➡ From Child Welfare Information Gateway
US: The Moments That Changed the Meaning of Adoption in the U.S.
Time – November 17, 2017
“The key shift is the Enlightenment, when children start to be viewed as individuals with rights and to whom we have obligations, whereas they used to be seen as a small creature you have to feed until they’re old enough to work,” says Peter Conn, author of Adoption: a Brief Social and Cultural History. “Really, the history of adoption is the history of children circulating among families probably in the same village and then later in the same city or the same state.”
http://time.com/5027647/national-adoption-day-history/