A Different Approach and a New Framework'.
Adoption entails a change to the legal status of a child.
The adoptive parents are substituted for the birth parents of the child, and the birth parents are relieved of the responsibility of parenthood. The child is presented to the world as if born to the adoptive parents. At that time, the nuclear family model was held up as the only viable definition of a 'family'. Such practices have been challenged, and adoption law and practice is increasingly being seen as 'out of step' with the realities of modern life. Life in NZ in the 21st century presents challenges and alternatives that legislators in 1955 would have been hard pressed to predict.