The Market in Babies
eBook - PDF

The Market in Babies

Stories of Australian Adoption

  1. 179 pages
  2. English
  3. PDF
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

The Market in Babies

Stories of Australian Adoption

About this book

The Market in Babies: Stories of Australian Adoption tells the history of adoption in Australia from its beginnings in the nineteenth century to its decline at the beginning of the twentyfirst. The authors find that a market in babies has long existed. In the early years supply outstripped demand: needy babies were hard to place. Midtwentieth century supply and demand grew together, with adoption presented as the perfect solution to two social problems: infertility and illegitimacy. Supply declined in the 1970s and demand turned to new global markets. Now these markets are closing, but technology provides new opportunities and Australians are acquiring babies through the surrogacy markets of India and the United States. As the rate of adoptions in Australia falls to an historic low, and parliaments across the country are apologising to parents and adoptees for the pain caused by past practices, this book identifies an historical continuum between the past and the present, and challenges the view that the best interests of the child can ever be protected in an environment where the market in babies is allowed to flourish. The authors of The Market in Babies are longestablished scholars expert in the history of the family, welfare history and the making of public policy in Australia.

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Yes, you can access The Market in Babies by Denise Cuthbert,Marian Quartly,Shurlee Swain in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Social Sciences & Feminism & Feminist Theory. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. List of abbreviations and acronyms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vi
  2. List of illustrations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii
  3. A note on the authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
  4. A note on the use of terms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . x
  5. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi
  6. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
  7. PART I: EXPERIENCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
  8. Chapter 1: Being adopted . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
  9. Chapter 2: The pain of mothering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
  10. PART II: PROCESS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
  11. Chapter 3: Making adoption safe and respectable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
  12. Chapter 4: Speaking truth to power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
  13. Chapter 5: The rise and fall of intercountry adoption . . . . . . . . . . . 102
  14. Chapter 6: New frontiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
  15. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
  16. Further reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
  17. Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149