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This paper briefly examines current arguments concerning the demise of the traditional family, pointing out that the numbers of lone‐parent families are not historically unparalleled and noting that the current emphasis in the "death of the family" debate on the nuclear rather than the extended family marks a significant shift over recent decades. The nature of kinship is briefly examined in historical context, and kin relationships are seen to be fundamentally different on a number of important dimensions from other social relationships. The erosion of kinship as the consequence of the increasing state regulation of family life and the lack of importance it is now generally accorded in modern child welfare systems is considered and the reasons for this are discussed. Finally the article turns to the changes that would be required were kinship decision‐making once more accorded a key place in planning for the care of children deemed to be in need of care and protection and the potential, as a model for practice, of the family group conference is considered.

Murray Ryburn considers how the courts in England and Wales apply contrasting principles to achieve very different outcomes in the private law where there are disputed questions of contact in divorce and separation on the one hand, and on the other, in adoption. He challenges the extent to which such divergence can be justified when the similarities between the questions at issue could be expected more reasonably to lead to comparable approaches. Reasons for the existence of this judicial divide are considered, alongside the consequent harm that may thereby result in the lives of some children and their kin networks.

SUMMARY: It has long been accepted that adopted children need access to information about their origins in order to provide a satisfactory answer to the question 'who am I?'. Such information is seen as vitally important to the formation of a clear and positive sense of identity in adulthood. This study examines the role that such information plays in the formation of personal identity and analyses accounts from 67 adopters of their children's requests for information about their families of origin. Comparisons are made between adopters whose children maintain contact with their families of origin and those whose children have no contact.

ABSTRACTThe issue of whether there should be continuing contact between those who are adopted and their birth relatives is one of the most contentious issues in current adoption practice (see for example DoH, 1993; McWhinnie and Smith 1994). The view traditionally taken is that adoption in England and Wales has been secret since its legal origins in 1926 and any moves to more fully disclosed information and indeed contact between the parties in adoption is a recent development (see for example DoH 1992). This article considers the history of birth family contact and access to records in adoption from 1926 to the 1958 Adoption Act and examines the factors that favoured the development of closed models of practice where there was no contact between the parties and records became secret. In doing so it challenges the accepted view that adoption has always provided for secrecy in England and Wales and establishes that both the thinking of policy makers and the legislation itself until 1949 provided for more open forms of adoption than we enjoy today. Secrecy, it is claimed, developed as a consequence of a collusion between professionals and the judiciary which disregarded the legal rights of birth parents and failed to respect their entitlement to a proper say in the decisions about the future of their children.

It seems reasonable to suppose that the bitterness of an adversarial contest and the granting of an order to which birth parents are strongly opposed are unlikely to offer a foundation for successful future contact. Murray Ryburn reports on the findings of a study of contact after contested adoptions.

A family can suffer few more public judgements of social failure than to have a child compulsorily removed from its care. Murray Ryburn records the views and experiences of twelve such families, and considers whether the recommendations of the Adoption Law Review Working Party will ensure that their voices are heard in future.