As Long as Parents Can Accept Them: Medical Disclosure, Risk, and Disability in Twentieth-Century American Adoption Practice.

Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press Country of Publication: United States NLM ID: 0141233 Publication Model: Print Cited Medium: Internet ISSN: 1086-3176 (Electronic) Linking ISSN: 00075140 NLM ISO Abbreviation: Bull Hist Med Subsets: MEDLINE

Original Publication: Baltimore, MD : Johns Hopkins University Press

Adoption* ; Communication* ; Parents*; Disclosure/*history; Disabled Persons/history ; History, 20th Century ; Humans ; Risk ; United States

This article reviews adoption debates about the disclosure of children's medical history in the twentieth century, noting shifts in the prescription of how much and what to tell adoptive applicants. I look at how adoption professional debates throughout the twentieth century around the disclosure of a child's medical history reveal the ways in which these professionals tried to deal with issues of predictability, risk, adoptability, and acceptability when it came to the persistent question of disability in adoptive family making. I consider how this management is similar to and different from histories of reproduction. I argue that as child eligibility gradually expanded to include children labeled disabled, and as adoption moved from a being a parent-centered practice to a child-centered one, professionals more intensely negotiated the management and communication of disability risk as a way to both mitigate the possibility of a failed placement and to facilitate a successful one.

Date Created: 20170404 Date Completed: 20170518 Latest Revision: 20170518

20231215

10.1353/bhm.2017.0004

28366898