October 21, 2013
Opt to Adopt
Seldom in life anyone not chose, desire or opt for someone or something. Opt in adopt comes from optare (“Online Etymology”), Latin for “choose or desire”. Furthermore, the desire to have a child is inversely proportional to the biological ability to produce one’s own. Unfortunately, not everyone is able to have a child that they can call their own, but they can adopt a child. Adoption can make a tremendous change in a person’s life, weather it is for a child being adopted or the adult. It could give new opportunity for children and allow to have a second chance at living a normal life.
Adoption, until the late 1800’s, has always been an informal process that didn’t hold any legal merit. In 1851, Massachusetts passed the first “modern” adoption law, recognizing adoption as a social and legal operation based on child welfare rather than adult interests. Historians consider the 1851 Adoption of Children Act an important turning point because it directed judges to ensure that adoptions were ‘fit and proper” (Herman). This was the first attempt to make sure that the children being adopted were looked after and cared for. In 1868 Massachusetts expanded upon this process further, and began paying for children to board in private family homes (Donaldson). No major changes to adoption were made until the early 1900’s when the First White House Conference on the Care of Depended Children declared that “poverty alone should not be grounds for removing children from families” (Herman). No child deserve to be abused, and adoption is a safer way out for them. Finally, in 1917, Minnesota passed the first law mandating social investigation of all adoptions (Hermana). This ensured was completely beneficial as opposed to legal child slavery.
The United States Department of Health and Human Services Administration for Children and Families latest position states that:
Post-adoption contact agreements are arrangements that allow...