temporary foster arrangements, is a legal and permanent transaction.

Shaped by the laws and cultures of each society, adoption was seldom concerned primarily with rescuing abandoned children but rather with the transfer of a child or adult from one set of parents to another in order to ensure property rights or family continuity. Yet the perception of adoption has always wavered between the legal fiction that a child is reborn into the adoptive family and the folk belief that blood is thicker than water. The Egyptians and the Hebrews practiced adoption; the Old Testament chronicles the story of Moses, who was adopted by the daughter of the Pharaoh but later returned to his people and led them out of bondage.

Roman law, the foundation of institutionalized legal adoption, was concerned primarily with property and inheritance rights but permitted birth parents to reclaim their abandoned children if they paid expenses incurred by the adoptive parents (Boswell). The Code of Napoleon, enacted in 1804, which was the beginning of modern adoption legislation and is still a major influence in French and Latin American law, allowed adoptees to have knowledge of family background and the option to retain their original name. The modern French government social security system provides for both "simple" (open) adoption and "complete" (closed) adoption.

English common law, the basis for U.S. law, stressed blood lineage and did not legalize stranger adoption, the total legal transfer of the child to nonrelatives, until 1926. Until then, a form of apprenticeship existed in which children lived with and worked under the master training them. Orphans were sent as indentured servants to the American colonies to help with the labor shortage. Economic considerations superseded any concern for the welfare of the individual child.

From the mid-nineteenth century until the beginning of the twentieth century, New York City street urchins were routinely rounded up and loaded into boxcars on "orphan trains" that carried them to "God-fearing" farm families in the West. There were no legal contracts or protections for the children who, once severed from their families, were regarded as orphans and forced into a life of domestic or manual labor thousands of miles away.

The transition from apprenticeship and indenture to present-day adoption was gradual in the United States, but by 1929 every state had some form of statutory adoption. Licensed adoption agencies established in the 1920s investigated prospective adoptive families to try to ensure the wellbeing of adopted children. Adoption records were open, but in the late 1930s a few states began to close them.

After World War II, U.S. adoption shifted its focus from the needs of homeless children to the desires of infertile couples to adopt healthy white newborns. Adoption became the means for the childless to create a family. As state after state closed their records, the adopted child's birth certificate was sealed and replaced with an amended document that named the adoptive parents as the birth parents. The original intent was to spare the child the stigma of illegitimacy, not to cut him or her off from the birth heritage. Over the years the rationale of protecting the confidentiality of the birth mother was added, but an even greater concern was the protection of the adoptive parents, who feared the birth parents might reappear to reclaim their biological, though no longer legal, child. By 2003 all but six states had sealed records.

Adoption Practice in the United States in the Mid- to Late Twentieth Century

The social upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s had a major impact on adoption practice. The legalization of abortion, along with the widespread use of contraceptives and the increased tendency of unmarried mothers to keep their children, led to a shortage of white, adoptable newborns. At the same time, there was a rise in infertility among couples who delayed having children.

The states regulate adoption practice; most states permit both independent and agency adoption. As the shortage of white, adoptable babies grew more acute, adoption became a commercial enterprise. Lawyers and "baby brokers" took over most infant adoptions from the agencies, frequently using newspaper advertisements to entice pregnant women and couples to give up their children with offers of money and other benefits.

Without regulation by the child-welfare field, there is little protection for the baby and both sets of parents. Prospective adopters may spend a great deal of money for medical, living, and legal costs only to have the pregnant woman change her mind and keep the baby or choose another family. Conversely, a birth mother who has been promised open communication with the adoptive parents and the child may find herself cut off once the adoption is finalized. Or the birth mother may break her promise to stay in touch with the family if she finds visits too difficult to continue. Safeguards for the baby are lacking when the investigation of the family by an agency occurs after the infant is already in the home and petition has been filed for legal adoption.

