How long has adoption existed?

Question

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Answer 1

Adoption has existed for as long as babies have been born and mothers have not be able to take care of them.

If you mean formal adoption though agencies, I am pretty sure that that started around the 1900's

Answer 2

isn't the answer something like, since the beginning of time?

i'm not a biblical junkie at all, but if you go with that account, then forever.

in my world, the answer is simply, "too effing long".

:)

Answer 3

In it's current 'as if born to', closed, stranger adoption?  Since the 1930s.

Before that, children were kept in the family.   There was no post-WW II consumerist society to aspire to--house, car, baby!  Family was valued more than posessions or social status.  People who couldn't have children accepted their fate, and moved on.

Also, the job of social worker didn't exist, creating a perfect storm for what we now know as the miracle of adoption. Not everything that is modern is better, adoption is a glaring example of this.

Answer 4

Over 2,000 years ago, many adoptions in Greece were of adult males.  For example:

"The First Emperor (Princeps) of Rome was Augustus.

Whether you date the reign of Augustus to Actium (31 B.C.) or the first constitutional settlement and the adoption of the name Augustus, Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus (aka the Emperor Augustus) ruled Rome until his death in 14 A.D.

Augustus, or Octavius (as he was called until his adoption by Caesar) was born 23 September, 63 BC. In 48 B.C. he was elected to the pontifical college. In 45 he followed Caesar to Spain. In 43 or 42 B.C., Caesar named Octavius Master of Horse. In March 44 B.C. when his great-uncle, Julius Caesar, died, Octavius discovered he had been adopted."

Probably a couple thousand years before then, too.

And of course, we all know the story of Moses...who returned to his peeps not too long after finding out he was adopted!  = )

ETA: "he grew and was brought to Pharaoh's daughter and became her son, as she had no other children at the time of her adoption of Moses." Not b/c his natural mom was "unable to care for him", but rather b/c the Pharaoh had ordered all Hebrew males born to be killed (drowned). His mother gave him up to save his life.  

I'm not sure about the "legal" part of it, in as much as what was considered legal under Pharaoh's rule.  Certainly no written records??

"The concept of adoption was not legally recognized in the US until the 1850's, with the inception of the first adoption statutes. While transfers of children to substitute parents had occurred informally since American colonial times, adoption statutes legitimized the informal adoptive arrangements which previously existed.

During the early years of American society, no formal procedures existed for recording births or name changes. Very often these informal placements were economically motivated. Farm families had great need for child labor. The advent of industrialization in the US resulted in massive immigration to major cites where families often were unable to support or care for their children. Informal transfers of these children to other families, by either the indigent parents or the charitable institutions where parents sometimes left their children, promoted these types of placements. This situation provided the impetus for the orphan trains between 1854 and 1929.

Children were often treaded as chattel with adoption being little more than a transfer of title. As the number of informal adoptions rose, the need became greater to have a formal process for adoptions. In 1851 Massachusetts enacted the first adoption statute; required judicial approval, consent of the child's parent or guardian, and a finding that the prospective adoptive family was of sufficient ability to raise the child.

Between 1850 and 1930, statutes may have referred to consent, but rarely set parameters regarding when or how consents were taken. Virtually no safeguards existed for ensuring that a consent was informed and voluntary. By 1917 Minnesota required the agency or state welfare department to investigate and make recommendations to the court. While early adoption statutes required a finding of suitability on the part of the prospective adoption home, this requirement was more form than substance. Finally, while early adoption statutes created a defined relationship between the adoptive parents and the adopted child, the impact on the ties to the biological parents was unclear. For instance, under some statutes adopted children retained the right to inherit from their biological parents.

The treatment of adoption records was similarly confusing. Early adoption statutes made no provision for confidentiality or the maintenance of records. Original birth certificates were not altered or secreted in court files to prevent their distribution. As a result, adoptive families and biological parents had no legal protection with respect to intrusions upon each other's lives following an adoption.

In the early twentieth century statutes began to address the confidentiality of adoption information as to the public at large, but not between the parties to an adoption. It was not until the 1930's that statutes evolved which were designed to preserve the exclusivity of the adoptive home.

Record Closure: During the 1930's. 40's, and 50's, social workers began sealing birth and adoption records. The rationale for the change in practice was guided by the attitudes, mores, and myths of the time. Secrecy surrounding adoptions was believed to protect the triad members."

