engaging the commodified face: the use of marketing in the child adoption process

Engaging the commodifiedface: the use of marketing inthe child adoption processMatthew Higgins and Warren Smith

Abbreviations

BAAF – British Agency for Adoption & Fostering

GSE – Good Samaritan Evangelical

SWA – Social Welfare Association

Introduction

The issue of child adoption within the UK invokes

associations that ricochet around contemporary

social concerns. However, there is a reluctance to

make these issues and the further assumptions of

child adoption explicit (Tod 1971). Any discussion

of child adoption raises contentious issues such

as male and female infertility, the notion of ‘right

and proper’ relationships, genetics, race and cul-

ture, natural and unnatural parenthood, the rights

of the child, ownership, possession and guardian-

ship. The sexual revolution of the 1960s may have

provided new designated spaces for the expression

and discussion of sexuality and difference, but these

did not accommodate discussion of child adoption.

Until recently child adoption within the UK was

little discussed, and was seldom a subject for topical

debate.

One of the most prominent features of child

adoption within England and Wales over the last

100 years has been the transfer of child adoption

from an informal social exchange to a wholly

codified system enforced through legislation. The

change within England and Wales was undertaken

due to fears over the ability of casual adoption

provisions to manage the large increase in orphans

following the First World War. Legislating1 for

child adoption made adoption a public process

rather than a private concern under most circum-

stances. The model on which English adoption law

was based stems from the inception of legal adop-

tion in North America, where the use of the law

provided a means to formalise and adjudicate on

issues of heirs and transmission of property (Hill

1991).

In one sense child adoption is understood as a

legal process by which ‘‘a child’s legal parentage

is entirely and irrevocably transferred from one set

of adults, usually the birth parents, and vested in

other adults, namely the adoptive parents’’ (Bromley

and Lowe 1992: 408). However the tensions be-

tween a rational procedure used to decide a child’s

parentage and the emotive issues surrounding the

issue renders such an explanation limiting.

‘‘Adoption is a technical method which helps to solve

such serious problems as illegitimacy, childlessness,

absolute or relative, and the nurture of the un-

wanted or the unattached child. It is also a human

enterprise, where sin and wickedness or foolishness

are met by pity and love, where biology jostles

passion, and the intruder – reason – has little place

and less power.’’ (Dr White quoted in Pringle 1967:

22)

Following the Adoption Act 1976 it is unlawful

for a person other than an adoption agency to

place a child for adoption unless the proposed

adopter is a relative of the child or they are acting

Business Ethics: AEuropean Review

# Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2002. 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UKand 350 Main St, Malden, MA 02148, USA. 179

pursuant to a court order. Adoption agencies must

be incorporated non-profit making bodies that are

able to meet specified operational requirements.

The adoption agency has a duty to the child and

child’s parents to explain the implications of

adoption. A similar duty is owed to the prospec-

tive adoptive parents. However, and significantly

within contemporary child adoption, the weight-

ing of the child’s welfare is of crucial importance.

The Adoption Act 1976 (6) states:

‘‘In reaching any decision relating to the adoption of

a child a court or adoption agency shall have regard

to all the circumstances, first consideration being

given to the need to safeguard and promote the

welfare of the child throughout his childhood; and

shall so far as practicable ascertain the wishes and

feelings of the child regarding the decision and give

due consideration to them, having regard to his age

and understanding’’.

By concentrating the process around the needs

of the child, the system is presented as a rational

bureaucratic professional system. Indeed stories

within the UK media have been critical of the

processes of child adoption in other countries that

seek to subvert or bypass this child-centred

approach. These stories, such as those that focus

upon activities of the Good Samaritan Evangelical

(GSE) and Social Welfare Association (SWA) in

India, stress the commerciality of these organis-

ations. The GSE and SWA are believed to have

paid poor families between 2,000 and 3,000 rupees

for their child ($47 to $70); the child is then sold to

families in North America and Europe for $2,000

to $3,000 for adoption (BBC News Online, 2000a).

In Guatemala 2,000 babies each year go up for

adoption at a cost of up to $30,000 each. But

demand in the United States and Europe outstrips

this limited supply and networks within Guate-

mala have developed which steal or farm children

for profit (BBC News Online 2000b).

