Adoption procedures

Abstract

In early Eastern Greek and Roman civilisations, a childless couple adopted a child to provide a direct heir or to perpetuate domestic ancestral worship, and in later centuries adoption was used to solve the problem of illegitimacy. Although the child often benefitted from adoption, it was used primarily as a means of giving a child to a family in the interests of the adults involved. Today, adoption is still used to smooth problems of rights and inheritance of the child, but it has also become, much more, a way of giving a family to a child who needs substitute parents from whom he can receive the love and nurture which are so necessary for his full development.