Adoption and Disclosure of Family Information: A Historical Perspective

Abstract

During the past decade, adoptive parents have challenged adoption agencies' right to withhold the medical and social history of an adopted child and the child's biological family by bringing lawsuits alleging the tort of wrongful adoption. This civil action is a recent legal development. The first successful wrongful adoption lawsuit, Burr v. Board of County Commissioners, took place in 1986. The tort of wrongful adoption permits adoptive parents to sue adoption agencies and collect monetary damages if the agencies deliberately conceal, intentionally misrepresent, or negligently fail to disclose the health status or family background of an adopted child [DeWoody 1993; Connelly 1991; Dickson 1991; Maley 1987; Goldenhersh 1992]. Since then, courts in at least five states have upheld wrongful adoption suits against child-placing institutions [Woo 1992; Goldenhersh 1992]. A Massachusetts jury in 1991, for example, awarded an adoptive couple $3.8 million because the state's Department of Social Services withheld the information that the adopted child was developmentally disabled and his biological mother was schizophrenic [Lambert & Moses 1991]. In response to these lawsuits, adoption agencies have claimed that they were following standard social welfare procedure in withholding an adopted child's medical and social history from the adoptive parents.But have adoption agencies always withheld an adopted child's medical and social history from adoptive parents? The material that follows suggests that the answer is no. It describes the historical development of adoption agencies' policies on disclosing medical and social history to adoptive parents and also seeks to explain why wrongful adoption lawsuits did not occur until recently and why they will probably die out in the next decade. Using a variety of sources, including the adoption case records of the Children's Home Society of Washington (CHSW or Society), annual reports of child-placing institutions, articles in popular magazines, statements by professional social workers, and survey research by the Child Welfare League of America (CWLA), this article argues that adoption agencies' release of medical and social history to adoptive parents has been cyclical in nature.During the first half of the twentieth century, a majority of adoption agencies disclosed all the facts in a child's case record to adoptive parents. Beginning in the 1950s, however, adoption agencies increasingly restricted disclosure of negative medical and social history to adoptive parents, partly in an effort to protect adopted children from social stigma and partly to accommodate adoptive parents' reluctance to discuss the matter with their children. In the past two decades, child-placing institutions have returned to a more open disclosure policy as a result of changes in the type of children available for adoption, the increasing flexibility of adoptive parents' attitudes toward special-needs children, and the impact of the adoption rights movement.Adoption Agencies, Adoptive Parents, and Postadoption ContactTwentieth century adoption literature documents that, to paraphrase a familiar adage, adoptive parents have been evaluated but not heard. Before the Second World War, policy recommendations and advice for evaluating adoptive parents' qualifications to adopt a child abounded in social work journals, adoption agency newsletters, and popular magazines. Professional social workers worked tirelessly to establish standards concerning the adoptive parents' mental and physical qualities, financial security, emotional stability, and religion. They called for extensive home studies, worried about the proper number of references to require, and debated whether the probationary period should be one year or less [Slingerland 1919; Hewins & Webster 1927; Sargent 1935; Clothier 1942]. Yet the paucity of any discussion of postadoption contact in social work literature before the 1950s is striking. …