Adoption is a process whereby a person assumes the parenting of another, usually a child, from that person's biological or legal parent or parents. Legal adoptions permanently transfer all rights and responsibilities, along with filiation, from the biological parents to the adoptive parents.
Unlike guardianship or other systems designed for the care of the young, adoption is intended to effect a permanent change in status and as such requires societal recognition, either through legal or religious sanction.
Historically, some societies have enacted specific laws governing adoption, while others used less formal means (notably contracts that specified inheritance rights and parental responsibilities without an accompanying transfer of filiation). Modern systems of adoption, arising in the 20th century, tend to be governed by comprehensive statutes and regulations.
History
Antiquity Adoption for the well-born
While the modern form of adoption emerged in the United States, forms of the practice appeared throughout history. The Code of Hammurabi, for example, details the rights of adopters and the responsibilities of adopted individuals at length. The practice of adoption in ancient Rome is well-documented in the Codex Justinianus.Code of HammurabiCodex Justinianus
Markedly different from the modern period, ancient adoption practices put emphasis on the political and economic interests of the adopter,Brodzinsky and Schecter (editors), The Psychology of Adoption, 1990, page 274 providing a legal tool that strengthened political ties between wealthy families and created male heirs to manage estates.H. David Kirk, Adoptive Kinship: A Modern Institution in Need of Reform, 1985, page xiv. The use of adoption by the aristocracy is well-documented: many of Rome's emperors were adopted sons. Adrogation was a kind of Roman adoption in which the person adopted consented to be adopted by another. Some adoptions were even posthumous.
Infant adoption during Antiquity appears rare.John Boswell, The Kindness of Strangers, 1998, page 74, 115 Abandoned children were often picked up for slaveryJohn Boswell, The Kindness of Strangers, 1998, page 62-63 and composed a significant percentage of the Empire's slave supply.John Boswell, The Kindness of Strangers, 1998, page 3 Roman legal records indicate that foundlings were occasionally taken in by families and raised as a son or daughter. Although not normally adopted under Roman Law, the children, called alumni, were reared in an arrangement similar to guardianship, being considered the property of the father who abandoned them.John Boswell, The Kindness of Strangers, 1998, page 53-95
Other ancient civilizations, notably India and China, used some form of adoption as well. Evidence suggests the goal of this practice was to ensure the continuity of cultural and religious practices; in contrast to the Western idea of extending family lines. In ancient India, adoption was conducted in a limited and highly ritualistic form, so that an adopter might have the necessary funerary rites performed by a son.Vinita Bhargava, Adoption in India: Policies and Experiences, 2005, page 45 China had a similar idea of adoption with males adopted solely to perform the duties of ancestor worship.W. Menski, Comparative Law in a Global Context: The Legal Systems of Asia and Africa, 2000
The practice of adopting the children of family members and close friends was common among the cultures of Polynesia including Hawaii where the custom was referred to as hānai.
Middle Ages to modern period Adoption and commoners
The nobility of the Germanic, Celtic, and Slavic cultures that dominated Europe after the decline of the Roman Empire denounced the practice of adoption. In medieval society, bloodlines were paramount; a ruling dynasty lacking a "natural-born" heir apparent was replaced, a stark contrast to Roman traditions. The evolution of European law reflects this aversion to adoption. English common law, for instance, did not permit adoption since it contradicted the customary rules of inheritance. In the same vein, France's Napoleonic Code made adoption difficult, requiring adopters to be over the age of 50, sterile, older than the adopted person by at least 15 years, and to have fostered the adoptee for at least six years.Brodzinsky and Schecter (editors), The Psychology of Adoption, 1990, page 274
Some adoptions continued to occur, however, but became informal, based on ad hoc contracts. For example, in the year 737, in a charter from the town of Lucca, three adoptees were made heirs to an estate. Like other contemporary arrangements, the agreement stressed the responsibility of the adopted rather than adopter, focusing on the fact that, under the contract, the adoptive father was meant to be cared for in his old age; an idea that is similar to the conceptions of adoption under Roman law.John Boswell, The Kindness of Strangers, 1998, page 224
Europe's cultural makeover marked a period of significant innovation for adoption. Without support from the nobility, the practice gradually shifted toward abandoned children. Abandonment levels rose with the fall of the empire and many of the foundlings were left on the doorstep of the Church.John Boswell, The Kindness of Strangers, 1998, page 184 Initially, the clergy reacted by drafting rules to govern the exposing, selling, and rearing of abandoned children. The Church's innovation, however, was the practice of oblation, whereby children were dedicated to lay life within monastic institutions and reared within a monastery. This created the first system in European history in which abandoned children did not have legal, social, or moral disadvantages. As a result, many of Europe's abandoned and orphaned children became alumni of the Church, which in turn took the role of adopter. Oblation marks the beginning of a shift toward institutionalization, eventually bringing about the establishment of the foundling hospital and orphanage.
