Factors Considered in the Adoption of Older Children: A Study of Six Children, Aged Three to Six, After a Period of Foster Home Care Under the New York Foundling Hospital

Background of the Study. Since the earliest of times, adoption has been on the minds of people. Primitive conditions fostered wholesale adoption of children. If a mother died and the child was not taken care of by his relatives or other tribesmen, whom he resembled, he would be left to starve to death. In some tribes the children were adopted before they were born and brought up as members of a different tribe. The Greek and the Roman laws form the basis for adoption laws in most countries of the modern world. Legal adoption was unknown to the common law and was not authorized by statute in Great Britain until 1926. In English law, the child had absolute right to succeed to any part of the parents\u27 property but could be disinherited by will in favor of either relatives or strangers. It was possible, therefore, for family titles to be continued and family estates kept together when there was no direct male descendant