Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Adoption’s Long and Often Surprising History

  • Chapter
Adoption: A Brief Social and Cultural History

  • 392 Accesses

Abstract

The first surprise, at least to me, is that adoption occurs quite regularly among non-human primates, other animals, and even birds. To put it in the terms of Chapter 1, even in the animal kingdom, the meaning of “natural” is more elusive than we might expect.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
eBook
USD 16.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book
USD 49.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Notes

  1. Marianne L. Riedman, “The Evolution of Alloparental Care and Adoption in Mammals and Birds,” in Quarterly Review of Biology, vol. 57, no. 4 (December, 1982), pp. 405–435.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. C. Daniel Batson, Altruism in Humans (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 51.

    Google Scholar 

  3. William J. Hamilton III, Curt Busse, and Kenneth S. Smith, “Adoption of Infant Orphan Chacma Baboons,” Animal Behaviour, vol. 30 (1982), pp. 29–34.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. C. M. Berman, “The Social Development of an Orphaned Rhesus Infant on Cayo Santiago: Male Care, Foster Mother-Orphan Interaction and Peer Interaction,” American Journal of Primatology, vol. 3 (1982), pp. 131–141.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Emily E. Wroblewski, “An Unusual Incident of Adoption in a Wild Chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) Population in Gombe National Park,” American Journal of Primatology, vol. 70, no. 10 (October, 2008), pp. 995–998.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Romina Pave, Martin M. Kowalewski, and Gabriel E. Zunino, “Adoption of An Orphan Infant in Wild Black and Gold Howler Monkeys (Alouatta caraya),” Mastozoologia Neotropical, vol. 17, no. 1 (2010), pp. 171–174.

    Google Scholar 

  7. G. R. Driver and John C. Miles, trans. and eds, The Assyrian Laws (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1935), p. 249.

    Google Scholar 

  8. Bella Vivante, Women’s Roles in Ancient Civilizations: A Reference Guide (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999), p. 94. According to Vivante, an unmarried woman could adopt a daughter, though not a son. The daughter was not a slave, but the mother could direct her either to marry or to work as a prostitute.

    Google Scholar 

  9. G. R. Driver and John C. Miles, trans. and eds, The Babylonian Laws (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1955), p. 75. In a note, “adoption” is translated as “literally: ‘for sonship’.”

    Google Scholar 

  10. Elizabeth C. Stone and David I. Owen, Adoption in Old Babylonian Nippur and the Archive of Mannum-mesu-lissur (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1991), p. 33.

    Google Scholar 

  11. See also Peter Raymond Obermark, Adoption in the Old Babylonian Period (Ann Arbor, MI: U.M.I., 1992).

    Google Scholar 

  12. Jack M. Sasson, ed., Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, volume II (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1995), p. 943.

    Google Scholar 

  13. John Sietze Bergsma, The Jubilee from Leviticus to Qumran: a History of Interpretation (Leiden: Koninklijke Brill, 2007), p. 34.

    Google Scholar 

  14. Alan H. Gardiner, “Extraordinary Adoption,” Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, vol. 26 (February 1941), pp. 23–29. In a comment published almost two decades later, Jacob J. Rabinowitz argued that this adoption papyrus was also a document of manumission, i.e., the adoption conferred the status of free person on the adopted women.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Jacob J. Rabinowitz, “Semitic Elements in the Egyptian Adoption Papyrus Published by Gardiner,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies, vol. 17, no. 2 (April 1958), pp. 145–146.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Von Wolfgang Helck and Eberhard Otto, eds, Lexikon der Agyptologie (Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz, 1975), p. 36. Unfortunately, the more recent Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt (2001) does not include a discussion of adoption.

    Google Scholar 

  17. Gay Robins, Women in Ancient Egypt (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), p. 77. Apparently, this case was not unusual. According to another source, “Several childless ofcials at Dayr al-Madina adopted young men to inherit their ofces and to carry out funerary rites,” Jack M. Sasson, ed., Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, volume I, p. 374.

