The Traffic in Babies

Exploring how and why babies were moved across borders, The Traffic in Babies is a fascinating look at how social workers and other policy makers tried to find birth mothers, adopted children, and adoptive parents

Karen A. Balcom is an associate professor in the Department of History at McMaster University.

Judith Modell Schater:
‘A groundbreaking historical study of the movement of children across borders. While studies of adoption, both domestic and international, have proliferated in recent decades, none goes as far as this one in documenting the process.’

Ellen Herman, Department of History, University of Oregon:
'Through a series of dramatic and compelling narratives, Karen A. Balcom effectively links the story of Canadian children adopted by American parents to central themes in the history of child welfare. Her examination of the practical and constitutional challenges that reformers faced in transnational family-making offers a powerful corrective to triumphal narratives about child-friendly liberal welfare states. The Traffic in Babies is both a very interesting read and a genuinely original contribution to the field of social welfare and adoption history.'

Citation for First Bowling Green Prize in Comparative and International Policy History :
'Karen A. Balcom’s The Traffic in Babies: Cross-Border Adoption and Baby-Selling between the United States and Canada, 1930-1972 is a model of scholarship in transnational policy history. Professor Balcom deals with an important, but largely neglected, aspect of Canadian-American relations – the movement of babies across national borders through transnational adoptions. This book makes an outstanding contribution to policy history because it examines the interactions of public and private agencies in placing children in adoptive homes, as well as policymaking and implementation at the federal, state and provincial levels on both sides of the border It also makes important contributions to women’s history and the history of social welfare, since women in both the U.S. and Canada led the efforts to regulate and rationalize the international movement of adopted children … In sum, The Traffic in Babies is an outstanding book.'