Special Needs and Biracial Adoption

In the 1990s adoption agencies, both private and public, focused primarily on finding families for "hard to place" children, a category that includes older children, sibling groups, disabled children, and biracial or minority-racial children. The U.S. Department of Human Services estimated in 1998 that 520,000 children lived in foster care in the United States, a sizable increase from 1992. About 110,000 children were reported to be legally free for adoption. Many child-welfare specialists believe that if sufficient effort were expended, homes could be found for them. Some states offer subsidies to families who are willing to adopt and raise disabled children. Single persons and gay and lesbian couples, not generally approved for newborn babies, are often considered acceptable for placement of children who otherwise might not find permanent homes. This remains a controversial issue in some parts of the United States, as a number of individuals and groups question the ability of these nontraditional adoptive parents to raise healthy, normal children.

In 1972 the National Association of Black Social Workers (NABSW) launched a campaign against allowing white families to adopt black or biracial children. The NABSW called this practice genocide. They maintained that, with enough effort and focus, black families could be found for these children. Proponents of interracial adoption argue that the benefits children gain from having permanent and loving homes outweigh the social and psychological difficulties they may face because of society's prejudice toward mixed-race families. Mental-health professionals generally agree that permanency, whether with legal adoption or long-term placement, is a paramount need for all children; they believe that growing up without roots and a stable home is a primary cause of lifelong problems. Many child advocates prefer that a child be placed with his or her extended family or within his or her community of race or religion, but accept the fact that biracial placement is preferable to no permanency as long as the families are sensitive to biracial issues and seek integrated communities in which to raise their children.

Adoption of Native American children is a related and equally controversial issue. Many Native Americans believe that adoption by Caucasians robs them of their children and robs the children of their native heritage. When Congress enacted the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978, giving tribal courts exclusive jurisdiction over adoption proceedings involving Native American children, each tribe developed its own guidelines concerning the Native American lineage a child needed to qualify as a member. Children identified as members of a particular tribe must be placed for adoption with a family of that tribe.

Intercountry Adoption

The shortage of desirable adoptable babies in the United States has led many who wish to adopt to seek children in other countries. The first international adoptions generally involved Amerasian children, that is, those fathered by GIs in Japan during and after World War II, in Korea during and after the Korean War, and in Vietnam during the U.S. involvement there. These adoptions were first sponsored by church groups and then by licensed adoption agencies (Lifton, 1994).

Since the middle of the 1980s, international adoption has shifted from the rescue of war orphans to the legal or (in some cases) illegal trafficking of children. Most of the children are drawn from Korea, China, Russia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America because these countries have made the emigration of children more accessible. Human-rights organizations report that many children are taken away from their families without formal relinquishments (Mantaphon). Studies of intercountry adoptions suggest that children cut off from their own culture and transplanted into a totally foreign environment may be more vulnerable to emotional problems (Verhulst et al., 1990a, 1990b). Many have difficulty in attaching to their new family or feeling part of the community, where they may not find full acceptance because of racial differences.

The 1989 U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child addressed the rights of the adopted child along with the rights of all children. According to the convention, each child has a right to receive a name, to acquire a nationality, and, as far as possible, to know and be cared for by his or her parents. A child placed outside of his or her family of origin has the right to maintain contact with his or her birth parents.

The Sealed-Record Controversy

For over half a century, closed adoption (i.e., with sealed records) was viewed by U.S. society as beneficial to everyone: The homeless child born out of wedlock was given a second chance in a new family, the infertile couple was able to become "real" parents, and the birth mother was free to go on with her life as if she had never had a child. Yet research conducted since the mid-1970s has consistently indicated that the secrecy in the closed-adoption system can often create lifelong psychological problems for everyone involved (Sorosky et al.).

Although adopted children comprise less than 5 percent of the population, the percentage of adopted children in mental-health facilities and residential treatment centers has been reported to be as high as 30 percent. Some researchers have found that adopted children score lower in academic achievement and social skills than the nonadopted, have a high incidence of learning disabilities, and display behavior characterized as impulsive, aggressive, and antisocial (Schecter et al.; Brodzinsky and Schecter; Brinich). Psychotherapists have postulated that an adopted child's perception of rejection and abandonment by the birth mother can cause low self-esteem. Ignorance of origins ("genealogical bewilderment") can lead a child to rebellion against the adoptive parents and society, and eventually to delinquency (Wellisch; Sants; Kirschner and Nagel).

