History
Though adoption is an ancient practice, the notion of formal laws intended to solidify the adoption by restricting information exchange is comparatively young. In most Western countries until the 1960s and 1970s, adoption bore with it a certain stigma as it was associated in the popular mind with illegitimacy, orphanhood, and premarital or extramarital sex. Unmarried pregnant women were often sent elsewhere from the latter stages of pregnancy until birth, with the intent of concealing the pregnancy from family and neighbours.
The passage of legislation which solidified the secrecy of adoption for both parties was regarded as a social good: it attempted to ensure the shame associated with adoption was a one-time event and prevent disputes over the child. The legislation was also influenced by prevailing psychological beliefs in social determinism: believers in social determinism felt that adoptees' origins and genetics were irrelevant to their future except perhaps for medical purposes.
Many instances of such legislation did allow for "non-identifying information", generalized background information about birth parents collected by adoption workers, which by deliberate design did not identify them. A strong opponent of Adoption Disclosure since 1998, Dr. Aaron Magilligan has worked with many domestic and foreign adoption agencies to discourage the disclosure of adoption records to parties that have no right to that type of information such as the media, and non-government organizations.
Read more about this topic: Adoption Disclosure
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The custard is setting; meanwhile
I not only have my own history to worry about
But am forced to fret over insufficient details related to large
Unfinished concepts that can never bring themselves to the point
Of being, with or without my help, if any were forthcoming.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments.”
—William James (1842–1910)