| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 107.1

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 107.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Julie Berebitsky. Like Our Very Own: Adoption and the Changing Culture of Motherhood, 1851–1950. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. 2000. Pp. viii, 248. $34.95.

Ads on billboards across America show a group of smiling children of diverse age and cultural origins with a caption that reads: "Adopt Us." As Julie Berebitsky reminds us, this is not the first public campaign in American history in which adoption has been highlighted as the desired solution for dependent children. While today the new interest in adoption stems from the wish to find a solution for the half million children languishing in foster care, a similar campaign during the Progressive era sought to relieve the pressure on child care institutions. Now, like then, most children were not free for adoption, and adoptive parents preferred babies over older kids. 1

As experts debate the various adoption options ("open" or "closed" adoption, interracial and international adoption, adoption of older kids, single-parent and gay and lesbian adoption), recent historians focus on the changes in ideology that led to these options. E. Wayne Carp, in Family Matters: Secrecy and Disclosure in the History of Adoption (1998), depicts the fight for open adoption records that eventually led to "open" adoption. Berebitsky's main concerns are the changes in the ideal adoptive family and the experience of the adoptive family between 1851 to 1950, as legal and professional experts shaped adoption rules and practices. . . .

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