An Adoption Program: A Study of the Development of the Spence-Chapin Adoption Service With Emphasis on the Present Program of Services, 1960

Christine Margaret Ksiazek, Fordham University

Abstract

Americans as a group have long been known for their concern for their children and the accompanying provision of educational, medical and social services to meet their needs. Within recent years much of their interest in child welfare has been focused on the field of adoption. Articles on this subject appear regularly not only in professional journals but in national magazines and daily newspapers. The subject is dramatized on television and radio. This widespread interest has raised many questions for both professional and lay people concerning the services needed in adoption and the way in which these services are being provided. Background of the Study. Adoption, the social, psychological and legal process through which a child becomes the son or daughter of a different set of parents than those to whom he was born, has existed in known history since Babylonian days. Within less than a single generation, this age-old process has become of vital interest and concern to the American public. Statistical data compiled by the United State's Children's Bureau reveals that three times as many children were adopted in 1944 as had been in 1934; between 1944 and 1953 there was an eighty per cent increase in adoptions, the number of children adopted increasing from approximately 50,000 to approximately 90,000.

Subject Area

Social work|Social research|Social studies education|Statistics

Recommended Citation

Ksiazek, Christine Margaret, "An Adoption Program: A Study of the Development of the Spence-Chapin Adoption Service With Emphasis on the Present Program of Services, 1960" (1960). ETD Collection for Fordham University. AAI30725065.
https://research.library.fordham.edu/dissertations/AAI30725065

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