(Re)discovering child adoption in Brazil thirty years after the Children’s Code

Abstract

Based on documental sources and informal interviews with professionals involved in this theme, we propose in this article to describe changes in the field of child adoption in Brazil over the past thirty years. We begin with a methodological observation on the lack of systematic statistics on domestic adoption. We proceed to consider a growing emphasis in recent years on adoption through the National Adoption Registry (in particular of older children) as a solution for the large number of youngsters in institutional care. We suggest that a pragmatic view based on the individualized child’s rights has gained ground, at the same time that discourses on “social justice” and “family reintegration”, associated with the beginning years of the Children’s Code, have been toned down. We then turn to the debates around “direct adoptions”, raising the hypothesis that, although suffering from doubtful legitimacy and zero visibility in official discourse, they exert a great influence on adoption practice in Brazil. We finish by underlining silences in the field of child adoption that hinder the evaluation of present policies as well as the planning of effective policies in the future.