Adoption is History: Enhancing Counselor Awareness of Adoption as a Legal and Sociocultural Practice

Abstract

Understanding cultural history is essential to becoming a culturally responsive counselor. Despite adoptees’ increased risks for negative mental health outcomes, the history of adoption as a cultural and legal practice has been underemphasized in counseling scholarship. This overview of adoption practices from Ancient Babylon through the mid-1970s highlights lasting historical influences on modern adoption practice and the lingering threats to adoptees’ mental health from systemic legal and sociocultural inequities.

Keywords

adoption adoption history counseling ethics multicultural competencies

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