Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
DIVWhat constitutes a family? Tracing the dramatic evolution of Americans#8217; answer to this question over the past century, IKinship by Design/I provides the fullest account to date of modern adoption#8217;s history. BR Beginning in the early 1900s, when children were still transferred between households by a variety of unregulated private arrangements, Ellen Herman details efforts by the U.S. Children#8217;s Bureau and the Child Welfare League of America to establish adoption standards in law and practice. She goes on to trace Americans#8217; shifting ideas about matching children with physically or intellectually similar parents, revealing how research in developmental science and technology shaped adoption as it navigated the nature-nurture debate. BR Concluding with an insightful analysis of the revolution that ushered in special needs, transracial, and international adoptions, IKinship by Design/I ultimately situates the practice as both a different way to make a family and a universal story about love, loss, identity, and belonging. In doing so, this volume provides a new vantage point from which to view twentieth-century America, revealing as much about social welfare, statecraft, and science as it does about childhood, family, and private life. /DIV
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