Little Strangers

by Claudia Nelson

"When Massachusetts passed America's first comprehensive adoption law in 1851, the usual motive for taking in an unrelated child was presumed to be the need for cheap help. Institutions housed young children but expected to place them as they became old enough to be useful; foster parents contracted to trade care for the child's services. But by 1929 - the first year that every state had an adoption law - the adoptee's main function was seen as emotional. Adopting strangers' children had become commonplace, and infants, who perform no work, were now more readily placed than older children."...

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