Lori Chamber's fascinating study explores the legal history of adoption in Ontario since the passage of the first statute in 1921. This volume explores a wide range of themes and issues in the history of adoption including: the reasons for the creation of statutory adoption, the increasing voice of unmarried fathers in newborn adoption, the reasons for movement away from secrecy in adoption, the evolution of step-parent adoption, the adoption of Indigenous children, and the growth of international adoption.

Unlike other works on adoption, this book focuses explicitly on statutes, statutory debates, and the interpretation of statutes in court. In doing so, she concludes that adoption is an inadequate response to child welfare and on its own cannot solve problems regarding child neglect and abuse. Rather, Chambers argues that in order to reform the area of adoption we must first acknowledge that it is built upon social inequalities within and between nations.

Lori Chambers teaches at McMaster University. She is the author of Married Women and Property Law in Western Ontario.

Lori Chambers' profile page

"Chambers’s scholarship provides needed insights into the origins of adoption law, the dubious tactics of social workers…, the responsibilities of putative fathers, the sordid tale of child apprehension, the debate between closed and open adoptions, and the fight to be legally recognized as parents by step-parents, same-sex parents, and biological fathers."

University of Toronto Quarterly, vol 87 3, Summer 2018

‘This is a timely and through analysis that will be of interest to scholars of legal and family history.’

The Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth vol 11:01:2018