| Summary: | This thesis profiles the lives of women in New Zealand,
comparing these generalised experiences to emerging adoption law
from a feminist perspective. Although this thesis covers
adoption's legislative history from its inception, it
concentrates on the era of closed adoptions, from 1955-1985.
This period encompasses a period in adoption history in which
women were forced to surrender their children and then silenced
and forgotten. This thesis draws on secondary sources and
interviews with birth mothers in Christchurch from as long ago as
1940 and from as recently as 1979. Women who gave up their
children for adoption were given a 'choice' to adoption or to
keep their child. However, the issue in not necessarily one of
the birth mother's 'choice', rather it is the conditions under
which choices are made. Birth mothers were rendered powerless
and invisible by the adoption process. The law' and practice of
adoption in New Zealand is examined as a form of social control
over birth mothers, the women who gave up their children for
adoption. This form of social control is, it is argued, a result
of the patriarchal power relations. It is argued that adoption
has formed part of population ideology and control, supporting
the nuclear family and maintaining the patriarchal status quo.
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