Whilst these stories of impoverished countries,

orphanages and corrupt officials offer heart-

rending tales for the popular press, possibly the

biggest influence on the current adoption system

in England and Wales stems from the perceived

excesses of the United States system. Since the

early 1990s the US adoption system has been

visible to many UK prospective adopters and

adoption agencies via child adoption Internet sites

based in North America. Usernet newsgroups

such as alt.adoption and alt.adoption agencies are

renowned for their high traffic. These groups offer

a strange mix of public anger at care authorities,

personal case histories, advice and agency promo-

tions. Neil Ballantyne outlines the impact of the

Internet on child adoption:

‘‘There is a relatively large number of North

American Web sites concerned with adoption on

the Internet. These are operated by adoption agencies,

legal services, voluntary organisations and enthusi-

astic individuals – often adoptive parents or adoptees

. . . The entrepreneurial feel to many of the US

adoption agency sites is a stark reminder of the

commercialisation of adoption in North America.’’

(Ballantyne 1996: 53)

This commercialisation in the provision of child

adoption within the United States is not merely

linked to the rise of the Internet. Reid (1971)

explained how the role of the adoption agency

within the United States has been shaped by

supply and demand. During the 1950s US agencies

had to ‘sell the country on adoption’ due to

shortage of adopters and surplus of healthy white

children. This produced a ‘blue ribbon attitude’,

a guarantee undertaken by the adoption agency

that the child was free of defects.

In this paper we wish to explore the moral

consequences of the use of marketing techniques

in the child adoption process. Using critical theory

this paper examines the ethical issues surrounding

human subjectivity in adoption as marketing

increasingly plays a key role in the provision of

child adoption services. We focus in particular on

the use of child specific advertising by adoption

agencies.

The expanding role ofmarketing

The expansion of the application of marketing

from the domestic to the international and from

the commercial to the non-commercial has been

one of the defining characteristics of marketing

over the last 30 years (Bartels 1974). The debate

over the expansion of marketing management was

Volume11 Number 2 April 2002

# Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2002180

ignited in the United States through the influential

articles by Kotler and Levy (1969), Kotler and

Zaltman (1971) and Kotler (1972) which argued

that marketing is a ‘societal’ activity whose know-

ledge is applicable within non-business areas.

Interestingly, the expansion of marketing think-

ing into the not-for-profit sector was not presented

as an incursion into new territory. Kotler and

Levy (1969) legitimised the application of market-

ing into the non-commercial domain by suggesting

that non-business organisations already applied

marketing whether they intended to or not.

Marketing was therefore an intrinsic function of

all organisations. Through this move every organ-

isation was instantly incorporated within the

marketing domain:

‘‘As other types of organisations recognise their

marketing roles, they will turn increasingly to the

body of marketing principles worked out by busi-

ness organisations and adapt them to their own

situations.’’ (Kotler and Levy 1969: 8)

The initial reaction of the marketing academy to

Kotler and Levy’s (1969) article was mixed. Some

marketers were concerned with the possible erosion

of marketing’s identity within such a broad domain

(Luck 1969, Bartels 1974, Arndt 1978). Neverthe-

less, surveys of marketing educators enquiring

into the ‘proper’ domain of marketing found that

95% of marketing educators believed that the

scope of marketing should be broadened (Bartels

1974). Not-for-profit marketing strove to be

perceived as a legitimate intellectual field within

marketing scholarship (Andreasen 1993, 1994,

1997). This was hastened as non-business organ-

isations such as governmental agencies, charities

and non-profit organisations were, at the end of

the 1960s, beginning to grow in size and influence.

Many adopted managerial skills to improve

efficiency.

It was also anticipated that the application of

marketing to social welfare problems would help

to alleviate the criticisms of commercial market-

ing. It was realised that not-for-profit organis-

ations are often, though not necessarily, linked to

performing various forms of social welfare activ-

ities. In this way marketers could demonstrate

their ethical credentials and meet the demands for

greater social responsibility. With the increasing

utilisation of marketing in the not-for-profit sector

the initial debate surrounding the appropriateness

of expanding the marketing domain was slowly

replaced by a concern with the pragmatic ethical

implications of utilising marketing (Howe 1990,

McCraken 1990).

In addressing this point, Laczniak, Lusch and

Murphy (1979) argued that social marketing prac-

titioners needed to ensure that the marketing tool

was significantly distanced from the social mess-

age. Marketers needed to be socially responsible in

their choice of topics to promote, thereby avoiding

the tarnishing of the marketing discipline and

ensuring a continued belief in the value neutrality

of the tool (Fine 1990, O’Cass 1997). This point

is exemplified by O’Shaughnessy’s (1996) warning

that social marketing and social propaganda can

be easily confused and that marketers need to

clarify the distinction to avoid any erroneous

linkage. In practice, O’Shaughnessy argues, this

distinction is acute, with social marketing being a

democratic tool utilised by established groups to

encourage a change of behaviour through an open

dialogue. This is in contrast to the single issue,

minority groups who ‘‘prefer an assault on the

consciousness’’ (O’Shaughnessy 1996: 74).

