ENGLISH

Like Our Very Own: Adoption and the Changing Culture of Motherhood, 1851-1950

Book information

Publisher
University Press of Kansas
Year
2001
ISBN
9780700610518
Language
english
Format
PDF
Filesize
14 MB (14768198 bytes)
Pages
272\256
Library
Fulcrum
Time added
2023-06-13 14:41:36

Description

Drawing on case histories, letters from adoptive parents, congressional records, and fiction and popular magazines of the day, Julie Berebitsky recovers the efforts of single women, African Americans, the elderly, and other marginalized citizens to obtain children of their own. She contends, however, that this diversity gradually diminished during the hundred years between the first adoption laws in 1851 and the postwar "baby boom" era. Adoption social theory and practice was gradually transformed into a highly homogenized model that tried to match children to parents by class and background and that ultimately favored conventional middle class American families. Like Our Very Own offers compelling evidence that adoption has always been an important factor in our evolving efforts to define the meaning and nature of both motherhood and family.

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