2023: Sad days for ‘adoptable’ children in Greece

The year is 2023: a major adoption scandal has unfolded in Hania, Crete. The adoption traffic may have been going on for the past 10 years? Ten years? How about 70 years? Adoption in and from Greece is celebrating a bizarre anniversary this year. Let me take you back to 1953, back 70 years ago.

1953: On the frontline

What significance does the date of 1953 bear for Greece? And why does an adoptions scandal in 2023 mark a sad anniversary? And a reminder of lack of action taken? Also, how does the 1953 date place Greece in the wider context of global twentieth-century history? This article discusses the historic adoption movement of postwar Greece, a movement that then-current terminology named "intercountry adoption," but that today is referred to as international adoption and is associated with transcultural and/or transracial child placements. All...