Тайната на осиновяването – явният белег на модела
The Secret of Child Adoption: The Obvious Feature of the Model

Summary/Abstract: The study has been devoted to the Bulgarian model of child adoption, which aims at the formation of a family, identical to “the normal”, coming into being after the biological birth of a child in it. This model has been associated with keeping the adoption a secret. The evolution of the two levels in the culture of child adoption has been followed: justice and everyday culture, in the period from the second half of the 19th century until the end of socialism. The two levels converged to a common view about the model of child adoption, when in 1961 the socialist state introduced complete adoption. The causes entailing this step have been studied. The most important among them are assumed to have been associated with the macroeconomic and the subsequent demographic changes: a drop in the rate of childbirth and an increase of extramarital births. The demand for manpower resources and the communist education of children made the socialist state look for a common solution concerning “the assimilation” of children, deserted by their mothers and brought up in institutions, on the one hand, and the childless families, on the other. The place of the adopted children, who by that time had mostly come from the same lineage, was taken up by children from the Mother and Child Homes. Thereby the state provided legal guarantees to a model, already familiar and practiced in everyday culture, turning it into an attractive way for child adoption. The causes have been studied of the coinciding preference of traditional and socialist culture for this model of child adoption.

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