ABSTRACT
When adoption in England and Wales was legalised in 1926, there were two key aims. The first was to get rid of the stigma of illegitimacy and the second was to protect the investment of the substitute parents. Seventy-five years later, this seems unbelievably outdated, yet the myth of adoption as a ‘new start’ or ‘a clean sheet’ pervades our practice, our thinking and probably our expectations. Why is this when we know that each one of us is today the sum of every experience and reaction we have experienced to date? Why do we not realise that we need to accommodate and reconcile the past within our hopes and plans for the future? If we can recognise this for ourselves and our families then we may well be on the road to recognising this fundamental truth for our work in adoption.
