Law Commons^™

The Best Interest Of The Child: Eliminating Discrimination In The Screening Of Adoptive Parents, Jehnna Irene Hanan

Golden Gate University Law Review

This comment will propose eliminating race and all factors that would be discriminatory in any other area of the law from consideration in adoption placement decisions, focusing instead on assessments of the parenting skills of individual prospective adoptive parents, and giving preference to foster parents or others who are already providing care to the child. Part II will discuss the historical precedents of today's adoption laws and show how the misperception of the adoptive family as inferior to the biological family helped to shape the current law. Part III will describe the process of adopting a child to demonstrate that …