The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare Volume 19 Issue 2 June Article 5 May 1992 The Sealed Adoption Records Controversy in Historical Perspective: The Case of the Children's Home Society of Washington, 1895-1988 E. Wayne Carp Pacific utherL an University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/jssw Part of the Social Work Commons Recommended Citation Carp, E. Wayne (1992) "The Sealed Adoption Records Controversy in Historical Perspective: The Case of the Children's Home Society of Washington, 1895-1988," The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare: Vol. 19 : Iss. 2 , Article 5. Available at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/jssw/vol19/iss2/5 This Article is brought to you by the Western Michigan University School of Social Work. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Sealed Adoption Records Controversy in Historical Perspective: The Case of the Children's Home Society of Washington, 1895-1988* E. WAYNE CARP Pacific Lutheran University Department of History *Iwould like to thank Charlie Langdon and D. Sharon Osborne, past and present Executive Directors of the Children's Home Society of Washing- ton (CHSW), for permission to use the CHSW's case records, and Randy Perin, Supervisor of the CHSW's Adoption Resource Center, whose en- thusiasm for this project has been inspirational. I am also grateful to Roger W. Toogood, Executive Director of the Children's Home Society of Minnesota (CHSM), and Marietta E. Spencer, Program Director, Post-Legal Adoption Services, CHSM, for permitting me access to the Society's case records. I would also like to thank Paula Shields, George Behlmer, Ruth Bloch, Clarke A. Chambers, Paula S. Fass, Ray Jonas, William I. Rorabaugh, and Eugene Sheridan for their thoughtful com- ments on earlier drafts of this paper. This paper samples the 21,000 adoption case records of the Children's Home Society of Washington between 1895 and 1988 in order to docu- ment and analyze the history of twentieth-century postadoption contact for adult adopted persons and birthparents.It demonstrates that as a re- sult of a variety of factors - primarily social work professionalism, the demographic profile of birthmothers, and the influence of psychoanalytic theory on casework practice - the Society's polcy on releasingfamily in- formation to clients evolved through three phases. In the first and longest phase, roughly from 1895 to the mid-1950s, the Society maintained that adult adopted persons were entitled to identifying and nonidentifying information and that birthparents had a legiN.ate claim to nonidentify- ing information. In the second phase, a transitionalperiod spanning the mid-1950s to the late-1960s, the Society's postadovtion policy of relative openness became more restrictive. In the final phase, beginning in the early 1970s, the Society established a firm policy of closed records. Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare The central issue igniting the Adoption Rights Movement in 1971 was the inability of adopted persons to gain access to information about their birth families contained in adop- tion case records (Sorosky, Baran, & Pannor, 1978, chap. 3). Institutional custodians of adoption records - courts, hospi- tals, and adoption agencies - citing state statutes, some more than a half century old, refused to divulge any family infor- mation to adopted persons or birthparents searching for their biological kin. As early as 1917 Minnesota enacted legislation closing adoption records to public inspection, and other states soon followed. By 1943, spurred on by reformers wanting to protect the child born out of wedlock from the stigma of ille- gitimacy, 23 states had passed similar legislation sealing adop- tion records. By the early 1970s, sealed records had become a standard, if not universal, feature of the adoption process, but they had also achieved a seeming immutability that belied the past from which they emerged (Heisterman, 1935, pp. 289-290; Colby, 1942, pp. 70-71). Not surprisingly, adoption rights activists assume that adop- tion records have always been sealed and that adoption agency officials have always been uncooperative in providing members of the adoption triad - adoptive parents, birthparents, and adopted persons - with family information (Sorosky, Baran & Pannor, 1978; Child Welfare, 1976, DiGiulio, 1979; Newborg, 1979; Weidell, 1980; Geissinger, 1984; Aumend & Barrett, 1984; Wertkin, 1986; Sachdev, 1988). These assumptions are so deeply rooted, so unquestioned, that adoption rights advocates have not even asked the question, "Have adoption records always been sealed?" because they begin with the ahistorical presump- tion that what is has always been so, and proceed accordingly. When adoption rights activists attempt to account for this state of affairs they assume, logically though without evidence, that adoption agencies and adoptive parents have conspired to seal the records (Fisher, 1971; Lifton, 1975, p. 12, 31, 105). But in fact, none of these assumptions is historically accurate. This article provides new information about a historical past that is all but unknown to historians, social workers, and proponents of un- sealing adoption records. It will demonstrate that the Children's Home Society of Washington State, the institution used here as a case study, had vast discretionary power over how much and Adoption Records to whom it divulged family information. The story is compli- cated, and the Society's response varied enormously, depending on which members of the adoption triad were involved, what kind of information they desired, and when they made their in- quiry. Generally, the Society's policy on releasing information to triad members evolved through three phases. In the first and longest phase, roughly from 1895 to the mid-1950s, the Society believed that adult adopted persons, regardless of legal restric- tions, were entitled to identifying information (surnames and addresses that would lead to locating birthparents) and non- identifying information (medical history or nationality) as long as it was in their best interests. During this first phase, the So- ciety also responded to birthparents, usually birthmothers, as if they had a legitimate claim to nonidentifying information. Indeed what is most striking about the Society's initial posta- doption contact policy was the way it used its discretionary power to divulge family information. In the postwar period, however, the Society's initial postadoption policy of relative openness gave way to a policy of secrecy that was shaped in the Cold War era primarily by social workers' increasing commit- ment to professional secrecy, the changing demographic profile of birthmothers, and the influence of psychoanalytic theory on casework policy. The second phase of the Society's postadoption policy - roughly from 1955 to 1968 - was one of transition. The Society became increasingly restrictive in giving out identi- fying information to adult adopted persons and nonidentifying information to birthmothers, believing that those who sought such data were irrational or emotionally disturbed. In the third phase, from the 1970s to the present, the CHSW established a firm postadoption policy of closed records. The Society reversed its policy of voluntarily giving nonidentifying information to adult adopted persons and refused to devulge any identifying family information to triad members without a court order. Data and Method This article uses for the first time the confidential adoption case records of a twentieth-century adoption agency: the Chil- dren's Home Society of Washington (CHSW or Society). The records run consecutively from 1895 to 1973 when, because of Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare the shortage of Caucasian infants, the Society all but ceased plac- ing children for adoption. One out of every ten of the CHSW's 21,000 adoption case records has been examined for evidence of its administrative policies toward releasing family informa- tion. (Data that the Society has added to the case records on postadoption contact has been examined through 1988.) The study's sample yielded 463 cases, comprising 479 individuals who returned to the Society 599 times in quest of informa- tion about themselves, siblings, or birthparents. Thus, almost a quarter of all cases (N=463) in this sample included postadop- tion contact. The case records have been supplemented by the Society's disorganized and incomplete minutes of supervisors' meetings, personnel files, and annual reports, dating mostly from the 1950s and 1960s. This article is a case study. But corroborative evidence from the Child Welfare League of American (CWLA) - a privately supported national organization of affiliate adoption agencies - and geographically diverse child placement agencies, such as those in Illinois, New York, Minnesota, Ohio, and Florida, lends strong support that the CHSW's policies were not unique. Rather, they were representative of mainstream adoption agen- cies' attitudes and practices. In evaluating the CHSW's represen- tativeness, it must be kept in mind that most adoption agencies still refuse to allow researchers access to their confidential case records. Scholars are invited to test this article's representative- ness by conducting research at their local adoption agencies. Until adoption agency officials permit researchers access to the case records, the data presented here may be the best historians and social workers will ever get. The Children's Home Society of Washington In 1896, a Methodist