Legal adoption has gained enormously in popularity over the last thirty-five years. Beginning in 1927 with under 3,000 cases, a peak was reached in the early post-war years with over 21,000 orders granted in 1946, while over the last decade this figure has stabilized at an annual average of 13,500. Something like a third of these adoption orders are for mothers wishing to confer legitimate status on their own children born before or out of wedlock, while in a small proportion of other cases children are adopted by relatives acting in loco parentis. We are left with a clear majority of cases (probably about 60 per cent.) in which the purpose of adoption is to create or complete a family where fertility is known or believed to be impaired. Only rarely will a couple adopt in preference to reproducing, although there are certain circumstances in which such a decision would be justified, for example where pregnancy carries serious risks for a woman healthy in all other respects or where there is a likelihood of inherited abnormality in her child.