The time of divergence is also relevant to the UK. Children growing up thinking their mother was actually their older sister was still possible in the 1950s when many babies were born at home, ditto some casual adoptions.
But adoption of newborn babies pretty much died out by 1980 thanks to access to contraception and abortion - certainly by the 1990s when the internet came along, there was a huge cultural gulf between the UK and the US. Adopting a (healthy, white) baby was still possible in the US, but in the UK adoptions were almost exclusively of older children (plus adoption by stepparents), who had been taken into care by the local authority 'the council', ie local government's Social Services.
Unless the scenario is one where access to contraception and abortion have been hugely limited, the concept of someone getting that far in pregnancy then deciding she wants to give the baby away, doesn't really compute. It sounds more like a surrogacy arragement - possibly because surrogacy in the UK is not allowed to be paid for?
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branchandroot
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Date: 2023-06-27 09:52 pm (UTC)But adoption of newborn babies pretty much died out by 1980 thanks to access to contraception and abortion - certainly by the 1990s when the internet came along, there was a huge cultural gulf between the UK and the US. Adopting a (healthy, white) baby was still possible in the US, but in the UK adoptions were almost exclusively of older children (plus adoption by stepparents), who had been taken into care by the local authority 'the council', ie local government's Social Services.
Unless the scenario is one where access to contraception and abortion have been hugely limited, the concept of someone getting that far in pregnancy then deciding she wants to give the baby away, doesn't really compute. It sounds more like a surrogacy arragement - possibly because surrogacy in the UK is not allowed to be paid for?