Women who relinquish their infants often suffer a profound loss and experience lifelong difficulties. Like the child, they are encouraged by society to deny and repress the feelings that accompanied giving up their children for adoption. Some studies indicate that these women never forgive themselves. Some may feel they have no right to a happy marriage and other children, while others may try without success to have other children as replacements for the one that they relinquished (Deykin et al.; Millen and Roll).

The closed-adoption system also encourages adoptive parents to deny their grief at not being able to produce a child that will carry on their lineage. They are expected to conceal their unresolved conflicts over infertility as they pretend that adopting a child is the same as giving birth (Blum). Adoptive parents who are able to acknowledge the differences between an adoptive and birth family, instead of denying them, have been shown to have better communication and closer relationships with their children (Kirk).

The closed-adoption system tends to pit the right of the adopted child to know the identity of his or her birth parents against the right of the birth mother to confidentiality, and against the right of the adoptive parents to maintain exclusive parental roles. The National Council for Adoption (NCFA), a lobbying organization representing traditional adoption agencies, contends that sealed records protect the privacy of the birth mother, who was promised confidentiality (Caplan). A national birth-parent group, Concerned United Birth Parents (CUB), argues that the majority of birth mothers did not ask for confidentiality and in fact want to have knowledge of or some contact with the children they gave birth to. Until 1976, birth fathers had no rights, only responsibilities. At that time, the U.S. Supreme Court gave birth fathers equal right of consent with birth mothers in adoption arrangements.

Search and Reunion

One of the effects of the civil-rights movement of the 1960s was the emergence of an adoption-reform movement led by adult adoptees. Its rallying cry was that the civil rights of the adopted had been violated when their original birth records were sealed, denying them access to information available to nonadopted people. Adoption support groups have been established across the United States to provide emotional support, lobby for open records, and facilitate the search for birth parents.

Some states, rather than open their previously sealed adoption records, have established "reunion registries" that will connect adoptees with their birth parents if both register and indicate their mutual desire. In other jurisdictions, there is an intermediary system, in which the court, or an adoption agency is empowered to search for the birth mother if an adoptee requests a reunion. The birth mother retains the right of refusal of contact. Adopted activists believe that both registries and intermediaries violate their right to information and the ability to make direct contact with birth relatives.

More adopted women search for their birth parents than adopted men. The quest to find the birth mother is usually stronger than the need to locate the birth father. Adoptees tend to begin their search when they become aware of formerly repressed feelings that often surface at times of life transitions, such as impending marriage, parenthood, or death of adoptive parents (Sorosky et al.; Lifton, 1988).

The secrets inherent in the closed-adoption system make reunion difficult for both birth mother and adoptee. To return to each other is to return to their earlier traumas. The adoptee experiences grief, anger, and divided loyalties; the birth mother relives the unresolved sadness, guilt, and humiliation she felt at the time of pregnancy, birth, and relinquishment (Lifton, 1994).

No matter whom adoptees find—a loving, a withholding, or even a deceased parent—the opportunity to heal arises when they can integrate the past with the present. Adoptees' relationship to their adoptive parents is usually strengthened once they have resolved their identity issues. Reality replaces their fantasies, and they are able to recognize the important role of their adoptive parents (Gonyo and Watson; Sorosky et al.; Lifton, 1994). Birth parents also enter a healing process after reunion because they have the opportunity to explain to their child why they relinquished him or her and to forgive themselves and be forgiven (Gediman and Brown).

Some adoptees and birth parents develop close, ongoing kinship ties. Others maintain a more distant relationship that may involve little more than exchanging holiday cards. A few, after one or two meetings, close off contact. Whatever follows the reunion, however, the individuals involved have been able to take control of this important aspect of their lives.