Thanks for the question! Very interesting...but will require a LOT more research!

ETA Part II: Could it be, Gershom, that the term "adoption" meant something quite different, say, in Greece in 44 B.C. when Octavius was "adopted" by his uncle, Julius Caesar? And in the US before "formal" (legal) adoption took place? Your thoughts?

Answer 5

Supposedly Moses was adopted.

In the Roman Empire adoption was common among leaders, in order to pass down the leadership if they had no heirs related by blood, OR if the heirs related by blood were pretty worthless.

So for a very long time, I would say forever.

Answer 6

Hmmm...very good question.

Answer 7

Ok Little Jaina, and Moses went back to his birth family too, didn't he?  Or did you forget about that...so I guess that means it's meant to be for all of us adoptees to return to our REAL families, JUST LIKE MOSES

hahahahahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

idiot

Answer 8

Hey!  Moses DID go back to his birth family didn't he.  And he led them to the promise land.  That is something to think about.

Gershom, I agree with other who say that the form of adoption of which you speak where records are sealed has existed in the United States since the 1930's.  Before that, records were kept open as they are today in many other countries.

Answer 9

I suppose the answer is ever since there have been too many unfit parents having too many children.

Answer 10

Although it's true that children have been raised by those other than their parents all throughout history, the first formal adoption statute in the United States was enacted in 1851 in Massachusetts.   State and agency involvement require home studies and reports to the court began with Minnesota's 1917 adoption statute.

It was not until after WW2, however, that birth records began sealing from the adopted person.  Social workers began doing this due to the stigma of the times and fears of the natural parents coming back for the child.  (They should have never fed into the stigma and fear.)

ETA:

Robin, those adoptions in Greece, often of adult males were usually done for purposes of inheritances, including inheritance to royal positions.  The whole idea of adoption as we know it today is quite new in history.

Answer 11

Gershom, I'm sorry, but here you are wrong.  Moses WAS adopted.  He WAS a member of the royal family of egypt.  Besides that, in Ancient Egypt adoption was a regular occurance, particularly for royalty.  It was how they "sured up" dynasty's, made sure idiots didn't inherit, and provided heirs for royal houses who had none.  Besides, in a pre-literate society, why would you assume that there would need to be "adoption papers".  Adoption occurs when any man or woman says "this is my son" or "this is my daughter" about a child who is not biologically "spawn" of their bodies.  

Besides that, the bible has multiple other references to adoption.  In one, Saul had to threaten to cut a baby in half because two women claimed it.  The non-biological mother was therefor trying to "adopt" the other woman's child.  I think that is also a second reference to a woman who would RATHER her child be adopted than killed.  

I'm sorry that you can only see one side of this issue, but adoption is as old as humanity itself.  Adoption does not require paperwork - it only requires acceptance into standardized relationships.  In fact, cases can be made for adoption in other SPECIES, though since they have no language, I suppose we can't be certain it's not just "guardianship".  

Adoption has probably existed since the first time a women saw an abandoned infant and brought that infant to her breast and loved it like her own.  Maybe this is hard for some people to accept, since some people seem to find it impossible to imagine familial love not following blood bonds, but it CAN happen.  Depending on your view of creationism/evolution, it's possible that adoption has existed since before we were even human.

Answer 12

Hi Gershom,

Thanks for asking this question.  There are a couple of good answers given already.  Here is some historical information as well as some biblical info.  Caring for other children has always existed as long as long as there have been children without parents.  I don't know anyone who is opposed to children being nurtured, protected, loved and provided for.

Going back in history, usually a relative would step in & fulfill the duties in the event of a parent's death or illness.  Originally, the intentions were sincerely and soley in the best interests of the child.  No deception was involved.  The child knew who his family was, he was allowed to grieve the loss of the parent, and maintained his identity although someone else was responsible for his care.  That's how it should be.  

Somewhere around the 1930's it started to became socially unacceptable for single parents to raise their own children.  The focus shifted over the next few decades from providing services for children who were already without parents to providing services for couples without children.  What did those people want?  They wanted infants.  This is when it stopped being about taking care of children and started being about packaging a product to be "adopted" as we know it today.  This is when the demand was driven up, at a hefty price, for finding babies to meet the needs of what those desperate & childless couples wanted.  Since there were not enough parentles babies to go around, the pressure mounted on the single mothers to give up their babies to strangers who often had more money.  Poor women were also targeted.  Society went along with the infinite wisdom of the social worker of the day.

