Abstract
Various mythologies have attached to the ‘adoption industrial complex’ which established itself in the late nineteenth century, both within and across national borders, bolstered by the belief that many orphans and foundlings are easily uprooted and happy to be transplanted.
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Notes
- 1.
See further McKee, Kimberly, ‘Monetary Flows and the Movements of Children: The Transnational Adoption Industrial Complex’ Journal of Korean Studies (2016) 21 (1), pp. 137–178 on how South Korea’s relationship with the United States became a global ‘template for a multi-million-dollar industry’ and how ‘smaller deterritorialized sites - the South Korean state, orphanages, adoption agencies, and American immigration policy’ worked together to enable this.
- 2.
See Oh, Arissa H., ‘War Waif to Ideal Immigrant: The Cold War Transformation of the Korean Orphan’ Journal of American Ethnic History (2012) 31 (4), pp. 34–55 on the ‘historiographical disappearance’ of Korean refugee orphans was reconfigured as an immigration narrative: ‘Korean orphans are typically described —if they appear at all — as an early group of immigrants…their refugee roots have been erased from our historical imaginations.’ p. 35.
- 3.
Drain, Susan, ‘Community and the Individual in Anne of Green Gables: The Meaning of Belonging’ Children’s Literature Association Quarterly (1986) 11 (1), pp. 15–19, p. 16.
- 4.
Proehl, Kristen, ‘Sympathetic Childhoods: Girl Orphans, Adoptions, and Reimagined Families in Sentimental Literature’ Women’s Studies Quarterly (2015) 43 (1/2), pp. 295–298 (reviewing Singley, Carol J., ‘Adopting America: Childhood, Kinship, and National Identity in Literature’ and Sanders, Joe Sutliff, ‘Disciplining Girls: Understanding the Origins of the Classic Orphan Girl Story’).
- 5.
Tessler, Richard et al., ‘The Many Faces of International Adoption: Endings, Beginnings, and Everything in Between’ Contexts (2011) 10 (4), pp. 34–39, p. 34 arguing that, as a social practice, international adoption remains ‘complicated and complex in both racial and global terms, a terrain that brings out some of the contradictory positive and problematic aspects of contemporary American race relations, and a practice with ramifications reaching well beyond American borders’ (p. 35). They argue further that international adoption also exposes deep fault lines that divide whites from blacks, rich from poor, and west from east’ (p. 39).
- 6.
Kim, Eleana, ‘Our Adoptee, Our Alien: Transnational Adoptees as Specters of Foreignness and Family in South Korea’ Anthropological Quarterly (2007) 80 (2), Kinship and Globalization, pp. 497–531, p. 497 analysing the ‘conflation of “blood” with “kinship” and “nation”.’
- 7.
Kim, Eleana, ‘Human Capital: Transnational Korean Adoptees and the Neoliberal Logic of Return’ The Journal of Korean Studies (2012) 17 (2), pp. 299–327, p. 299.
- 8.
Ibid., p. 321.
- 9.
Ibid., p. 322.
- 10.
Godden, Rumer, ‘An Episode of Sparrows’ (1955) Virago: London, p. 30.
- 11.
See further Keating, Jenny, ‘A Child for Keeps: The History of Adoption in England, 1918–45’ (2009) Palgrave Macmillan: England.
- 12.
Birk, Megan, ‘The Farm, Foster Care, and Dependent Children in the Midwest, 1880–1920’ The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era (2013) 12 (3), pp. 320–342, p. 321, noting also that ‘these children, sometimes erroneously labeled orphans because most possessed at least one living parent, were defined as dependents because they relied on public or private charity outside their family home.’
- 13.
Birk, ibid., p. 321.
- 14.
Creagh, Dianne, ‘The Baby Trains: Catholic Foster Care and Western Migration, 1873–1929’ Journal of Social History (2012) 46 (1), pp. 197–218, p. 199.
- 15.
See further MacDonald, David B., ‘The Slee** Giant Awakes: Genocide, Indian Residential Schools, and the Challenge of Conciliation’ (2019) University of Toronto Press: Toronto.
- 16.
See further Gray, Jane, ‘The Circulation of Children in Rural Ireland During the First Half of the Twentieth Century’ Continuity and Change (2014) 29 (3), pp. 399–421, who argues that the ‘circulation of children and adolescents formed part of a set of flexible, adaptive practices oriented towards preserving and supporting kinship groups, and in some cases towards improving family status by facilitating upward social mobility.’
- 17.
