In readiness for the centenary of the first Adoption of Children Act (passed in 1926 and enacted in 1927), Coram has commissioned a special edition of their academic journal, created a timeline of adoption history on their website, and is calling for a hundred personal ‘stories of adoption’ by people ‘touched by adoption’ [insert barf emoji], to publish online during the year. (They ‘know that the history of adoption is not always positive’ and ‘are happy to consider stories of a more difficult nature’ [emphasis added]—now why might it be necessary to give such reassurances? Could it be because adoption propaganda is rife and organisations involved in adoption are well known for spreading it?)

They have also promised to tell the story of their own ‘evolution’—no comment from me for now—and have been careful to say they will ‘mark’ (rather than ‘celebrate’) the centenary of the first Act.

Here I would like to make a couple of comments on their timeline, which is generally accurate and thorough. First, a small point: although John Triseliotis’ study of Scottish adoptees In Search of Origins: Experiences of Adopted People was not published until 1975 it had been commissioned for, and was made available to, the Houghton Committee and contributed to the change in law that allowed adoptees in England and Wales to access their birth information (the 1975 Children Act). 

More importantly, the origins and role of voluntary adoption societies is completely glossed over. Yes, the National Council for the Unmarried Mother and Her Child (later called the National Council for One-Parent Families, and then Gingerbread) was formed in 1918 but it was around the same time as—and stood largely in opposition to—large national voluntary adoption societies, who were practising and advocating for mass adoption, as well as lobbying government for legalisation. Those with reservations such as the NCUMC, the NSPCC and the Ministry of Health only supported the legalisation of adoption in the end because it was already being widely practised and there was an urgent need for some regulation and safeguards (the Act did not really deliver these, but that’s another story). They wanted adoption to be used in very limited circumstances but the law as passed did not differentiate between exceptional cases and cases where the better outcome would be for mother and child to remain together, had there been more support made available and less social stigma. And so agencies (both religious and unaffiliated) whose main or entire business was to arrange adoptions continued to operate and proliferate, procuring infants for supply to their (increasingly middle-class) customers to raise as their own. (The fact that they ran on a not-for-profit basis does not take away from the fact that adopters were clients, or customers, in the transaction that was an adoption). Alongside the adoption societies, informal and unregulated adoptions continued (until 1949, as noted in the timeline) and private or third-party adoptions were not banned until the 1980s.

Another area that can be viewed with more nuance is the shift in the late 1960s/early 1970s from child adoption as largely practised on healthy white infants to the focus on adoption of ‘looked after’ children who would otherwise be in children’s homes or local authority care (often euphemistically referred to in adoption circles as ‘hard to place’ children or ‘children who wait’). This was obviously a supply-driven change, as acknowledged in the timeline, but there is much more to be said about both the intentional pivot by the adoption sector and the public discourse they encouraged. I will address this in another blog post. 

In the meantime, if anyone with adoption experience wishes to offer a contribution to Coram’s stories, you can find the submission form here. Or if you have ideas for an adoptee-led alternative to the project, you can contact Adult Adoptee Movement.