TY - BOOK ID - 6654627 TI - Family matters : secrecy and disclosure in the history of adoption PY - 1998 SN - 0674796683 9780674796683 PB - London Harvard University Press DB - UniCat KW - Adoption KW - Open adoption KW - Adoptees KW - Birthparents KW - Family social work KW - Confidential communications KW - History KW - Identification KW - Identification. KW - History. KW - Child placing KW - Foster home care KW - Parent and child KW - Adoption - United States - History KW - Open adoption - United States - History KW - Adoptees - United States - Identification KW - Birthparents - United States - Identification KW - Family social work - United States KW - Confidential communications - United States UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:6654627 AB - Amid recent controversies over sealed adoption records and open adoption, it is ever more apparent that secrecy and disclosure are the defining issues in American adoptions--and these are also the central concerns of E. Wayne Carp's book. Mining a vast range of sources (including for the first time confidential case records of a twentieth-century adoption agency), Carp makes a startling discovery: openness, not secrecy, has been the norm in adoption for most of our history; sealed records were a post-World War II aberration, resulting from the convergence of several unusual cultural, demographic, and social trends. Pursuing this idea, Family Matters offers surprising insights into various notions that have affected the course of adoption, among them Americans' complex feelings about biological kinship versus socially constructed families; the stigma of adoption, used at times to promote both openness and secrecy; and, finally, suspect psychoanalytic concepts, such as "genealogical bewilderment," and bogus medical terms, such as "adopted child syndrome," that paint all parties to adoption as psychologically damaged. ER -