Everything that followed after that was orchestrated to further make adoptive couples happy.  Identities of babies were erased and rewritten.  Lies were told to the children.  Laws were changed to seal all wrongdoings.  The needs of the child fell into the background while agencies made huge profits and social workers conducted the largest social experiement of the baby scoop era called closed adoptions.  They made up facts about how adopting their product (an infant) will be exactly the same as giving birth to one.  They assured prospective parents that if they just love the children, they will never have any desire for knowldege of their own backgrounds.  Everything was claimed to be "as if."  Adoption existed like that during those decades leading up to the 1970's.  Records were sealed to provide the adoptive parents with their new completed families, free of any interference from the child's past, and guarantees were made to the adoptive parents that the child would be completely & forever theirs.  

Eventually these experimental babies grew up and spoke up.  They are still speaking up.  It was NOT as the social workers had predicted.  The children still had needs to their own identities, and needs to their own backgrounds.  They were NOT happy with the adoption system & having their identities changed & their rights taken away.  It turned out they were NOT blank tablets that could be erased and written over with new information, no matter how nice the adoptive family was.  The adoptees demanded their rights back.  Adoption began to change in that no more promises were made to propspective parents that children would grow up and not seek out their natural families.  Social workers then began to prepare prospective parents differently based on new knowledge. Women considering adoption were no longer willing to play by the old rules of relinquishing their children to never see them again, especially with single parenting becoming more socially acceptable again.  So adoption agencies, in order to stay in their lucrative businesses, came up with new options such as open adoption, to make adoption seem more appealing.  They wanted to make it appear that the women were in control, that they actually had choices in adoption.

No matter what form modern day adoption takes, it needs to get back to the basics of being child-centered.  The child's short & long-term needs must always be considered before adult's needs or businesses' needs.  If it does that then it again becomes the honorable institution of taking care of a child who has no other options.  Every child deserves a good home.  It should not come at the expense of meeting everyone else's needs first.

Since biblical characters were brought up, it's a good time to add some comparisons here.  I've noticed some people mention Jesus was adopted as if the implication there is if it's in the bible & it's good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for all adoptees, so we should stop complaining?

No, that is not a fair comparison of what adoptees go through today as what adoption might have meant back in biblical times. They are totally different experiences.

Was Jesus taken away from his mother at birth or shortly thereafter and permanently transferred to another home away from any of his relatives? No, he was not.

Did Jesus grow up and know his natural mother? Yes, he did. Who has not seen the madonna images depicting mother & child? They were definately closely connected.

Was Jesus lied to and meant to assume that Joseph was his biological father? No, I don't think so.

Was he kept from knowing his date, time, and place of birth? Again, no.

Were the people who raised him infertile? Nope.

Were there any false documents forced upon him by the government? None.

Did Joseph pay disgraceful amounts of money for the privilege of being in Jesus's life & acting like a father? No.

Did any entity profit huge amounts of money from Jesus's so-called adoption? None that we know of. Agencies are a relatively new phenomenon.

Was his real identity kept from him? No way.

Their family would not have been considered to be any poorer than the average family living at that time and place in history. Regardless, being poor in and of itself is never any justification for tearing apart families.

There is nothing in the bible that even comes close to adoption as it's practiced today. Although children have always been raised by others out of necessity throughout history, it wasn't until nearly 20 centuries later that it became commonly done for the benefit of others instead & that adoption laws turned to work against the adoptee.

Whatever Jesus did experience from having Joseph in his life as a human father-figure did not amount to what adoptees today experience from being adopted. It's an unfair and untrue comparison. Children should be cared for, yes, but not ever made to assume a false identity or treated as commodities. I think the bible clearly supports that, as there is no mention of adoption or similar situation in the bible.

Caring for other children will continue to exist as long as it's necessary.  It is the right thing to do.  Changing their identity is not acceptable!  I see what you are asking & You're right - They are two totally different things!  The good one has always existed.  The other one is relatively recent.  Adoption as an institution needs to evolve if it is to meet the needs of the children.  Thanks so much for asking!

julie j

reunited adoptee