Make Way for Mavericks: U.S. Adoption, Voluntarism, and "Can-Do" Policymaking during the Vietnam War

In the first decades of the Cold War, international adoption was a nascent institution that lacked the carefully constructed and hard-won regulations governing U.S. domestic adoptions. Child welfare volunteers of this era commanded significant authority in setting policies and standards for international adoptions. Examining adoptions from Vietnam to the United States at the end of the Vietnam War, this paper contends that the conditions in Vietnam cultivated an environment conducive to “can-do” policymaking. Exemplified by urgency, improvisation, and decentralization, (and reminiscent of voluntary agencies’ authority in 1950s Korean adoption) this kind of policymaking maintained that private agencies created and implemented humanitarian procedures better than governments in the mid-1970s. Because the U.S. and Vietnamese governments relied heavily on private agencies to administer Vietnamese child welfare programs, they fostered a social welfare culture that supported maverick humanitarians like Rosemary Taylor of Friends for All Children and Cherie Clark of Friends for Children of Vietnam. Without stronger regulatory boundaries, mavericks could and did enforce their own visions of child protection, which often prioritized immediate rescue over conscientious procedures. A rift between Congress and the State Department, and a growing public distrust of government in the 1970s, provided an opportunity for private interests to conduct on-the-ground policymaking in Vietnam with less regulatory oversight than they might otherwise have had. Still, was the confusing and often messy system that governed Vietnamese adoptions just administratively convenient, or a structural feature of international child welfare by the 1970s? In addition, since many relief agencies also conducted international adoptions, how did relying on private interests further blur the already muddy line between adoption and humanitarianism?