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Market Forces: Defining the Adoptable Child, 1860–1940

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 April 2012

Shurlee Swain
Shurlee Swain*
Affiliation:
School of Arts and Sciences, Australian Catholic University E-mail: shurlee.swain@acu.edu.au
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Abstract

Discomfort about the notion of adoption as facilitating a market in children has been one of the major motivations for regulation and control, not only for intercountry adoption but throughout the history of in country adoption as well. This paper explores the nature of the market in Australia, beginning in the decades before legalisation but looking also for continuities in the ways in which in country and later intercountry adoptions have been debated. Drawing on an analysis of advertisements from major metropolitan and regional newspapers it argues that benevolence always exists in an uneasy alliance with assumptions about the right to a child, creating a ‘shopping list’ of desired characteristics which the market has rarely been able to satisfy.

Keywords

Adoptionadoption historyadoption legislationnewspaper advertisementsmarket in children
Type
Themed Section on Waiting for a Better World: Critical and Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Intercountry Adoption
Information
Social Policy and Society , Volume 11 , Issue 3 , July 2012 , pp. 399 - 414
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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