Adoption History

Welcome to our Adoption History wiki! The following articles are an attempt to cover the history of adoption services in the United States. Included in the references are social science and psychological studies, doctoral dissertations, conference proceedings, speeches, peer-reviewed journal articles, and books. The Adoption History articles cover a wide range of adoption topics such as the history of open and closed adoptions, foster care, orphanages, Native American adoptions, the Orphan Train Movement and so on. Most of the articles focus on the history taking place between the 1920s and today, but a lot of it goes back to the early 1800s. We hope that you find these articles informative and useful, especially if you are considering adoption in one form or another, or even if you are simply curious about the history of adoption practices in the United States. Enjoy.

Adoption in America before the Twentieth Century

In the early days of the nineteenth century (1800s), Americans had a vastly different view of the role of children, both as a part of society and as part of the family; especially when compared to the view that we have of the roles of children in our society today. During the nineteenth century, it was commonplace to find children from working class families in the . . .Read More

Open vs. Closed Adoption

Open Adoption

Adoptions have been open throughout most of US history. In fact, prior to the 1930s, most state governments did not have laws regulating the privacy of adoption records. Until that point, court records, birth certificates, adoption records, and other official documents, such as those related to a person’s marital status and court proceedings, were generally considered freely available to the public. Then, beginning in 1917, . . . Read More

Closed Adoption

Closed adoptions, also known as sealed adoptions, are adoptions where the birth records of the person who was adopted were sealed, most often by law or by the request of the birth parents. Many people who are unfamiliar with the history of closed adoptions in the United States assume that adoptions have always been closed or have been . . . Read More

Indian Child Welfare Act

During the time of the American colonies, the European colonists separated the various Native American children from their families for reasons such as selling the children into slavery, forcing the children to adopt a certain religion, and adopting the children into Euro-American families. Throughout the . . . Read More

American Orphanages

During the Roaring Twenties: Orphan Trains

n the 1853, the New York Children’s Aid Society sent out letters to various individuals to see if they would be willing to house an orphan child in exchange for that child working on their farm, in their home, or in their place of manufacture. If the people were willing to accept a child, then the Children’s Aid Society would send an orphan out by train. This is where the nickname “Orphan Trains” . . . Read More

During the Great Depression

On Thursday, October 24, 1929, the stock market in the United States began an unprecedented decline. This day would later become known as “Black Thursday” and was soon followed by more “black” days. By Wednesday of the following week, the stock market had declined by 33 percent: the era in the United States known as The Great Depression had begun . . . . Read More