Where and why was adoption began?

Here is the ''Adoption History Project " a website started by the research of Jean Paton, an adopted person.

http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~adoption/index.html

Jean was an adopted person, who is credited with starting the "open records movement."

She was born in the very early 20th century, and adopted before records were sealed.

In the UK it started in the way we know it in the late 19th century. Churches and charitable organisations would find homes for orphaned children and those living in poverty provided it was agreed with the parents. This evolved so that private adoptions were allowed as well, social services also got involved in it and adoption agencies were set up. Private adoptions were stopped about 1958 in the UK and are illegal here. All adoptions have to go through social services or adoption agencies which are generally charitable organisations so it is much cheaper here to adopt than other countries.

Adoptees are allowed to have their OBC once they turn 18 and can have access to records from that age in the UK

Child adoption was invented in 1851 in Massachusetts. It spread from there to other states, the U.K., Australia, Europe, Canada and other "white" nations.

It came out of laws to try to get immigrant children off the street, to provides homes for orphans, and as a social experiment to take the children of the poor away from them so "they won't breed more poor."

It is a myth that adoption began before then. Adult adoption did, yes, so that adult males could adopt other adult males as hiers. But in ancient times one did not legally adopt children because of high child mortality rates -- why take a chance the child would die?

Fostering on the other hand has been done forever. Child adoption, not. It is a recent social invention. Fostering differs from adoption because in adoption the child becomes legally "As If Born To" the adoptive parents and the original parents are "dead in law" to the child. They no longer are related in any way, shape or form. That artificial construct is recent. It is not found in nature.

After WWII, the adoption industry grew as the demand for healthy white infants grew and the social work profession worked on ways to separate unwed mothers from their children. It was then that it became truly a way to provide childless couples with womb-fresh infants.

It began wayyy before the start of civilization, or even humankind due to the fact that there were so many young orphaned/abandoned members of the species (human, canine, ect.) that the older members would take care of them as their own. The fact that childless couples also benefit is just a happy bonus