The Market in Babies: Stories of Australian Adoption

(Paperback)

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This book tells the history of adoption in Australia from its beginnings in the nineteenth century to its decline at the beginning of the twenty-first. The authors find that a market in babies has long existed. In the early years supply outstripped demand; needy babies were hard to place. Mid-twentieth century demand and supply grew together with adoption presented as the perfect solution to two social problems: infertility and illegitimacy. Supply declined in the 1970s and demand turned to new global markets. Now these markets are closing, but technology provides new opportunities and Australians are acquiring babies through the surrogacy markets of India and the United States. As the rate of adoptions in Australia falls to a historic low, and parliaments across the country are apologising to parents and babies for the pain caused by past practices, this book identifies an historical continuum between the past and the present and challenges the view that the best interests of the child can ever be protected in an environment where the market for babies is allowed to flourish.

Author Bio

Marian Quartly has taught and researched Australian history at Monash University for longer than she cares to remember. Her publications include the co-authored Creating a Nation, a feminist history of Australia. She is currently writing about gendered citizenship (male and female), about museums and virtual communities, and about the history of adoption in Australia. Her interest in visual representations of gendered citizens in this case of workers and capitalists arises out of the need to relate to a visually oriented generation of students. Shurlee Swain is a Professor at Australian Catholic University. She has published widely in the history of women and children, with a particular interest in the impact of welfare on individual lives. Denise Cuthbert is currently Dean of the School of Graduate Research at RMIT. She has a long-standing interest in adoption and family formation and has published on the experiences of non-Aboriginal women who adopted and fostered Aboriginal children. In her recent work on the history of adoption in Australia, Denise has published widely on the politics and philosophy of adoption policy.