ABSTRACT
The long-term goal for many members of the search movement is to eliminate adoption altogether, or at least to limit it to situations of absolute necessity. The movement has generated a significant body of literature in recent years whose fundamental message is that the institution of adoption is sick to its core and destructive of the human beings it affects. He feels an alien, an outsider, outside the natural realm of being. Other forces at work in the society at large have helped to make adoption newly suspect in today's world. Social regulators translate their suspicion of adoption into screening rules that make the process of becoming an adoptive parent seriously frustrating and unpleasant, so that the infertile have all the more reason to see adoption as a last resort. Given the predictable impact of the negative myths about adoption, it is a wonder that the evidence about the actual experience of those involved looks so positive.