As the idea of institutional care gained acceptance, formal rules appeared about how to place children into families: boys could become apprenticed to an artisan and girls might be married off under the institution's authority.John Boswell, The Kindness of Strangers, 1998, page 420 Institutions informally adopted out children as well, a mechanism treated as a way to obtain cheap labor, demonstrated by the fact that when the adopted died their bodies were returned by the family to the institution for burial.John Boswell, The Kindness of Strangers, 1998, page 421.
This system of apprenticeship and informal adoption extended into the 19th century, today seen as a transitional phase for adoption history. Under the direction of social welfare activists, orphan asylums began to promote adoptions based on sentiment rather than work; children were placed out under agreements to provide care for them as family members instead of under contracts for apprenticeship.Wayne Carp, Editor, Adoption in America, article by: Susan Porter, A Good Home, A Good Home, page 29. The growth of this model is believed to have contributed to the enactment of the first modern adoption law in 1851 by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, unique in that it codified the ideal of the "best interests of the child".Wayne Carp, Editor, Adoption in America, article by: Susan Porter, A Good Home, A Good Home, page 37.Ellen Herman, Adoption History Project, University of Oregon, Topic: Timeline
Despite its intent, though, in practice, the system operated much the same as earlier incarnations. The experience of the Boston Female Asylum (BFA) is a good example, which had up to 30% of its charges adopted out by 1888.Wayne Carp, Editor, Adoption in America, article by: Susan Porter, A Good Home, A Good Home, page 44. Officials of the BFA noted that, although the asylum promoted otherwise, adoptive parents did not distinguish between indenture and adoption: "We believe," the asylum officials said, "that often, when children of a younger age are taken to be adopted, the adoption is only another name for service."Wayne Carp, Editor, Adoption in America, article by: Susan Porter, A Good Home, A Good Home, page 45.
Modern period Adopting to create a family
The next stage of adoption's evolution fell to the emerging nation of the United States. Rapid immigration and the American Civil War resulted in unprecedented overcrowding of orphanages and foundling homes in the mid-nineteenth century. Charles Loring Brace, a Protestant minister, became appalled by the legions of homeless waifs roaming the streets of New York City. Brace considered the abandoned youth, particularly Catholics, to be the most dangerous element challenging the city's order.Ellen Herman, Adoption History Project, University of Oregon, Topic: Charles Loring Brace, The Dangerous Classes of New York and Twenty Years' Work Among Them, 1872Charles Loring Brace, The Dangerous Classes of New York and Twenty Years' Work Among Them, 1872
His solution was outlined in The Best Method of Disposing of Our Pauper and Vagrant Children (1859), which started the Orphan Train movement. The orphan trains eventually shipped an estimated 200,000 children from the urban centers of the East to the nation's rural regions.Ellen Herman, Adoption History Project, University of Oregon, Topic: Charles Loring Brace The children were generally indentured, rather than adopted, to families who took them in.Stephen O'Connor, Orphan Trains, Page 95
As in times past, some children were raised as members of the family while others were used as farm laborers and household servants. The sheer size of the displacement—one of the largest migrations of children in history—and the degree of exploitation that occurred, gave rise to new agencies and a series of laws that promoted adoption arrangements rather than indenture. The hallmark of the period is Minnesota's adoption law of 1917, which mandated investigation of all placements and limited record access to those involved in the adoption.Wayne Carp (Editor), E. Adoption in America: Historical Perspectives, page 160Ellen Herman, Adoption History Project, University of Oregon, Topic: Home Studies
During the same period, the Progressive movement swept the United States with a critical goal of ending the prevailing orphanage system. The culmination of such efforts came with the First White House Conference on the Care of Dependent Children called by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1909,M. Gottlieb, The Foundling, 2001, page 76 where it was declared that the nuclear family represented "the highest and finest product of civilization" and was best able to serve as primary caretaker for the abandoned and orphaned.E. Wayne Carp (Editor), Adoption in America: Historical Perspectives, page 108Ellen Herman, Adoption History Project, University of Oregon, Topic: Placing Out As late as 1923, only two percent of children without parental care were in adoptive homes, with the balance in foster arrangements and orphanages. Less than forty years later, nearly one-third were in adoptive homes.Bernadine Barr, "Spare Children, 1900–1945: Inmates of Orphanages as Subjects of Research in Medicine and in the Social Sciences in America" (PhD diss., Stanford University, 1992), p. 32, figure 2.2.
Nevertheless, the popularity of eugenic ideas in America put up obstacles to the growth of adoption.Ellen Herman, Adoption History Project, University of Oregon, Topic: Eugenics Lawrence and Pat Starkey, Child Welfare and Social Action in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, 2001 page 223 There were grave concerns about the genetic quality of illegitimate and indigent children, perhaps best exemplified by the influential writings of Henry H. Goddard, who protested against adopting children of unknown origin, saying,