Finding families, finding ourselves : English Canada encounters adoption from the nineteenth century to the 1990s

Summary: "In Finding Families, Finding Ourselves historian Veronica Strong-Boag examines the realities behind idealized pictures of adoptive families rescuing needy children, or adoptees fitting seamlessly into new families. The first comprehensive examination of the history of adoption in Canada, Finding Families, Finding Ourselves draws on a broad range of sources - from legal cases, sociological studies, and government policies to fiction and first-hand accounts." "Strong-Boag argues that adoption, far from being a marginal aspect of Canadian history, goes to the heart of who we are as individuals and as a national community. With its complicated dance of obligations and rights, insiders and outsiders, acceptance and rejection, adoption reflects the ways in which we - as families and as communities - have consciously and unconsciously remade ourselves in the course of creating our future."--BOOK JACKET.