Open versus Closed Adoption

Since the early 1980s there has been a trend toward openness in adoption. In the placement of older children, good adoption practice dictates providing each child with a "life book" that has information and photographs about their history. Often these children are encouraged to maintain contact with the previous foster mother and with relatives, such as grandparents, in the extended birth family.

In infant adoption, a birth mother may choose the parents for her baby, but completely open arrangements—where there is an ongoing relationship between birth and adoptive families—are still rare. Semi-open adoption is more usual. It may vary from little more than a single meeting between the birth mother and adoptive parents, with no disclosure of names or discussion of future contact, to annual exchanges of photographs and information and the promise of more contact when the child grows up (McRoy et al.). Professionals describe open-adoption arrangements as a process in which all parties move at their own pace over the years (Silber and Dorner).

Opponents of open adoption argue that it makes it difficult for the birth mother to accept that she has given up a child, that it hinders adoptive parents in forming secure ties with an infant, and that it deprives the child of a sense of permanence with the adoptive family (Caplan). Proponents of open adoption believe that birth mothers who take an active part in the placement process can resolve their guilt and grief about giving up their baby; that it obviates adoptive parents' fantasies about the child's background because they have facts; that it permits adopted children to know that their birth parents are real persons, not ghosts; and that they were not given up because there was something wrong with them (Silber and Dorner).

Court Battles between Birth Parents and Adoptive Parents

Since the mid-1980s the number of contested adoption cases has multiplied. Many have been brought by birth mothers (and increasingly by birth fathers) who feel that they did not receive proper counseling or enough time, or were coerced into signing relinquishment papers. When the birth mother seeks the return of the child, lawyers for the adoptive parents may delay action in order to prolong the child's presence in the adoptive home. The longer that period, the stronger the argument that it is in the best interests of the child to stay in the only home he or she has ever known. Adoptive-parent lobbies seek to limit the time that birth parents may have to revoke their consent or relinquishment. There is also a strong movement to develop uniform state laws that would limit the problems of inter-state placements and decrease the legal conflicts of different jurisdictions.

Conclusion

The adoption field is betwixt and between stasis and change. The records remain sealed in most states, but the traditional closed system is gradually giving way to a more open one that allows birth parents and adoptive parents to meet and even maintain contact over the years for the sake of the child.

Adoption practice is no longer exclusively concerned with healthy white newborns. Adoptees include transracial and biracial children and older handicapped children with special needs. Standards for adoptive parents, once modeled on white, middle-class, heterosexual couples, have changed to include single parents, homosexual couples, and minority and biracial couples of any age.

Uniform state laws are necessary to regulate adoption practice, but there is much disagreement about the relative importance of birth-parent versus adoptive parent rights. The term "best interests of the child" has come to mean whatever people want it to mean. Prospective adoptive parents and birth parents find themselves in adversarial roles where their own best interests may conflict with the best interests of the child.

Adoption-reform activists believe it is in the best interests of the child to have adoption practice limited to nonprofit agencies and child-welfare specialists. They stress the need for adequate legal and psychological counseling for both birth parents and adoptive parents before and after the birth of the baby and especially before finalizing relinquishment plans.

Reformers would like to see adoption records unsealed so that adopted children can integrate their dual heritage and avoid many of the psychological problems that are caused by secrecy. They advocate a nationwide program that would promote sex education, pregnancy prevention, family preservation, and legally enforced open-adoption arrangements when relinquishment and placement are necessary.

POSTSCRIPT

Twenty-First Century Adoption Practices

During the late 1990s, laws erasing the secrecy and anonymity of the last century of adoption practice have been enacted in a number of states. Adopted adults are gaining access to their original birth certificates through legislative acts and voter referendums, despite the fact that there is still resistance to opening adoption records in most states. However, even in states where the records remain sealed, there has been an increase in reunions between birth parents and adoptees relinquished in infancy or childhood.