Whilst the use of marketing in not-for-profit

organisations grew in popularity and acceptance

within the United States, the use of social

marketing in the UK developed more gradually

both in terms of academic interest and practitioner

utilisation. This slow take up of social marketing

in comparison to North America stems from the

historical organisational forms that social welfare

takes within the UK. Whilst the United States

largely depended upon private enterprise and

voluntary organisations for their welfare provi-

sion, the UK sought to offer a uniform welfare

system organised on bureaucratic principles.

Not-for-profit marketing and the publicsector

Due to the fear of economic and social instability

in the wake of World War II, the UK state

centralised and co-ordinated many of the activities


181# Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2002

which were formerly undertaken by private organ-

isations and families. This arrangement remained

consistently popular within the UK population until

the 1970s. Then, as Harvey (1990) argues, global

recession, unemployment, the tensions of the Cold

War and the perceived need to adapt to more flex-

ible modes of capital flow began to raise questions

about the sustainability of a centralised state.

The election success of the Conservative Party

in 1979 began a process of remodelling the state to

align with assumed market principles. This govern-

ment supervised a fragmentation of the social as

an increasing provision of state assistance was

transferred to the private sector. Furthermore

those services that had not been transferred to

private ownership were subjected to the methods

of accountability usually found in the private

sector. Government policy increasingly sought to

encourage individuals to measure and evaluate the

service provision from state services in the same

manner as those services that they have experi-

enced from the private sector.

Increasingly methods of management from the

private sector were applied to the public sector.

This principle was notoriously enshrined in the

‘Citizens Charter’, which sought to encourage

effective and efficient public service provision by

outlining rights that the user could expect:

‘‘The charter is based upon the recognition that all

public services are paid for by individual citizens,

either directly or through their taxes. Citizens are

entitled to expect high quality services, responsive to

their needs, provided efficiently at minimum costs.’’

(Service First 2000)

Since the 1980s the privatisation of public services

and establishment of competitive tenders for grants

exposed non-profit organisations to the demands

of market mechanisms. Indeed, non-profit organ-

isations and government agencies sought to recruit

those with commercial marketing skills in order

to ease their transition to the new environment.

Organisations that were once renowned for being

bureaucratic and unresponsive began to source

managerial courses for their staff. Voluntary

organisations sought to emulate the success of

commercial organisations and the goal of cus-

tomer orientation.

The gradual promotion and adoption of a more

managerialist culture within many UK public and

voluntary services left exposed those areas that

retained the perceived traditional approach to

public service. This exposure provided political

leverage to be used against those areas that re-

mained outside the new public sector. These

traditional public sector organisations were repre-

sented as bureaucratic, slow, unwieldy, inefficient

and ineffective. The child adoption service was

one area portrayed as being in desperate need of

managerial and marketing techniques.

The changing face of child adoption

Social, cultural and technological changes have

affected the number of adoptions: improvements

in birth control, greater social acceptance of single

parenthood, and the legalisation of abortion have

reduced the number of babies being put forward

for adoption. From a peak of 24,831 adoption

orders granted in 1968, there has been a steady

decline in the number of adoption orders, and

significantly a change in the type of child being

adopted (Bromley and Lowe 1992). In 1976 there

were 18,000 adoptions, of which 3,600 were of

children aged 1 year or under. By 1993 this figure

had fallen to 6,900, with only 465 children aged

under one year old (Kennedy 1996). The fall in the

number of ‘healthy white babies’ has changed the

primary role of many social service departments

and charities. Their role as the mechanism for

delivering a ‘healthy white baby’ for the infertile

couple is now rare. Increasingly adoption is a

means of securing long-term welfare for ‘hard to

place’ children. These children include older

children, children with mental or physical dis-

abilities, children of a non-Caucasian background

and children with behavioural difficulties.

In addition, adoption agencies were encouraged

to transform the nature of adoption, specifically to

practice ‘open adoption’ and be sensitive to cul-

tural, racial and religious difference (McWhinnie

1967, Triseloitis 1973). ‘Open adoption’ is an

adoption practice and philosophy that stems from

a movement in the United States in the 1960s

initiated and led by adoptees who were highly



critical of the secrecy that surrounded adoption.