On the international child rescue movement, see further Swain, Shurlee, ‘Sweet Childhood Lost: Idealized Images of Childhood in the British Child Rescue Literature’ The Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth (2009) 2 (2), pp. 198–214.
- 18.
Sanders, Joe Sutliff, ‘Disciplining Girls: Understanding the Origins of the Classic Orphan Girl Story’ (2011) John Hopkins University Press: US, p. 92.
- 19.
Anne of Green Gables (1908) loc. 111 kindle ed. The question of taking in an Indigenous child would obviously not have arisen, given the use of Residential Schools. See also Dubinksy, Karen, ‘Babies Without Borders: Adoption and Migration Across the Americas’ (2010) University of Toronto Press: Toronto, p. 9.
- 20.
Sanders, op. cit. p. 89.
- 21.
Swain, op. cit., p. 200.
- 22.
Sanders, op. cit. p. 90 a.
- 23.
Sanders, ibid., p. 90 adding that other novels of the time had ‘…embraced story telling as a way to enchant and thereby direct objects of discipline.’ As such, Anne of Green Gables ‘feels nostalgic… relentlessly recount[ing] the successes of moral suasion.’
- 24.
Ibid., p. 90.
- 25.
Drain, Susan, ‘Community and the Individual in Anne of Green Gables: The Meaning of Belonging’ Children’s Literature Association Quarterly (1986) 11 (1), pp. 15–19, p. 16.
- 26.
Anne of Green Gables, Loc 149.
- 27.
Swain, op. cit., 202.
- 28.
Anne of Green Gables, p. 200.
- 29.
A Little Princess, p. 173.
- 30.
Ibid., p. 175.
- 31.
Ibid., p. 179.
- 32.
Gruner, Elisabeth Rose, ‘Cinderella, Marie Antoinette, and Sara: Roles and Role Models’ in A Little Princess. The Lion and the Unicorn (1998) 22 (2), pp. 163–187. Though Cinderella-like in nature, Sara’s story differs in significant ways: her rescue from poverty and abuse does not depend upon her making a ‘good’ marriage, ‘nor is her endurance either mute or passive’ (p. 168).
- 33.
A Little Princess, p. 174.
- 34.
Ibid.
- 35.
Kimball, Miles A., ‘Aestheticism, Pan, and Edwardian Children’s Literature’ CEA Critic (2002) 65 (1) Special Issue: Scholarly Approaches to Literature for Children and Adolescents, pp. 50–62, p. 50, arguing further that ‘the figure of Pan in these works allows us to recognize the ironies surrounding the Romantic child, encouraging us to look more carefully at children's literature that uses this literary device to represent the status of childhood’ p. 61.
- 36.
Little White Bird, p. 24.
- 37.
Mickalites Carey, ‘Fairies and a Flâneur: J. M. Barrie’s Commercial Figure of The Child’ Criticism (2012) 54 (1), pp. 1–27, p. 1.
- 38.
Ibid.
- 39.
Little White Bird, p. 91.
- 40.
Ibid., p. 110.
- 41.
Ibid.
- 42.
Ibid.
- 43.
Stolzenbach, Mary M. ‘Braid Yorkshire: The Language of Myth? An appreciation of ‘The Secret Garden’ by Frances Hodgson Burnett’ Mythlore (Winter 1995) 20 (4) (78), pp. 25–29, p. 26.
- 44.
The Secret Garden, Loc 157.
- 45.
Stolzenbach, op. cit., p. 29.
- 46.
Birk, op. cit., p. 325, adding how ‘stories filled the media of foster children abused, killed, unsupervised, or lost in the system. Indeed, the weaknesses of the foster-home system eventually corresponded to problems that progressives sought to remedy in farm placements over one hundred years earlier.’
- 47.
Honeyman, Susan, E., ‘Childhood Bound: In Gardens, Maps, and Pictures’ Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal (2001) 34 (2) No. 2, A Special Issue: Children’s Literature (June 2001), pp. 117–132, p. 118.
- 48.
Ibid., p. 131.
- 49.
Eckford- Prosser, Melanie, ‘Colonizing Children: Dramas of Transformation’ Journal of Narrative Theory (2000) 30 (2), pp. 237–262, p. 259.
- 50.
Ibid.
- 51.
Blackford, H., ‘Unattached Women Raising Cain: Spinsters Touching Orphans’ in Anne of Green Gables and Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ South: A Scholarly Journal (2018) 51 (1), pp. 36–53. Not only does the analogy of the slave orphan underscore Anne’s entrapment in a system that traffics children and bears visceral prejudice; the parallel growth in the spinsters, who assert their independence and empower themselves to protect the girls, also suggests broader implications in social reform and feminism.