The Internet has revolutionized the adoption field. Searches for identifying information have become easier than in previous decades due to the nation's fascination with genealogy and the growth of databases on the Internet. Potential adopters and pregnant women considering relinquishment are also using the Internet to make contact. Families with special-needs children can turn to a variety of websites, help lines, chat rooms, and referral sources. There are also special websites on international adoption that lay out the unique problems one can encounter in the various countries where children are available.

The lucrative business of adoption in the marketplace continues to grow as attorneys, private agencies, and intermediaries use the Internet for networking in both domestic and international placements. International adoption is increasing as the number of adoptable healthy newborn Caucasian infants born in the United States decreases. Most women, married or single, choose to raise, rather than relinquish, their babies. Potential adoptive couples fear that even those women who initially choose to relinquish their babies will change their minds, or that the birth father will challenge the legality of the adoption. The publicity around and pain caused by contested adoptions has resulted in the introduction of new codes and procedures in many states to act as safeguards.

At the same time, open arrangements between birth and adoptive families in the United States are becoming the accepted practice with both infants and older children. The degree of openness varies and may be modified over the years, but all parties generally have identifying knowledge of each other. Agencies and other adoption practitioners can no longer offer guarantees of confidentiality or anonymity. In fact, many agencies offer post-adoption services in which they act as intermediaries in reunions, conduct support groups, and do counseling with all members of the triad.

By the beginning of the twenty-first century, private and public adoption agencies served different communities. The private agency or practitioner deals primarily with Caucasian infants born in the United States and with international adoptions of infants and toddlers. Public agencies, connected to the welfare system, place special-needs children. These children are usually older, part of a sibling group, non-Caucasian, racially mixed, or with medical or developmental problems. The federal government has enacted special programs, with financial incentives to local public agencies, to increase the numbers of children moving from foster home placement into permanent or adoptive homes. In both public and private agencies, there is greater acceptance of adoptions by single persons and gay and lesbian couples.

Those couples or individuals who prefer international adoption discover that the availability of children and the cost involved shifts from country to country, depending on political, economic, and legal issues. Regulations in the United States as well as in the country of the child's origin and in international umbrella agencies all contribute to the complicated procedures facing those applying to adopt. Nevertheless, a growing number of children are adopted through these routes. Those who choose international adoption to avoid the risk of legal challenges or interference from the birth parents overlook the psychological need of adopted children to know their heritage. Many young adults adopted from Asia, Europe, and South America have returned to seek their biological families in an attempt to resolve their ethnic, racial, and cultural identity.

Another revolutionary development in the adoption field is its connection with alternative reproductive techniques. Adult children who have learned they were conceived by donor insemination have organized a world wide movement, still small in number, to gain the right to have identifying information about their fathers. They refer to themselves as "in utero adoptees." Their initiative has brought about a growing acceptance of the right to access of identifying information in both egg and sperm donations. The American Adoption Congress recognizes donor offspring as adoptees, and advocates opening their records, as well as promoting future openness in all alternative family building methods. Embryo adoptions are being seriously considered as an alternative, due to the surplus of fertilized embryos no longer needed by couples. Rather than defrost and destroy them, a few agencies are encouraging donation of these embryos to infertile couples.

Researchers have not yet determined what the psychological effects will be on children born to parents to whom they are not genetically related when they learn of their high tech origins. One thing is certain: that they will ask the same question that legions of adoptees since Oedipus have struggled with: "Who Am I?"

annette baran

betty jean lifton (1995)

revised by authors

SEE ALSO: Abortion; Children: History of Childhood; Embryo and Fetus: Religious Perspectives; Infanticide; International Health; Natural Law; Sexism

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Baran, Annette, and Pannor, Reuben. 1990. "Open Adoption." In The Psychology of Adoption, ed. by David M. Brodzinsky and Marshall D. Schechter. New York: Oxford University Press.

Blum, Harold P. 1983. "Adoptive Parents: Generative Conflict and Generational Continuity." Psychoanalytic Study of the Child 38: 141–163.

Boswell, John. 1988. The Kindness of Strangers: The Abandonment of Children in Western Europe from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance. New York: Pantheon.

