California became a state in 1850. State law did not
include any reference to
adoption until 1870, when a statute for the first
time allowed for the legal
transfer of a child into the care of unrelated
adults, who would promise the
state of California to "raise such child as his or
their own . . . as if born of the
body of such person." Infants of unmarried mothers
could be left with the San
Francisco Lying-In Hospital and Foundling Asylum,
which could either place
the infants with adoptive parents or in
apprenticeships until they reached
adulthood. In 1874 new language in the adoption law
stated that, "after
adoption, the [child and adoptive parents] shall
sustain towards each other the
legal relation of parent and child, and have all the
rights and be subject to all
the duties of that relation."
The birth certificates of adopted individuals
were not secret at this time.
However, a birth certificate, particularly of a
child born out of wedlock, might
not exist and was not mandatory until the early 20th
century. By 1915, every
child in California was required to have his or her
birth recorded and kept by
an office of vital records. This was part of a
national program to register births.
Birth registration would help the federal government
do research about child
welfare while providing proof of age when school
attendance became
mandatory.
Prior to the 1930s, many Americans were
uncomfortable with the idea of
raising someone else's child as their own. (Indeed,
many still are today.) A
belief at that time was that unmarried mothers, by
definition, had "bad genes."
And while the adoption or fostering of child
laborers in the Midwest had been
popular in the late 19th century because family
farms required extra labor,
infants were of no practical use to most people at
that time. Many
"illegitimate" children died in the late 19th and
early 20th centuries after their
desperate mothers paid "baby farmers" to take them
and place them for
adoption. There was no market for infants and the
"baby farmers" were
unable to care for them.
In the 1930s, adoption of infants became more
acceptable in the United States
and adoption rates accelerated after World War II.
Now children's labor was
not required; adoption was an emotional act with
children thought to be
"priceless" additions to a family. Laws began to
catch up with practice. In 1927,
ALL adoptive homes in California were newly required
to be investigated by
the State Department of Social Welfare. Three
quarters of adoptions in
California at that time were independent, non-agency
placements, so the vast
majority of adoptive homes escaped any scrutiny
before 1927.
California was one of the early states to seal
original birth certificates of
adopted individuals from those individuals. This was
done in 1935, in the
middle of the Great Depression. Oakland's
Assemblyman Charles Fisher,
citing problems of blackmail of adoptive parents in
southern California,
presented a bill in January 1935 to make original
birth certificates of adoptees
unavailable to *anyone,* including the adoptive
parents, birth parents and
"the child," except by court order.
Assemblyman Fisher's concern, noted in the
Sacramento Bee (January 22,
1935), was that a blackmailer could threaten to tell
the child he or she was
adopted. This tells a lot about the social stigma of
adoption at the time records
were sealed in California. It appears that the
original purpose of sealing
records in California was to give adoptive parents
complete control over
whether to tell their child of the adoption and to
protect the adoptive family
from any outside interference, including blackmail.
The adoption of children
whose parents cannot take care of them was (and
continues to be) of great
interest to the government because, without
adoption, the government itself
might have to support these children at a time when
child labor had largely
been abolished, attendance at school had become
mandatory, and an
unprecedented economic depression had overtaken the
country during the
preceding five years. Reassuring adoptive parents of
their power and control
was probably thought to be essential to adoption in
1935.
But adoption records were already sealed to the
general public. If a stated
purpose of sealing records was to protect adoptive
parents, one possible
explanation for making records inaccessible to
adoptive parents might have
been a fear that potential blackmailers could
IMPERSONATE adoptive parents
in order to gain illegal access to the records.
Another possible explanation that
cannot be discounted is that certain adoption agency
officials may have urged
sealing records from all parties in order to protect
themselves from having
their illegal practices discovered.
The role of unscrupulous adoption agencies should
not be overlooked because
a "black market" of illegal adoptions was active in
North America and in
many parts of the world during the 1930s and 1940s.
Georgia Tann, head of the
Children's Home Society of Memphis, Tennessee until
her death in 1950,
placed many children in California, including with
actors in Hollywood.
Adoptive parents in California who had obtained
children from Tann's agency
became her advocates through an organization called
the Adoptive Children's
Association, most likely unaware of her irregular
practices. Days before
Tann's death, her illegal actions were uncovered by
a new city administration
in Memphis: she had sold children for profit, lied
about their original
identities to adopting parents, completely
fabricated birth certificates,
terminated parental rights of impoverished birth
parents in order to place
their children for profit, and allowed children in
her agency's care to die for
lack of medical treatment. Conveniently, these
practices would never be
discovered with records tightly sealed to all. Such
was the social environment
during the time adopted people's birth certificates
were sealed in California.