The impending revolution : the prospect for openness in Korean-American adoptions
This thesis explores the potential for openness in international adoptions and, more specifically, in Korean-American adoptions. Open adoptions are becoming more common in the United States. More adoptees are also searching for their birthfamilies. These changes resulted from social evolutions that reduced the stigmas surrounding adoption and illegitimacy. Changes in domestic adoptions affect international adoptions because both international adoptees and their adoptive parents are exposed to the adoption rights movements in this country. It seems probable that international adoptees will desire contact with their birthfamily as domestic adoptees have. This thesis uses the trend toward openness in the United States and the regulations governing international adoptions to create a list of factors to be evaluated when determining if openness in an international adoption would be beneficial to all members of the adoption triad, specifically the birthmothers, and therefore, probable. It is important to recognize that a birthmother may not always benefit from an open adoption. These factors include residency requirements for the adoptive parents during the adoption proceedings; specific definitions of adoption; stigmatization of illegitimacy; reverence for blood ties; the national divorce rate; population control legislation; a women's health care movement; and an adoption rights movement or birthmother organizations. Evaluating the specific situation in Korea at this time, it seems unlikely that open adoptions are currently possible. However, many social changes, especially connected with the status of women in Korean society, are currently taking place that will likely make open adoptions possible in the future. Thesis Advisor: Sally Haslanger Associate Professor of Philosophy
The Orphan Trains: Placing Out in America
"From 1850 to 1930 America witnessed a unique emigration and resettlement of at least 200,000 children and several thousand adults, primarily from the East Coast to the West. This 'placing out,' an attempt to find homes for the urban poor, was best known by the 'orphan trains' that carried the children. Holt carefully analyzes the system, initially instituted by the New York Children's Aid Society in 1853, tracking its imitators as well as the reasons for its creation and demise. She captures the children's perspective with the judicious use of oral histories, institutional records, and newspaper accounts. This well-written volume sheds new light on the multifaceted experience of children's immigration, changing concepts of welfare, and Western expansion. It is good, scholarly social history."-Library Journal
Keep or adopt: A study of factors influencing pregnant adolescents' plans for their babies
The 1976 U.S. census lists 235.3 births for every 1,000 unmarried women below the age of nineteen [1]. From these figures it appears that in spite of the availability of contraceptive methods adolescent pregnancy continues to be a problem in this country. It is one problem that has always been of interest to mental health practitioners and fortunately various services are available which provide social, medical and educational support. Several facilities offer comprehensive care, but the services are usually confined to the time of pregnancy and two to three months following the birth. While such services seem appropriate for a large number of young women, for some, however, care is needed for a longer period.