    Google Scholar 

  18. Joyce Tyldesley, Daughters of Isis: Women of Ancient Egypt (London: Penguin Books, 1995), p. 44.

    Google Scholar 

  19. Jefrey Howard Tigay, “Adoption,” in Encyclopedia Judaica, 2nd edn, volume 1 (Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007), p. 415.

    Google Scholar 

  20. Alfred L. Kroeber, “Totem and Taboo in Retrospect,” American Journal of Sociology, vol. 55 (1939), p. 446.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Claude Levi-Strauss, The Elementary Structures of Kinship (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1969), p. 41. Ancient Egypt, of course, presents a notable exception to this generalization. Marriages between brothers and sisters were a custom regularly practiced by Egyptian pharaohs. In addition, scholars have discovered marriages between half-brothers and half-sisters in classical Greece.

    Google Scholar 

  22. Kristin Elizabeth Gager, Blood Ties and Fictive Ties: Adoption and Family Life in Early Modern France (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), p. 5.

    Google Scholar 

  23. Bernard Knox, The Heroic Themper: Studies in Sophoclean Tragedy (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1964), p. 5.

    Google Scholar 

  24. These quotations are taken from Mark Golden, Children and Childhood in Classical Athens (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), pp. 142, 143.

    Google Scholar 

  25. W. K. Lacey, The Family in Classical Greece (London: Tames and Hudson, 1968), pp. 125, 145.

    Google Scholar 

  26. Cited in Barry S. Strauss, Fathers and Sons in Athens: Ideology and Society in the Era of the Peloponnesian War (London: Routledge, 1993), p. 51.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  27. Sarah B. Pomeroy, Families in Classical and Hellenistic Greece: Representations and Realities (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1997), pp. 34, 122.

    Google Scholar 

  28. Lene Rubinstein, Adoption in IV. Century Athens (University of Copenhagen, 1993), pp. 2–3.

    Google Scholar 

  29. Emma Dench, Romulus’ Asylum: Roman Identities from the Age of Alexander to the Age of Hadrian (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 115.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  30. See also Kevin M. McGeough, The Romans: New Perspectives (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC CLIO, 2004), p. 137.

    Google Scholar 

  31. J. A. Crook, Law and Life of Rome (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1967), p. 111.

    Google Scholar 

  32. For a detailed account of the regulations governing Roman adoption, see Alan Watson, The Law of Persons in the Later Roman Republic (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1967), pp. 77–101.

    Google Scholar 

  33. John Francis Brosnan, “The Law of Adoption,” Columbia Law Review, vol. 22, no. 4 (April 1922), p. 332.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  34. Suzanne Dixon, The Roman Family (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), p. 112.

    Google Scholar 

  35. Florence Dupont, Daily Life in Ancient Rome, trans. Christopher Woodall (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), p. 117.

    Google Scholar 

  36. Stefan Weinstock, Divus Julius (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1971), p. 189.

    Google Scholar 

  37. Mireille Cormier, “Divorce and Adoption as Roman Familial Strategies,” in Beryl Rawson, ed., Marriage, Divorce, and Children in Ancient Rome (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1991), p. 74.

    Google Scholar 

  38. The most extensive discussion of Clodius and his adoption can be found in Hugh Lindsay, Adoption in the Roman World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 174–181. For Cicero’s speech,

    Book  Google Scholar 

  39. see Leo Albert Huard, “The Law of Adoption: Ancient and Modern,” Vanderbilt Law Review, vol. 9 (1955–56), pp. 746–747.

    Google Scholar 

  40. Paul Veyne, “The Roman Empire,” in Philippe Ariès and Georges Duby, eds, A History of Private Life, I (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1987), p. 17.

    Google Scholar 

  41. Jerome Wilgaux, “Consubstantiality, Incest, and Kinship in Ancient Greece,” in Beryl Rawson, ed., A Companion to Families in the Greek and Roman Worlds (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), p. 218.

    Google Scholar 

  42. For discussion of adoption in early Japan, see in particular, Jefrey P. Mans, Lordship and Inheritance in Early Medieval Japan (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1989), and Akira Hayami, “The Myth of Primogeniture and Impartible Inheritance in Tokugawa Japan,” Journal of Family History (Spring, 1983), pp. 3–29.

