Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Adoption, kinship and the family: cross-cultural perspectives
- 2 Kinship in Greece and Rome
- 3 Greek adoptions: comparisons and possible influences on the Roman world
- 4 Procedural aspects of Roman adoption
- 5 The testamentary adoption
- 6 Roman nomenclature after adoption
- 7 Adoption and inheritance
- 8 Roman freedmen and their families: the use of adoption
- 9 Adoption in Plautus and Terence
- 10 Sallust and the adoption of Jugurtha
- 11 Adrogatio and adoptio from Republic to Empire
- 12 Testamentary adoptions – a review of some known cases
- 13 Political adoptions in the Republic
- 14 Clodius and his adoption
- 15 The adoption of Octavian
- 16 Political adoption in the early Empire at Rome, Pompeii and Ostia; the imperial family
- Conclusion
- Glossary
- References
- Index
Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 January 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Adoption, kinship and the family: cross-cultural perspectives
- 2 Kinship in Greece and Rome
- 3 Greek adoptions: comparisons and possible influences on the Roman world
- 4 Procedural aspects of Roman adoption
- 5 The testamentary adoption
- 6 Roman nomenclature after adoption
- 7 Adoption and inheritance
- 8 Roman freedmen and their families: the use of adoption
- 9 Adoption in Plautus and Terence
- 10 Sallust and the adoption of Jugurtha
- 11 Adrogatio and adoptio from Republic to Empire
- 12 Testamentary adoptions – a review of some known cases
- 13 Political adoptions in the Republic
- 14 Clodius and his adoption
- 15 The adoption of Octavian
- 16 Political adoption in the early Empire at Rome, Pompeii and Ostia; the imperial family
- Conclusion
- Glossary
- References
- Index
Summary
Today, in the Western world, adoption is seen as a means for couples who are unable to have children to experience parenthood. In general, the idea is that people with a strong commitment to raising children will be able to take over children whose situation is in some way substantially impaired.
In the recent past, relatively large numbers of unwanted children became available in this way. An element that has changed is the attitude to sole parenting, and children resulting from unplanned pregnancies are more often retained than adopted out. Community attitudes have shifted considerably, and it is now seen as psychologically desirable for the child to be brought up in its birth family, if possible, rather than to be reassigned.
The result is that adoptees have to be sought from further away, from parts of the world where it is economically impossible for the birth family to bring up the child, or where social conditions, including famine and war, have created large numbers of orphans. Children brought in under these conditions raise complex issues such as the paternalism of rich countries, which lead on to other controversies, for example the cultural displacement of the children.
Rome from its inception was a different type of community, and conditions of family life differed substantially. The presence of slaves as well as an enormous gulf between rich and poor is only a beginning.
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- Information
- Adoption in the Roman World , pp. 1 - 3Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009