Law Commons^™

Adoption In The Progressive Era: Preserving, Creating, And Re-Creating Families, Chris Guthrie, Joanna L. Grossman

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The history of adoption law and practice has received scant attention from legal scholars and historians. Most of what little scholarship there is focuses on the history of adoption to the mid-nineteenth century, when the first adoption statutes emerged in the United States. Although the enactment of these statutes has been hailed as "an historic moment in the history of Anglo-American family and society" and "the most far-reaching innovation of nineteenth-century custody law," few scholars have made an effort to document the actual operation of adoption law following the enactment of these landmark statutes. This article does just that. Drawing …