The Sealed Adoption Records Controversy in Historical Perspective: The Case of the Children\u27s Home Society of Washington, 1895-1988

I would like to thank Charlie Langdon and D. Sharon Osborne, past and present Executive Directors of the Children\u27s Home Society of Washington (CHSW), for permission to use the CHSW\u27s case records, and Randy Perin, Supervisor of the CHSW\u27s Adoption Resource Center, whose enthusiasm for this project has been inspirational. I am also grateful to Roger W. Toogood, Executive Director of the Children\u27s Home Society of Minnesota (CHSM), and Marietta E. Spencer, Program Director, Post-Legal Adoption Services, CHSM, for permitting me access to the Society\u27s case records. I would also like to thank Paula Shields, George Behlmer, Ruth Bloch, Clarke A. Chambers, Paula S. Fass, Ray Jonas, William I. Rorabaugh, and Eugene Sheridan for their thoughtful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. This paper samples the 21,000 adoption case records of the Children\u27s Home Society of Washington between 1895 and 1988 in order to document and analyze the history of twentieth-century postadoption contact for adult adopted persons and birthparents. It demonstrates that as a result of a variety of factors - primarily social work professionalism, the demographic profile of birthmothers, and the influence of psychoanalytic theory on casework practice - the Society\u27s polcy on releasing family information to clients evolved through three phases. In the first and longest phase, roughly from 1895 to the mid-1950s, the Society maintained that adult adopted persons were entitled to identifying and nonidentifying information and that birthparents had a legitimate claim to nonidentifying information. In the second phase, a transitional period spanning the mid-1950s to the late-1960s, the Society\u27s postadovtion policy of relative openness became more restrictive. In the final phase, beginning in the early 1970s, the Society established a firm policy of closed records

Da circulação de crianças à adoção internacional: questões de pertencimento e posse From child circulation to international adoption: questions of ownership and belonging

Nesse artigo, examino uma prática local - a circulação de crianças em bairros populares de uma grande cidade brasileira - à luz do contexto mais amplo que inclui a adoção nacional e internacional. Inicio com a descrição etnográfica de redes de ajuda mútua e valores familiares de duas mulheres que, por causa de extrema miséria, confiaram seus filhos aos cuidados de outrem. Procuro entender como essas mulheres significam a "circulação" de suas crianças e, num segundo momento, pergunto se, no seu entendimento, as leis regendo a adoção legal seriam inteligíveis. Finalmente, teço uma curta reflexão sobre discursos encontrados entre europeus e norte-americanos que recorrem à adoção, questionando a aplicação diferencial desses discursos no âmbito internacional.<br>In this article, I examine a local practice - the circulation of children in working-class neighborhoods of a large Brazilian city - by situating it within a wider context which includes national and international adoption. I begin with the ethnographic description on mutual help networks and family-related values of two poverty-stricken women who have given their children to be raised by others. I then seek to understand the place child placement holds in the life experience of these women, and, by extension, the way laws governing legal adoption connect with their way of seeing the process. Finally, in the light of this ethnographic material on "child donors", I weave a short reflection on discourses held by Europeans and North Americans on adoption, questioning the particular way these discourses filter through to and operate on the international arena