- 52.
Names and re-naming, matter, as ever. That she misnames it Jiminy Cricket is telling, calling to mind a conscience-ticking companion, the ‘talking cricket’ character of Collodi’s The Adventures of Pinocchio (1883), who, like the statute of Mary that had often guided or ‘advised’ Lovejoy, is broken into pieces when the main character throws something at it in anger (his subsequent ghost form, notwithstanding). The miniature rose’s official name was Little Monarch; it could be argued that Lovejoy—and her society—is less in need of an ancient system than they are of a conscience-provoking entity. Renaming is significant as Chapter 5 discusses more fully.
- 53.
She ‘managed by stealing’ as Angela observes. The objects that she takes are symbolic of home life and of childhood, small luxuries such as sweets and ice cream, ribbon for her hair and—in a nod to the opportunities missed out on at school—a pencil sharpener (p. 28). A literal safety net—taken from a child’s pram—is also stolen by her, to protect her seedlings from birds. The irony should not be lost.
- 54.
An Episode of Sparrows, p. 26.
- 55.
This is in sharp contrast to Tip’s uniform (he is sent off to train for the Navy, a punishment which, for him, is much more reward than sanction) which will visibly indicate that he has joined a respected community, held in high regard by society.
- 56.
The kindly Vincent, who gradually becomes a de facto foster parent to the neglected, abandoned girl, acts as a sort of social worker. He literally removes her from the freezing stairs outside the rented room she shares with her mother taking her to a ‘place of safety’ (the wording of the Children and Young Persons Act 1933 s.107 which would have then been in force). A dying Olivia considers adopting or fostering Lovejoy but is told in no uncertain terms by her sister Angela that ‘old maids’ are never permitted to adopt children (p. 257).
- 57.
Diver A ‘Equity, Altruism, and the Voice of the Child in An Episode of Sparrows: Perennial Issues of Youth Justice and Child Protection’ Children’s Literature Association Quarterly (2021) 46 (4), pp. 357–378, where I argue that even yet (as The Redgrave Report (2021: 3) observed) there are perennial, systemic ‘blind spot[s]’ in dealing with extremely vulnerable children and young persons.
- 58.
Parker, David, ‘Oliver Twist and the Fugitive Family’ Dickens Studies Annual (2000) 29, pp. 41–59, p. 53.
- 59.
The ‘consistency’ of Brocklehurst’s regime is mirrored by the ‘sameness’ of Lowry’s sedated, barely human village in The Giver (1993). Even the relentlessly cheery Anne (Anne of Green Gables) is initially forbidden from having fashionable clothing, given what it might represent in terms of non-conformity with her new family.
- 60.
See, e.g., The Preamble and Article 1 of the UDHR. https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights.
- 61.
‘Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.’ UDHR, Article 2 (Emphasis added). Article 7 reaffirms that ‘All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.’
- 62.
There is also a right to not have to suffer ‘attacks’ upon one’s ‘honour and reputation’ (Article 12). The preservation of social respectability, as ever, seems to be a key concern.
- 63.
Article 1 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (2000) states that “Human dignity is inviolable. It must be respected and protected.” See also Article 7 on the ‘right to respect for private and family life, home and communications.’
- 64.
As noted by the Australian Human Rights Commission ‘Human Rights Brief No.1’, https://humanrights.gov.au/our-work/human-rights-brief-no-1. Domestic legislation can offset this by making best interests the paramount consideration, see further https://www.alrc.gov.au/publication/seen-and-heard-priority-for-children-in-the-legal-process-alrc-report-84/16-childrens-involvement-in-family-law-proceedings/the-best-interests-principle/.
- 65.
Hammarberg, Thomas, (Commissioner for Human Rights Council of Europe) ‘The Principle of the Best Interests of the Child – What it Means and What it Demands From Adults’ (Lecture), 30 May, 2008 (Warsaw) CommDH/Speech (2008) 10. https://rm.coe.int/16806da95d.
- 66.
Ibid.
- 67.
As seen recently, citizenship and nationality can also be lost later in life. Tammy, Kim, E., ‘Adoptees Have the Same Right to Citizenship as Biological Children’ New York Times (September 2021). https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/23/opinion/adoption-immigration-korea.html.
- 68.