    Google Scholar 

  43. Myron L. Cohen, Kinship, Contract, Community and State: Anthropological Perspectives on China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005), p. 116.

    Google Scholar 

  44. Ann Waltner, Getting an Heir: Adoption and the Construction of Kinship in Late Imperial China (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1990), pp. 24, 25.

    Google Scholar 

  45. Arthur P. Wolf and Chieh-shan Huang, Marriage and Adoption in China, 1845–1945 (Stanford University Press, 1980), p. 112.

    Google Scholar 

  46. Patricia Buckley Ebrey, “The Early Stages in the Development of Descent Group Organization,” in Ebrey and James L. Watson, eds, Kinship Organization in Late Imperial China, 1000–1940 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1986), p. 18.

    Google Scholar 

  47. The most extensive analysis of this complicated sequence of events can be found in Carney T. Fisher, The Chosen One: Succession and Adoption in the Court of Ming Zhizong (London: Allen & Unwin, 1990).

    Google Scholar 

  48. Julius Jolly, Hindu Law and Custom, trans. Batakrishna Ghosh (Varanasi: Bhartiya Publishing House, 1975), p. 156.

    Google Scholar 

  49. Pandurang V. Kane, History of Dharmasastra, Vol. III (Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 1946), p. 662.

    Google Scholar 

  50. James J. O’Donnell, The Ruin of the Roman Empire: A New History (New York: Ecco, 2008), p. 173.

    Google Scholar 

  51. Timothy S. Miller, The Orphans of Byzantium: Child Welfare in the Christian Empire (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2003), p. 165.

    Google Scholar 

  52. Jack Goody, The Development of the Family and Marriage in Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 72. Although Goody’s analysis has received a good deal of scrutiny, from Georges Duby, Natalie Zemon Davis, and R. A. Houlbrooke, among other major fgures, the general shape of his conclusions has been widely accepted.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  53. G. Robina Quale, Families in Context: A World History of Population (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1992), p. 83.

    Google Scholar 

  54. C. M. A. McCaulif, “The First English Adoption Law and Its American Precursors,” Seton Hall Law Review 16 (Summer/Fall 1986), p. 660.

    Google Scholar 

  55. Tomas More, Utopia a Revised Translation, Backgrounds, Criticism, George M. Logan, ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 2011), p. 99.

    Google Scholar 

  56. Edmund Blair Bolles, The Penguin Adoption Handbook (New York: Penguin Books, 1984), p. 23.

    Google Scholar 

  57. Stephen B. Presser, “The Historical Background of the American Law of Adoption,” Journal of Family Law, vol. 11 (1971), p. 453.

    Google Scholar 

  58. Cited in Betsy Rodgers, Georgian Chronicle: Mrs. Barbauld and Her Family (London: Methuen, 1958), p. 68.

    Google Scholar 

  59. W. V. Harris, “Child-Exposure in the Roman Empire,” Journal of Roman Studies, vol. 84 (1994), pp. 1, 22. Infanticide appears to have been tragically common throughout the ancient world. Aside from the practices of Greece and Rome, see for example L. Sternbach, “Infanticide and Exposure of New-born Children in Ancient India,” in L. Sternbach, Juridical Studies in Ancient Indian Law, Part I, pp. 501–507. For a useful survey, see William Langer, “Infanticide: A Historical Survey” and “Further Notes on the History of Infanticide,” History of Childhood Quarterly, vol. 1, no. 3 and vol. 2, no. 1 (1974). Additional sources include Lloyd DeMause, “The Evolution of Childhood,” in DeMause, ed., The History of Childhood (New York: Psychohistory Press, 1974), pp. 25–32,

    Article  Google Scholar 

  60. and Mildred Dickeman, “Demographic Consequences of Infanticide in Man,” Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, vol. 6 (1975), pp. 107–137.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  61. Barbara Kellum, “Infanticide in England in the Later Middle Ages,” History of Childhood Quarterly: The Journal of Psychohistory, vol. 1, no. 3 (Winter, 1974), pp. 367–388.

