Family matters : secrecy and disclosure in the history of adoption E. Wayne Carp

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Carp, E. Wayne, 1946-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Adoption--United States--History.

Adoption.

Open adoption--United States--History.

Open adoption.

Adoptees--United States--Identification.

Adoptees.

Birthparents--United States--Identification.

Birthparents.

Family social work--United States.

Family social work.

Confidential communications--United States.

Confidential communications.

Physical Description:

xii, 304 pages ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1998.

Summary:

Family Matters cuts through the sealed records, changing policies, and conflicting agendas that have obscured the history of adoption in America and reveals how the practice and attitudes about it have evolved from colonial days to the present.

Amid recent controversies over sealed adoption records and open adoption, it is ever more apparent that secrecy and disclosure are the defining issues in American adoptions - and these are also the central concerns of E. Wayne Carp's book. Mining a vast range of sources (including for the first time confidential case records of a twentieth-century adoption agency), Carp makes a startling discovery: openness, not secrecy, has been the norm in adoption for most of our history; sealed records were a post-World War II aberration, resulting from the convergence of several unusual cultural, demographic, and social trends.

Pursuing this idea, Family Matters offers surprising insights into various notions that have affected the course of adoption, among them Americans' complex feelings about biological kinship versus socially constructed families; the stigma of adoption, used at times to promote both openness and secrecy; and, finally, suspect psychoanalytic concepts, such as "genealogical bewilderment," and bogus medical terms, such as "adopted child syndrome," that paint all parties to adoption as psychologically damaged.

Contents:

The rise of adoption

The origins of adoption records

When adoption was no secret

The ephemeral age of secrecy

The emergence of the Adoption Rights Movement

The adoption records wars

From open records to open adoption

The prospects for adoption.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 237-285) and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Carp, E. Wayne, 1946- Family matters.

ISBN:

0674796683

9780674796683

0674001869

9780674001862

OCLC:

37608280

Online:

Book review (H-Net)