| Infant adoption, though perpetually controversial, is a | | | | of contributing to overpopulation, complications with |
| practice that has endured through the ages, dating | | | | pregnancy and childbirth and the like are just a few |
| way back into the time of the Roman Empire, where | | | | of them. In fact, intra-family adoptions, believe it or |
| adopting young men in order to serve as heirs to | | | | not, happen way more often than adoptions |
| dynasties was not an uncommon practice. This | | | | between unrelated families, though the latter are the |
| carried well into the Middle Ages, also as a means to | | | | more publicized ones. Similar reasons, nevertheless, |
| produce heirs for a certain bloodline, and well into the | | | | also account for unrelated adoptions. |
| Civil War and immigration eras, where it was utilized in | | | | Adoptions come in two forms: open and closed. In an |
| order to complete (and sometimes, create) families | | | | open adoption, information between adoptive and |
| torn by all sorts of misfortune. Today, even though | | | | biological parents is freely communicated, allowing the |
| the procedures may be different and a little more | | | | individual involved in the infant adoption access to |
| legally founded, the principle remains the same: to | | | | information regarding his adoption, which includes |
| care for a child that has either lost his parents or | | | | unaltered birth certificates and adoption records. Any |
| does not have parents available, in order that he may | | | | binding agreements made between the adoptive and |
| still grow up with a family, considered to be the most | | | | biological parents of the child are also kept in the |
| basic unit of a human community. | | | | open, though with limited access to avoid abuse. |
| There are many reasons nowadays that back up the | | | | Closed adoptions are a different story altogether. In |
| idea of adoption. Intra-family adoptions are allowed | | | | a closed adoption, the records of the adoption and |
| when one or both parents of the child have died, | | | | other similar materials are kept confidential, usually by |
| resulting in a relation of either parent stepping in to | | | | a hired lawyer. This means that information linking the |
| be a stepmother or stepfather for the child, in order | | | | adopted child to his biological parents, people related |
| to re-create a family for the child. Many other | | | | biologically to the child, and other such information |
| reasons for intra-family adoptions exist: wanting to | | | | regarding the adoptee's biological identity are withheld |
| stop the spread of a hereditary disease, avoidance | | | | and kept a secret. |