The adoptees argued that knowledge of the indi-

vidual’s biological history was an innate human

need and aided human development and identity

formation. The existing adoption practice was

seen as detrimental to the adoptee’s health and

welfare, and a need for greater transparency in the

process was identified. In short, the granting of the

adoption order should not involve the termination

and elimination of the links between the child and

its biological parents (Rompf 1993). Neverthe-

less, despite these changes to the fundamental

nature of child adoption, the prospective adopters

are often still the same infertile couple that want

a child.

The political climate since 19962 within England

and Wales has also seen a reassessment of the

manner in which the state organises care for

children who are permanently or temporarily within

its legal and moral guardianship. The over-riding

aim is to remove from institutional care the

estimated 50,000 children in England and Wales

(BBC News Online 2000c). One outcome of this

reassessment is an acknowledgement of the under-

utilisation of permanent child placement through

child adoption. To improve the effectiveness of

child adoption the government is seeking to

introduce marketing and other management tech-

niques and modes of evaluation from the com-

mercial world into the child adoption context.

Social services are increasingly being encouraged

to adopt ‘professional’ managerial techniques to

deliver effective ‘value’ to their customers. In the

Chief Inspector’s overview of the 8th Annual Re-

port of the Chief of Social Services one of the ‘key

messages’ emphasises the need for the organis-

ation to adopt and embrace a more managerial

outlook:

‘‘New approaches have emerged which emphasise

choice, partnership, rights, openness of decision-

making and value for money and all are clearly

beneficial for the development of social work

services.’’ (Platt 1999)

Child adoption is to be used by councils to re-

duce the number of children in care. Performance

indicators are being used to establish national

targets and monitor performance by agencies. The

government’s Junior Health Minister, Mr John

Hutton was quoted as saying:

‘‘We will not hesitate to take the necessary action in

the future to ensure that looked-after children do

not become the innocent victims of misplaced theory

or ideology. Poor performance will not be toler-

ated.’’ (BBC News Online 1999a)

To demonstrate the government’s commitment

to child adoption as a means of removing children

from care, a league table of the ten worst Local

Authorities assessed as the ratio of child adoption

to children in care was published (BBC News

Online 1999b). This focus on performance within

child adoption is also mirrored within the media.

The opening titles of Dispatches: Adoption on Trial,

a television documentary, succinctly captures this

move.

‘‘More than 2000 children in care are desperate to be

adopted. More than 1000 families are willing to give

them a home . . . why are they still waiting?’’

In September 1998 Jeff and Jennifer Bramley

became household names when they went on the

run with their two foster children. Through the use

of the media, the Bramleys explained that they

had been forced to abduct the children because

Cambridge Social Services Department had raised

concerns over their suitability to be the adoptive

parents of their foster children. The Bramleys were

represented as folk heroes, a traditional quiet couple,

challenging the bureaucratic power and control

exerted by the public sector social worker.

Although there is political capital to be obtained

from reforming the child adoption service, and

although such reform seeks to improve the process

for the prospective adopter, adoptee and birth

parents, the utilisation of the performance-related

mode of evaluation to justify such reform does

highlight a fundamental tension within child

adoption. As detailed earlier in this paper, the

primacy of the child’s welfare is currently upheld

within legislation. Any reform would be forced to

ensure that the child’s interest is not de-centred.

Thus all reform policies that base their justifica-

tion on the beneficial consequences of their action

are forced to address the demand that the child

within the adoption process is not treated as a



means. Any utilisation of marketing within the child

adoption process inevitably must work around the

interests of the child. However, marketing’s require-

ment to identify the customer and the demand to

prioritise the child may be problematic for mar-

keting. As Nantel and Weeks (1996: 9) argue ‘‘the

tendency in marketing is fundamentally utilitarian’’

due to the imperative of customer focus. One area

within child adoption where this tension is par-

ticularly visible is in the use of advertising.

‘Family finding’

Child adoption is often perceived by social workers

and the public as a service to those people who

are classified in terms of the social norm, in other

words the male/female married couple who enjoy

material well being (Pascall 1984). This is a stereo-

type that arguably dates from the healthy white

baby period of child adoption, where adoption

was seen as a means of legitimising or protecting

the child and society from illegitimate or immoral

behaviour. Although child adoption is still closely

associated with infertility or an inability to have

children (Mihill 1995) adoption agencies have

been forced to attract other members of the com-

munity. Wedge and Thoburn (1986: 82) claim

that:

‘‘Agencies have moved away from their previous

conventions about what constitutes suitable adopters,

agencies are no longer looking for traditional adopters

who are young, middle class and childless.’’

