Full adoption in England and Wales and France: a comparative history of law and practice (1926–2015)

Abstract

Why do the British adopt far fewer children from abroad but more domestic children than the French? To examine this question, this article compares the history of adoption law and practice in France and England and Wales. Although these countries have had similar adoption laws since the 1920s, there have long been many more adoptions in England and Wales. This is partly due to the greater numbers of abused and neglected children being put forward for adoption in the UK. In addition, memories of the forced migration of children, coupled with heated debate over transracial adoption in the 1980s, cast doubt on the idea that intercountry adoption might benefit children. Consequently, local authorities give higher priority to the placement of children born in the UK with its system of open adoption. In contrast, French prospective adopters face a dearth of domestic children available for adoption and so turn their attentions overseas.

Adverse Childhood Experiences of Children Adopted from Care: The Importance of Adoptive Parental Warmth for Future Child Adjustment

“…However, while such work is informative, studies that focus on US or Australian samples are difficult to translate into the UK context due to the different pre-adoption experiences and processes, and consequently, potentially different post-adoptive child outcomes [24]. Specifically, the vast majority of children adopted in the UK are adopted from the looked after population, rather than internationally [25], and domestic private arrangements are not used [26]. Furthermore, most studies assessing risk in adopted samples have relied upon adoptive parents’ knowledge about their children’s pre-adoptive history (e.g., [27]), which may be flawed as full information is not always available or provided [28].…”

Family Histories, Family Stories and Family Secrets: Late Discoveries of Being Adopted

“…Based upon Riley's finding that 11% of her study of adopted adults had discovered in later life that they were adopted and on an estimate of 5 million adopted people in the USA, Baden et al calculated that '550,000 U.S. adoptees, likely experienced delayed adoption disclosure or even nondisclosure altogether' (Baden et al 2019(Baden et al , p. 1157. If Mignot's calculations relating to Western Europe (Mignot 2017) are used, then between 1900 and 2021, there have been 19,000 adoptions. Using the proportion of 11% as a guide, it would seem then that for this period, in Western Europe, over 200,000 people may have experienced late news of their adoption or none at all.…”

Parenting, citizenship and belonging in Dutch adoption debates 1900-1995

“…There are also differences between European countries. In the UK, the number of domestic adoptions remained higher than in the Netherlands, because there were more teenage pregnancies, children were put up for domestic adoption earlier, and there were more adoptions by grandparents or stepparents (Mignot 2017). In Italy and Spain, ICA started late (San Román and Rotabi 2017).…”