Bowlby, John. 1982. Attachment and Loss, 2nd edition. New York: Basic Books.

Brinich, Paul. 1989. "Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy with Adoptees." Paper presented at the 36th Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, New York, October 13.

Brodzinsky, David M., and Schechter, Marshall D. 1992. Being Adopted: The Lifelong Search for Self. New York: Doubleday.

Caplan, Lincoln. 1990. An Open Adoption. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux.

Deykin, Eva Y; Campbell, Lee; and Patti, Patricia. 1984. "The Postadoption Experience of Surrendering Parents." American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 54(2): 271–280.

Erikson, Erik H. 1980. Identity and the Life Cycle: Selected Papers. New York: W. W. Norton.

Gaylord, C. Lester. 1976. "The Adoptive Child's Right to Know." Case and Comment 81(2): 38–44.

Gediman, Judith S., and Brown, Linda P. 1989. Birthbond: Reunions between Birthparents and Adoptees—What Happens After. Far Hills, NJ: New Horizon.

Gonyo, Barbara, and Watson, Kenneth W. 1988. "Searching in Adoption." Public Welfare 46(1): 14–22.

Kingsolver, Barbara. 1993. Pigs in Heaven: A Novel. New York: HarperCollins.

Kirk, H. David. 1964. Shared Fate: A Theory of Adoption and Mental Health. New York: Free Press.

Kirschner, David, and Nagel, Linda S. 1988. "Antisocial Behavior in Adoptees: Patterns and Dynamics." Child and Adolescent Social Work 5(4): 300–314.

Lifton, Betty Jean. 1988. Lost and Found: The Adoption Experience. New York: Perennial Library.

Lifton, Betty Jean. 1994. Journey of the Adopted Self: A Quest for Wholeness. New York: Basic Books.

Mantaphon, Withit. 1993. "Sale of Children: Report." Geneva: U.N. Economic and Social Council.

McKenzie, Judith K. 1993. "Adoption of Children with Special Needs." Future of Children 3(1): 62–76.

McRoy, Ruth G.; Grotevant, Harold D.; and White, Kerry L. 1988. Openness in Adoption: New Practices, New Issues. New York: Praeger.

Millen, Leverett, and Roll, Samuel. 1985. "Solomon's Mothers: A Special Case of Pathological Bereavement." American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 55(3): 411–418.

Rynearson, Edward K. 1982. "Relinquishment and Its Maternal Complications: A Preliminary Study." American Journal of Psychiatry 139(3): 338–340.

Sants, H. J. 1964. "Genealogical Bewilderment in Children with Substitute Parents." British Journal of Medical Psychology 37: 131–141.

Schecter, Marshall D.; Carlson, Paul V.; Simmons, James Q., III; and Work, Henry H. 1964. "Emotional Problems in the Adoptee." Archives of General Psychiatry 10(2): 109–118.

Silber, Kathleen, and Dorner, Patricia. 1990. Children of Open Adoption and Their Families. San Antonio, TX: Corona.

Sorosky, Arthur D.; Baran, Annette; and Pannor, Reuben. 1978. The Adoption Triangle: The Effects of the Sealed Record on Adoptees, Birth Parents, and Adoptive Parents. New York: Anchor.

Verhulst, Frank C.; Althaus, Monika; and Versluis-Den Bieman, Herma J. 1990a. "Problem Behavior in International Adoptees: I. An Epidemiological Study." Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry 29(1): 94–103.

Verhulst, Frank C.; Althaus, Monika; and Versluis-Den Bieman, Herma J. 1990b. "Problem Behavior in International Adoptees:II. Age of Placement." Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry 29(1): 104–111.

Wellisch, Erich. 1952. "Children without Genealogy: A Problem of Adoption." Mental Health 13: 41–42.

Winnicott, Donald W. 1955. "Adopted Children in Adolescence." In Report of the Residential Conference Held at Roehampton, July 8–11, 1953, pp. 33–41. Roehampton, Eng.: A. Rampton.