    Google Scholar 

  62. John Boswell, The Kindness of Strangers: The Abandonment of Children in Western Europe from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance (New York: Pantheon Books, 1988), pp. 16, 46–47.

    Google Scholar 

  63. Philippe Ariès, Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life, Robert Balcick, trans. (New York: Vintage Books, 1962), p. 125.

    Google Scholar 

  64. Audra Abbe Diptee, “Imperial Ideas, Colonial Realities: Enslaved Children in Jamaica, 1775–1834,” in James Marten, ed., Children in Colonial America (New York: New York University Press, 2007), p. 52.

    Google Scholar 

  65. Margaret Kornitzer, Child Adoption in the Modern World (London: Putnam, 1952), p. 6. “Baby farming,” the ghastly and often lethal practice of placing abandoned (sometimes kidnapped) infants with incompetent caretakers, became a particular target of reform.

    Google Scholar 

  66. See T. Richard Witmer, “The Purpose of American Adoption Laws,” in Helen L. Witmer, Elizabeth Herzog, Eugene A. Weinstein, and Mary E. Sullivan, Independent Adoptions: A Follow-up Study (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1963), p. 32. I return to this topic in Chapter 3.

    Google Scholar 

  67. Dr. Stanley Smith, “Adoption of Children in New Zealand”, Journal of Comparative Legislation and International Law, 3rd series, vol. 3, no. 4 (1921), p. 165.

    Google Scholar 

  68. Clif Picton, “Adoption in Australia,” in R. A. C. Hoksbergen, ed., Adoption in Worldwide Perspective: A Review of Programs, Policies and Legislation in 14 Countries (Lisse: Swets & Zeitlinger, 1986), pp. 151–152.

    Google Scholar 

  69. Cited in Michael Gold, And Hannah Wept: Infertility, Adoption, and the Jewish Couple (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1988), p. 152.

    Google Scholar 

  70. Louis Jacobs, “The Lubavich Movement,” in Encyclopedia Judaica Yearbook, 1975–6 (Jerusalem: Keter Publishing House, 1976), p. 163.

    Google Scholar 

  71. See Mark A. Peterson, Korean Adoption and Inheritance: Case Studies in the Creation of Classic Confucian Society (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996),

    Google Scholar 

  72. and Kuentae Kim and Hyunjoon Park, “Family Succession Trough Adoption in the Chosun Dynasty,” History of the Family, vol. 15, no. 4 (October 29, 2010), pp. 443–452.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  73. Everett M. Ressler, Neil Boothby, and Daniel J. Steinbock, eds, Unaccompanied Children: Care and Protection in Wars, Natural Disasters, and Refugee Movements (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 38–43.

    Google Scholar 

  74. Taimie L. Bryant, “Sons and Lovers: Adoption in Japan,” American Journal of Comparative Law, vol. 38, no. 2 (Spring, 1990), p. 300.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  75. The data in these paragraphs are taken from Jihong Liu, Ulla Larsen and Grace Wyshak, “Factors Afecting Adoption in China, 1950–1987,” Population Studies, vol. 58, no. 1 (2004), pp. 21–36.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  76. Junhong Chu, “Prenatal Sex Determination and Sex-selective Abortion in Rural Central China,” Population and Development Review, vol. 27 no. 2 (June, 2001), pp. 259–281.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  77. Vern Carroll, “Introduction: What Does Adoption Mean,” in Carroll, ed., Adoption in Eastern Oceania (University of Hawaii Press, 1970), pp. 3, 4. In 1976, Ian Brady edited another anthology of essays on kinship in Oceania, Transactions in Kinship, Adoption and Fosterage (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press).

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Authors
  1. Peter Conn
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Copyright information

© 2013 Peter Conn

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Conn, P. (2013). Adoption’s Long and Often Surprising History. In: Adoption: A Brief Social and Cultural History. Palgrave Pivot, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137333919_3

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation