Adoption has been a politically charged subject since the Progressive
Era, when it first became an established part of child welfare reform.
In A Home for Every Child, Patricia Susan Hart looks at how, when, and
why modern adoption practices became a part of child welfare policy.
The Washington Children's Home Society (now the Children's Home Society
of Washington) was founded in 1896 to place children into adoptive and
foster homes as a means of dealing with child abuse, neglect, and
homelessness. Hart reveals why birth parents relinquished their children
to the Society, how adoptive parents embraced these vulnerable family
members, and how the children adjusted to their new homes among
strangers.
Debates about nature versus nurture, fears about immigration, and
anxieties about race and class informed child welfare policy during the
Progressive Era. Hart sheds new light on that period of time and the
social, cultural, and political factors that affected adopted children,
their parents, and administrators of pioneering institutions like the
Washington Children's Home Society.