HIST 2800 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Eugenics, Combined Oral Contraceptive Pill, Margaret Sanger
17 May 2017
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Document Summary
Kinship by design: adoption in the 20th century. Main point: adoption is a very public, family-making operation that has been the target of almost constant political and legal change throughout its modern history. Growing number of children are adopted across national, butural and racial borders and look nothing like their parents meaning adoption has become more visible than it was in the past. Adoption demonstrates that kinship takes diverse forms and has diverse meanings. The practice highlights that defining family is not straight forward. Before the mid nineteenth century no western nations had legislation to regulate adoption. Exception of us (regulations from 1850s) most not till 1920s. Generally, people wanted to keep adoptions private and secret, and dew people felt that legal procedures were necessary to bring families together or makethem real . Adoption was long considered dangerous, orphans were tainted due to lack of family ties.
