Strangers and Kin: The American Way of Adoption - Hardcover

Melosh, Barbara

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0674009126 ISBN 13: 9780674009127

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 2002

Synopsis

Strangers and Kin is the history of adoption, a quintessentially American institution in its buoyant optimism, generous spirit, and confidence in social engineering. An adoptive mother herself, Barbara Melosh tells the story of how married couples without children sought to care for and nurture other people's children as their own. It says much about the American experience of family across the twentieth century and our shifting notions of kinship and assimilation. Above all, it speaks of real people striving to make families out of strangers.

In the early twentieth century, childless adults confronted orphanages reluctant to entrust their wards to the kindness of strangers. By the 1930s, however, the recently formed profession of social work claimed a new expertise--the science and art of child placement--and adoption became codified in law. It flourished in the United States, reflecting our ethnic diversity, pluralist ideals, and pragmatic approach to family. Then, in the 1960s, as the sexual revolution reshaped marriage, motherhood, and women's work, adoption became a less attractive option and the number of adoptive families precipitously declined. Taking this history into the early twenty-first century, Melosh offers unflinching insight to the contemporary debates that swirl around adoption: the challenges to adoption secrecy; the ethics and geopolitics of international adoption; and the conflicts over transracial adoption.

This gripping history is told through poignant stories of individuals, garnered from case records long inaccessible to others, and captures the profound losses and joys that make adoption a lifelong process.

About this title

About the Author

Barbara Melosh is Professor of English and History at George Mason University.

Reviews

An adoptive mother herself, Melosh (English and history, George Mason Univ.) offers an insightful and well-researched history of adoption in the United States. Although she draws on a broad range of studies, much of her documentation and examples come from the records of the Children's Bureau of Delaware. She begins in the early 20th century, when adoption was rare; through the 1930s and 1940s, when social workers formalized many of the procedures for adoption; to the post-World War II period, when adoption reached its peak; and to the decline of adoption after the 1970s. The reader will learn of prevailing cultural and social science theories during each period. Final chapters deal with transracial and international adoption, how children have been told about their adoption across this time span, and the growth of an adoption rights movement and "open" adoptions. Unlike most of the recent literature on adoption (see "We Are Family: Books on Adoption," LJ 11/1/00), Strangers and Kin is a scholarly history, not a memoir or parenting book, somewhat similar to Adam Pertman's Adoption Nation: How the Adoption Revolution Is Transforming America, which focuses on the adoption boom of the last decade or so. Extensive notes and an index follow the text. Recommended for public and academic libraries. Kay Brodie, Chesapeake Coll., Wye Mills, MD
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Melosh brings her expertise as a historian and her experience as an adoptive mother to this probing look at adoption in the U.S. Melosh primarily uses records of the Children's Bureau of Delaware, focusing on 400 cases. Changes in the records reflect changes in the laws, policies, and attitudes shaping adoption practices over the years. Melosh describes how abandoned children have been handled, from being housed in orphanages and foster homes to being subjected to baby traffickers. Social attitudes toward unwed mothers and poverty figure prominently in the policies and practices of social workers, and class biases informed requirements that adoptive families have separate sleeping quarters for the child and a backyard or nearby park. Melosh examines the work of groups such as the Children's Aid Society and U.S. Children's Bureau in standardizing adoption practices, reflecting mores of the times, including efforts to match families intellectually and racially. The records include case studies, reports, and letters from prospective parents that offer telling descriptions of how attitudes on family and adoption have changed. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0674009126
• ISBN 13: 9780674009127
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336