I’ve created this site as a place to share my research and writing on the history of adoption, to educate, and start conversations. As an adoptee, my starting point is how did we get here? How did we get to a place where child removal is not only normalised but romanticised and celebrated? Where adoptees’ rights, needs and experiences are routinely dismissed? Where the system can’t be questioned, because we are so deeply attached to the flawed narrative that supports it that no one can imagine the alternatives.

The answer is both nuanced and shocking. It involves civil servants, clergy and lay believers, philanthropists, government, social workers, parents, lawyers, mass media, and adoptees themselves. It reminds us of the harsh conditions of British life within living memory, and the effects of war, disease, poverty, infant mortality and social stigmas. Above all, it raises fundamental questions about how we raise and care for the next generation in a capitalist society. And while much has changed, child adoption has not. The principles and the legal impact are unchanged since protracted negotiations in the 1920s led to the first Adoption Act in 1926. Now, as then, we should ask: whose interests are being served?

I will use original documents from the archives, newspaper articles, and census records to tell stories in their social and political context. Some of the material, and the language used, is starkly racist, misogynist, ableist, and classist. But we must face up to the role that these attitudes played, and we are, after all, talking about an economy in which babies and children are a commodity. And some babies are more valuable than others. So we should expect to feel discomfort.

I don’t know how often I will post, but you can subscribe if you want to receive new stories directly to your inbox. Some of you already know me from AAM and we will continue to publish blogs of our own, and guest blogs, there.