| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.5

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.5 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Barbara Melosh. Strangers and Kin: The American Way of Adoption. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 2002. Pp. x, 326. $29.95.
In a field that still cries out for more attention, Barbara Melosh's history of adoption is a welcome volume. Her account of American adoption practices in the twentieth century is thorough, straightforward, and measured. Personally engaged with her subject, Melosh does not ignore the demands of her discipline, grounding her history in a wealth of data. To the material she uses from the Children's Bureau of Delaware (CBD) she adds data from newspapers, the writings of experts, photographs, and literature. The chapters that draw individual voices from the CBD records provide insight into the experiential dimensions of adoption for all participants.	1
Melosh covers the main subjects in American adoption, from baby markets to birthparent searches, from social work standards to family policy. Her chapters include an introduction to adoption in the United States (chapter one), an analysis of placement decisions (chapter two), a description of changing attitudes toward adoption (chapter three), a discussion of transracial adoption (chapter four), the knotty subject of secrecy (chapter five), and, finally, the direction adoption is taking in the twenty-first century (chapter six). Throughout, Melosh links changes in adoption practice to context; she notes the major social, political, and economic events that have an impact on adoption, the cultural shifts that affect the ideology of family, and the swings of professional opinion on "placing" children. She examines in detail the "personas" of participants: the figure of the relinquishing parent, for instance, which embodies ideologies of gender, sexuality, and family. Testimonies from CBD records distinguish the book from other coverage of these conventional topics in adoption literature.	. . .

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