ABSTRACT
Regardless of their worldview and political orientation, most adults have feelings that will tend to be supportive of adoption or other measures to help children in need. Sympathy for a needy child is a natural impulse, and that such children deserve help is a universal moral imperative.14 But whatever people’s natural feelings and moral sense may tell them, their ‘reason’, or ideological leanings can push them in other directions. For example, there is sympathy for the plight of a needy child amongst people who favour neo-liberal welfare policies towards single mothers, policies that arguably contribute to the child’s plight. Similarly, adopters often have to contend with political and social views that impinge on them in ways that are not necessarily either supportive or sympathetic. Furthermore, the adoptive parents themselves may hold ambivalent views in ways that may influence their choices about which children they adopt and whether or not to keep the adoption secret.
