Adoption

Lore & Background

Adoption practices appeared throughout history, with the Code of Hammurabi detailing rights of adopters and responsibilities of adopted individuals. In ancient Rome, adoption emphasized political and economic interests, strengthening ties between wealthy families and creating male heirs. Adrogation was a Roman adoption where the person adopted consented. Infant adoption was rare; abandoned children often became slaves or alumni, reared under guardianship. Other ancient civilizations, such as India and China, used adoption to ensure continuity of cultural and religious practices, with males adopted for ancestor worship. In Polynesia, including Hawaii, the custom was called hānai. After the decline of the Roman Empire, Germanic, Celtic, and Slavic nobility denounced adoption, as bloodlines were paramount. English common law did not have a formal adoption statute but permitted adoption via private acts of Parliament and practices like 'deed of adoption' or 'fostering' recognized in equity. France's Napoleonic Code made adoption difficult. The Church introduced oblation, dedicating children to monastic life, but this often placed children in servitude or religious life and they still faced social stigma. This led to foundling hospitals and orphanages. Institutions informally adopted out children, often as cheap labor. In the 19th century, social welfare activists promoted adoptions based on sentiment rather than work.

Reader's Guide

Adoption’s significance is rooted in its transformation across history, from a mechanism serving aristocratic political and economic ends to a modern institution centered on child welfare. In ancient Rome, adoption was a legal tool to strengthen ties between wealthy families and secure male heirs, as seen in the succession of emperors like Trajan, who was adopted by Nerva and later adopted Hadrian. The Code of Hammurabi detailed adopters’ rights and adoptees’ duties, while Roman law also recognized adrogation, where the adopted person consented. Infant adoption was rare; abandoned children often became slaves or were raised as alumni under a guardianship-like arrangement, considered property of the biological father. Ancient India and China used adoption to ensure continuity of cultural and religious practices, such as funerary rites or ancestor worship, contrasting with Western lineage extension. In Polynesia, including Hawaii, adopting relatives’ or friends’ children was common, known as hānai. After the Roman Empire’s decline, European nobility rejected adoption due to bloodline emphasis, leading to informal contracts, like a charter in Lucca where adoptees became heirs in exchange for caring for the adopter in old age. The Church then innovated through oblation, dedicating abandoned children to monastic life, creating the first European system where such children faced no legal or moral disadvantages. This shift toward institutionalization led to foundling hospitals and orphanages, where children were placed as apprentices or married off under institutional authority. Modern adoption, emerging in the twentieth century, is governed by comprehensive statutes, permanently transferring all rights and filiation, unlike guardianship. Pioneers like Sister Irene of New York Foundling Hospital established boarding-out systems to avoid institutionalization. Adoption’s legacy is a complex interplay of legal, social, and religious forces that redefined family and parental responsibility.

Did You Know?

• The Code of Hammurabi details the rights of adopters and responsibilities of adopted individuals.
• In ancient Rome, some adoptions were posthumous.

Pioneers and Early Breakthroughs

Before the Second World War, U.S. adoption agencies almost universally insisted that a child's skin color and faith mirror those of the prospective parents. That rigid matching culture began to crack in 1944, when the Boys and Girls Aid Society noticed a growing backlog of minority children—Asian American, Native American, and African American—waiting for homes. The agency launched a campaign called "Operation Brown Baby," whose goal was to find adoptive families even when race did not align. The first child placed under that program was Noah Turner, a Chinese infant who entered a Caucasian household in 1947. The civil rights era brought new advocates. Groups such as the Open Door Society and the Council on Adoptable Children publicized the plight of orphans of color, and a handful of regional agencies began placing African American children in non-minority homes. Meanwhile, Evangelical farmers Harry and Bertha Holt from Oregon lobbied Congress, resulting in the 1955 "Bill for Relief of Certain War Orphans," which let them bring eight Korean children to the United States—an act that reshaped many Americans' image of what a family could look like. In the early 1970s, Bernice Gottlieb pushed a similar vision for Asian children in stigmatized conditions whose parents wanted a better life for them abroad.

The Numbers Behind the Narrative

Federal data paints a complex picture of who is in the foster and adoption pipeline. In fiscal year 1998, the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System showed that roughly 57 percent of children in U.S. foster care were of non-Caucasian background. Among those waiting for adoption, 21 percent were Black, 23 percent Hispanic, and 2 percent American Indian or Alaska Native, while Asian, Pacific Islander, and Native Hawaiian children accounted for essentially zero. By 2019, the profile of actual adoptees had shifted: 50.7 percent were White, 20.1 percent Hispanic, 16.5 percent Black or African American, and 9.2 percent identified as two or more races. The 2000 Census added another layer, revealing that of 1.7 million households with adopted children, about 308,000—roughly 18 percent—contained members of different races. A 1987 National Health Interview Survey estimated that 1 percent of white women adopted Black children, 5 percent adopted children of other races, and 2 percent of women of other races adopted white children. In the United Kingdom, the gap was stark: between 2008 and 2009, approximately 2,700 white children were adopted compared with only 410 mixed-race and 90 Black children, and Black, mixed-race, and Asian children typically waited three years longer than white peers.

The International Adoption Surge and Its Retreat

Interracial adoption into the United States experienced a dramatic arc in the early 2000s. From 1999 to 2005, the practice grew steadily until it peaked at 585 adoptions in a single year. After that high point, the numbers fell sharply, dropping to 288 by 2011. Across the full 1999-to-2011 window, 233,934 children from other countries were adopted into the United States. Nearly two-fifths of those children—39.4 percent, or 92,202—were under twelve months old, and 63 percent, roughly 146,516, were female. China dominated the sending countries, contributing 66,630 of the adopted children, while Russia came second with 45,112. The broader trend was unmistakable: between 1990 and 2009, U.S. adoptions of foreign-born orphans rose from 7,093 to 12,753, an 80 percent increase, with China ranking as the top sending nation and Vietnam as the seventh highest. China has since halted its foreign adoption program, a development that reshaped the landscape for prospective transracial adoptive families. The Holt Bill of 1955, which first opened the door for Korean war orphans, had set the precedent for this entire international pipeline.

Institutional Resistance and Ongoing Tensions

Even as advocates pushed for cross-racial placements, powerful institutional forces pushed back. In 1972, the National Association of Black Social Workers formally condemned interracial adoption, arguing that children placed in non-Black households risked developing a poor racial identity due to a lack of same-race role models. By the 1990s, the placement of Black children into non-Black homes had virtually come to a complete stop in the United States, a sharp reversal from the modest gains made around 1970. In the United Kingdom, the challenges are structural as much as ideological. Children of mixed ethnicities are more likely than other children to be placed for adoption, yet Black, mixed-race, and Asian children typically wait three years longer than white children to find a permanent home. Practitioners note that placement decisions are shaped by competing values, ideology, and anti-oppressive frameworks that must be weighed within social work practice. Meanwhile, international transracial adoptions continued to grow even as domestic cross-racial adoption contracted, creating a paradox in which the most visible interracial families were often formed across national borders rather than within a single country's foster system.