See, e.g., Sect. 3 of The Children Act 1989, and article 3 of The Children (NI) Order 1995, and their attendant welfare checklists. Moreover, there is the presumption that parliament will not enact legislation that conflicts with the government’s obligations under international law.
- 69.
See further Diver, Alice, ‘A Law of Blood-ties: The ‘Right’ to Access Genetic Ancestry’ (2014) Springer: London, Chapter 4 on UN Committee Guidance.
- 70.
Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe Resolution 2232 (2018) ‘Striking a Balance Between the Best Interest of The Child and the Need to Keep Families Together’. https://assembly.coe.int/nw/xml/XRef/Xref-XML2HTML-en.asp?fileid=25014&lang=en.
- 71.
O’Halloran, Kerry, ‘Adoption and Human Rights: International Perspectives’ (2018) Routledge: London, p. 307.
- 72.
Ibid., p. 308.
- 73.
Ibid., p. 308.
- 74.
Ibid., 309.
- 75.
See further Singley’s seminal account of informal, openly practised adoption processes in the United States Singley, Carol J., ‘Adopting America: Childhood, Kinship, and National Identity in Literature’ (2011) Oxford University Press: Oxford, which sets out how, by the mid-twentieth century, adoption had generally become ‘a well-maintained secret, at times hidden even from the adoptee.’ See also Singley, Carol J., ‘Teaching American Literature: The Centrality of Adoption’ Modern Language Studies (2004) 34 (1/2), pp. 76–83, p. 77, on ‘personal, familial, and national identity, including the longing for lost origins; the embrace of new beginnings; and the interplay of competing loyalties to self and others.’
- 76.
Barnett-Jones Beverley and Manning Cliff, ‘Modernising Post-Adoption Contact: Findings From a Recent Consultation’ (2021) Nuffield Family Justice Observatory (NFJO), which found for example that ‘Some adoptees told us that they had not known that their birth parents had been forbidden to say ‘I love you’ in their letters until they had reconnected as adults. Some adopters told us that they had wanted to share more truth about their child’s presenting issues but had been advised against doing so for fear of distressing the birth family and/or being seen as failing’ (p. 5).
- 77.
The Human Rights Act 1998 incorporated much of the ECHR into the UK’s domestic law, making its provisions binding rather than persuasive. Chapter 5 discusses the UK’s recent government Inquiry (The Right to Family Life: Adoption of Children of Unmarried Women 1949–1976) which looked at forced adoptions in England and Wales and the violation of family life (rather than family life rights, notably). An apology has not been forthcoming, despite government acknowledgement of the harms suffered by mothers and adoptees.
- 78.
Not least because of the delineating phrase ‘right to respect for’ (rather than a more straightforward ‘right to’) home, family, and private life (Article 8 (1)).
- 79.
The wording of Article 8 ECHR can be problematic: having respect for someone’s right to family life clearly differs from being under a juridical obligation to actively take positive steps to realise, protect, or promote that right, and indeed their right to identity, if it is resting upon the presence or absence of a familial connection. The notion of respect also suggests an agenda of passive non-interference, rather than a binding duty to endorse or actively assist with the maintenance or repair of less obvious bonds of kinship, or to help with identifying or contacting genetic relatives.
- 80.
Draghici, Carmen, ‘The Legitimacy of Family Rights in Strasbourg Case Law: Living Instrument or Extinguished Sovereignty?’(2017) Bloomsbury: Oxford p. 1.
- 81.
See further Deblasio, Lisa Marie, ‘Hiding Behind the Law? A Critique of the Law and Practice under the Adoption and Children Act 2002’ Plymouth Law and Criminal Justice Review (2014) 6, pp. 148–172, who argues that in practice, there is significant reliance upon legal fictions ‘and a disregard of flaws within the system, which not only contravenes any rights retained by birth parents, but creates legal voids for children, which conflict directly with the paramountcy principle.’ p. 148; Hill, Amelia, ‘Adoption a ‘runaway train’ often breaching rights of birth parents’ The Guardian (2018) on how the UK ‘has the highest number of adoptions in Europe and is one of just three EU countries that allow forced or non-consensual adoptions – where children are adopted against the wishes of their birth parents..[it is] the only country in Europe to have a uniform rule forbidding any direct contact between adopted children and their birth and foster families.’ https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/jan/18/adoption-has-become-runaway-train-social-workers-cannot-stop (accessed 30 July 2023); Thornberry Hugh, ‘Forced adoption’ criticism shouldn’t get in the way of hel** children’ Community Care (2016) https://www.communitycare.co.uk/2016/03/09/policy-changed-forced-adoption-criticism/ (accessed 1 January 2023).
