Strangers and Kin: The American Way of Adoption by Barbara Melosh

From the Publisher

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.

Publishers Weekly

Adoption is a quintessentially American institution, says George Mason University English and history professor Barbara Melosh, in that it embodies optimism, generosity of spirit and confidence in "social engineering." In Strangers and Kin: The American Way of Adoption, Melosh offers a history of adoption from the early 20th century to today. Drawing on records of adoptions and individual stories, she presents thoughtful comments on current debates surrounding adoption, including transracial adoption and the ethics of international adoption. Adoption calls people "to hope and trust anew in the only authentic kinship we know: bonds forged in love and sustained by will and commitment."

Library Journal

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 Cahners Business Information.

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Table of Contents