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Adoption Of Children Act 1926 Essay

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The beginnings of adoption
Prior to the Adoption of Children Act 1926, the process of adoption had no regulation or governing law. Child adoption was an informal and generally secretive procedure which left adoptive parents with no rights, meaning that a biological parent remained their legal guardian (Keating, 2008). Meaning that children living as family with people who were not their parents still remained the legal responsibility of their birth parents. This resulted in a demand for custody, of a child, regardless of the length of time spent outside of the biological parent(s)’ care. This lack of formality also meant that there were no records of adoption preceding 1927.
The increasing number of ‘illegitimate’ children, …show more content…

Throughout the act, the child is referred to as the ‘infant’ and this encompasses any that is person under the age of twenty-one (s 1(2)). Nevertheless, the parameters were restricting as, under the Adoption of Children Act 1926, a court had no power to make an adoption order in respect of a child who was not a British subject and this act applied only to England and Wales - although a similar Act applicable to Scotland was passed in 1930 (Roll, 2001). An adoption order would also not be made without the consent of the mother, where this was regarded as a crucial part of the act. This was to ensure that “mothers were not compelled by extraneous circumstances into relinquishing their children permanently when a temporary respite was all that was needed in reality” (Bridge & Swindells, 2003:5). If a mother was consenting to an adoption, it was deemed that she was willingly relinquishing her care of the ‘infant’. A further limitation being that the rights transferred being restricted to only those relating to the custody of the child. An adoption under this Act “affected no rights of property or succession for the adopted child and no rights on the intestacy of the new family” (Bridge & Swindells,

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