- 82.
See further Featherstone Brid and Gupta Anna, ‘The Role of The Social Worker in Adoption – Ethics and Human Rights: An Enquiry’ (2016) British Association of Social Workers (BASW) on how ‘in recent decades, policy makers had tended to promote adoption as risk free in a ‘happy ever after’ narrative….’ This is despite the frequent ‘silencing of adopted children and adults who may have to manage contradictory emotions such as grief and loss, joy and happiness [and] birth families being unable to articulate their losses and feelings of shame and sadness.’ https://www.basw.co.uk/media/news/2018/jan/basw-unveils-adoption-enquiry-report-and-key-findings (accessed 12 July 2023). See also the BASW Response (2018) https://www.basw.co.uk/system/files/resources/basw_55744-7.pdf (accessed 12 July 2023).
- 83.
See, e.g., Re Z (A Minor: Freeing for Adoption) (2022) NI Fam 1; R. and H. v. the United Kingdom, (2011) no. 35348/06; In the Matter of TM and RM (Freeing) [2010] NI Fam 23; Re W (An Infant) [1971] 2 AER 49; Re C (a minor) (Adoption: Parental Agreement, Contact) [1993] 2 FLR 260; and Down and Lisburn Trust v H and R [2006] UKHL 36, with particular reference to the Dissenting Opinion of Baroness Hale (now Lady Hale).
- 84.
Seddon v Oldham MBC (Adoption Human Rights) [2015] EWHC 2609 (Fam).
- 85.
Hollis, op. cit.
- 86.
Ibid. The statutory requirement that birth parents must firstly apply for the court’s permission to bring contact proceedings is arguably not compatible with Article 8’s provisions.
- 87.
Roagna, Ivana, ‘Protecting the Right to Respect for Private and Family Life Under the European Convention on Human Rights’ (2012) Council of Europe, p. 30, https://www.echr.coe.int/documents/d/echr/Roagna2012_EN.
- 88.
See however Anayo v Germany [2010] EHRR (Application no. 20578/07) and the Dissent in Odièvre v France [2003] 1 FCR 621 (Application no. 42326/98).
- 89.
The court stressed that the ‘as if born to’ paradigm still held sway in this jurisdiction, via s.67 of the Adoption and Children Act 2002 (‘ACA’) (para 31). See also B (a Child), Re [2013] UKSC 33 (12 June 2013).
- 90.
Para 34, citing In Re B (Adoption: Jurisdiction to Set Aside) (1995) Fam 239 per Simon Brown LJ.
- 91.
Adoptees in England and Wales have been able generally to obtain their original birth certificate at age 18, since the mid-1970s; see further The Children Act 1975, and The Adoption Act 1976.
- 92.
EHCR Application no. 35991/04.
- 93.
EHCR Application no. 31021/08.
- 94.
HH Hollis, Keith ‘Does Article 8 Survive Adoption?’ UK Human Rights Blog (2015). https://ukhumanrightsblog.com/2015/10/06/does-article-8-survive-adoption/.
- 95.
I.S. v. Germany (2014), op. cit. n. Significantly, it was noted that the adoptive parents had at first hesitated to tell the children that they were adopted: they had also apparently been planning to write a letter to the birth mother but had held back from doing so due to feelings of insecurity caused by the commencement of the court proceedings (para 32). It was noted too at the Appeal stage that the German Civil Code provided that when an adoption takes effect, the relationship of the child ‘and its descendants to its previous relatives and the rights and duties arising from this are extinguished.’ The Civil Code similarly did not recognise ‘half open’ or open adoptions.
- 96.
Ibid. at para 68.
- 97.
Ibid.
- 98.
Ibid. It was held that ‘the applicant could not be granted contact, as she had not created a significant social and family relationship with the children. The time of pregnancy and the two weeks after the birth did not suffice. The Civil Code grants to the adoptive parents the sole right to establish, grant or deny contact with the children even in respect of the natural mother. Furthermore, the court argued that the children, who were only three years old, might be overwhelmed by the fact that they had two mothers’ (at para 33, emphasis added).
- 99.
Ibid. The court reiterated that while the ‘essential object’ of Article 8 was the protection of the individual against arbitrary interferences by the State, this does not merely oblige the State refrain from such interference.
