HIST 365, Winter 2004, Week 6
Outline and Key Terms
Historical Adoption: Legal and Social Arrangements
1. Background to the Research Project
2. Adoption: The Basics
3. Adoption: Contemporary and Historical Statistics
4. Adoption: Why does it matter?
6. Adoption as a Legal Operation
Today, five million Americans are adoptees, 2-4 percent of all families
have adopted, and 2.5 percent of all children under 18 are adopted.
relative, non-relative, and informal adoptions
1970: 20th-century adoptions peak at 175,000 annually
early America: adoption by will, indenture, private legislation
Massachusetts Adoption of Children Act, 1851
modern regulatory machinery or “safeguards”: record-keeping,
investigation, supervision, probation
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