Positive obligations arise too, via the duty to respect private or family life. However, ‘the boundaries between the State’s positive and negative obligations under Article 8 do not lend themselves to precise definition.’
Moreover, ‘regard must be had to the fair balance which has to be struck between the general interest and the interests of the individual’ (para 70).
- 100.
See, e.g., Kearns v France [2008] (Application no. 35991/04); Webster (the Parents) v Norfolk County Council [2009] EWCA Civ 59, and the useful summary Press Assoc., ‘Couple vow to fight adoption ‘miscarriage of justice’ The Guardian (2009) https://www.theguardian.com/society/2009/feb/12/child-adoption-appeal-court-ruling.
- 101.
EWCA Civ 1146; See also In re B (A Child) (Care Proceedings: Threshold Criteria) [2013] UKSC 33.
- 102.
Downs, Martin, ‘When Adoption Without Parental Consent Breaches Human Rights’, UK Human Rights Blog (2013) https://ukhumanrightsblog.com/2013/10/01/when-adoption-without-consent-breaches-human-rights/ adding that ‘The Family courts [had] been bracing themselves for this Judgment since McFarlane LJ gave permission to appeal on 14 June 2013 (Re B-S (Children) [2013] EWCA Civ 813) and deployed the phrase audit to describe the kind of scrutiny of human rights issues required in public law family cases since In re B.’
- 103.
Ibid.
- 104.
EWCA Civ 407.
- 105.
Jackson LJ (at para 59) offers a workable template, suggesting that courts include background facts, and identify the core issues prior to deciding on the relevant legal tests. The important aspects of verbal and written evidence must be highlighted in advance, with evidence evaluated as whole and weightings clarified. Explanation should be given for the decision reached.
- 106.
Featherstone and Gupta, op. cit.
- 107.
Singley (2004), op. cit., p. 82.
- 108.
See further however Paradiso and Campanelli v Italy ECHR [2017] (Application no. 25358/12), a surrogacy case involving Article 8 ECHR in which the absence of genetic connection seems to have been a significant factor in the Strasbourg Court’s decision to remove the commissioned child from his prospective adoptive parents (who had by that stage been raising him for 8 months). Italy’s aim of banning commercial surrogacy—via criminalisation—was key here. The placing of the child into the care system—orphanising him—seems a disproportionate response and not entirely in kee** with other decisions such as, for example, Mennesson v France ECHR [2014] (Application no. 65192/11).
- 109.
Strand Lobben and Others v. Norway [2019] (Application no. 37283/13) at para 206.
- 110.
Loibl, Elvira, ‘Abdi Ibrahim v. Norway: A New Zeitgeist regarding (Intercultural) Adoptions at the ECtHR’ (2022) Strasbourg Observers https://strasbourgobservers.com/2022/04/11/abdi-ibrahim-v-norway-a-new-zeitgeist-regarding-intercultural-adoptions-at-the-ecthr/; See also Patsianta Kiriaki D.M. and N. v. Italy: Individual Measures in Aid of Biological Parents in Adoption Proceedings (2022) Strasbourg Observers https://strasbourgobservers.com/2022/04/04/d-m-and-n-v-italy-individual-measures-in-aid-of-biological-parents-in-adoption-proceedings/ on the increased need for more bespoke approaches in such cases.
- 111.
Draghici, op. cit., p. 279.
- 112.
Gilead, Sarah, ‘Magic Abjured: Closure in Children's Fantasy Fiction’ PMLA (1991) 106 (2), pp. 277–293, p. 288.
- 113.
Karín, Lesnik-Oberstein ‘The Psychopathology of Everyday Children's Literature Criticism’ Cultural Critique (2000) 45, pp. 222–242.
Works Cited
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Barnett-Jones, Beverley and Cliff Manning, ‘Modernising Post-adoption Contact: Findings From a Recent Consultation’ (2021) Nuffield Family Justice Observatory (NFJO).
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Blackford, H., ‘Unattached Women Raising Cain: Spinsters Touching Orphans in Anne of Green Gables and Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ South: A Scholarly Journal (2018) 51 (1), pp. 36–53.
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Deblasio, LisaMarie, ‘Hiding Behind the Law? A Critique of the Law and Practice under the Adoption and Children Act 2002’ Plymouth Law and Criminal Justice Review (2014) 6, pp. 148–172.
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Diver, A. (2023). Adoption’s ‘Golden Age’: From Orphan Rescue to the Rights of the Child. In: Genetic Stigma in Law and Literature. Palgrave Socio-Legal Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46246-7_4
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