The demands of open adoption and a need to be

sensitive to difference when matching children to

prospective adopters has focused attention upon

the promotional strategies and tactics used to find

prospective adopters for ‘hard to place children’.

For instance, the term ‘family finding’ is suscept-

ible to several meanings. One interpretation of

‘family finding’ suggests that the organisation

seeks to recruit families so as to develop a resource

pool of prospective adopters, which they then use

to match with children. To this end, the British

Agency for Adoption and Fostering (BAAF)

offers advice and national co-ordination amongst

adoption agencies for adopter recruitment and

children matching. However, at the local level

agencies are responsible for managing their pro-

motions to recruit families. They utilise such pro-

motional tools as newspaper advertisements, open

days, stalls within shopping areas, talks to in-

terested groups, leaflets within public libraries and

health centres and adverts in the Yellow Pages.

These promotions are justified and assessed by

means of an instrumental calculation, namely the

cost of the promotion against the number of people

who approached the agency to adopt. If from this

cost/benefit calculation the benefits that accrue

from such a promotional campaign exceed the

costs, the promotion is considered to have been

worthwhile and justified. Advertisements focus

upon adoption as an abstract concept. No specific

child is mentioned. The agency is merely seen as

offering the means which the prospective adopter

must take to achieve their goal of adopting a child.

If children are featured in these promotions they

are rarely the children who are available for adop-

tion. Instead a child model, cartoon or symbols of

the concept represent the children awaiting adop-

tion. Through the focus upon the service and

procedures the child remains hidden.

A further interpretation of family finding revolves

around the use of promotional tools to communi-

cate information to prospective adopters about

specific children. Here the difficulty of finding

prospective adopters for some children has forced

child adoption services to utilise child-specific

recruitment. It is here that the use of marketing

within child adoption is most ‘public’ and it is here

that a sense of unease is particularly apparent.

Child-specific advertising

Adoption legislation requires the agency to main-

tain the primacy of the child within the child

adoption process. But once a child is referred to

specifically within a promotional campaign the

tension between treating the child as a means and

achieving the purpose of the advertising begins

to exert concern. Although voluntary adoption

agencies and local authorities do utilise child-

specific advertising by, for instance, featuring

children in the classified sections of national



newspapers or on the Internet,3 the central mech-

anism for child-specific promotion is provided by

BAAF who publish Be My Parent. This is a bi-

monthly, two-colour broadsheet newspaper style

publication. Its objective is as a ‘family-finding

newspaper for children who need long-term foster

care or adoption.’

Subscribers to Be My Parent are divided be-

tween adoption agency staff and people who are

approved as adopters and are interested in

children of five and under with special needs.

Although it features several pages of adoption

related news, its central purpose is to offer a

classified advertisement section. This contains

profiles and photographs of available children.

The profiles are divided into geographic regions

that correspond to the area in which the children

are located. Each child is submitted for inclusion

in the newspaper by the organisation who rep-

resents the child and who is seeking prospective

adopters for that specific child.

Approximately 7–8 children are featured on

each page. Each is allocated a rectangular space of

varying dimensions within which a photograph

and a text profile is inserted. Underneath or to the

side of the photograph is the child’s first name and

date of birth beneath which there is a formulaic

profile of the child. The profile amounts to

between 50–100 words usually written by the

adoption agency in the third person. Each profile

features information such as social behaviour,

level of affection, interests, learning skills, genetic

disease, disabilities, type of care that they have

experienced, the racial requirements of prospective

adopters, allowances available and the degree of

contact with birth parents. Occasionally the child

can stipulate the type of adopter they would

prefer, however again this is voiced through the

third person.

The ethics of it all

So what is at issue here? Why should we be con-

cerned about the use of the child in the advertise-

ment? Why the unease? We appear to have a stand

off between the ‘idealism’ of ethics and the

necessity of pragmatism (Parker 1998). Whilst

we may be uncomfortable with the use of the child

within advertisements due to the collision of

previously separate domains, a utilitarian inter-

pretation would simply lay claim to the principle

of logic and performativity.

Felicity Collier, Director of BAAF, has ac-

knowledged the unease surrounding the use of

children to encourage prospective adopters. How-

ever she justifies the advertising on the basis that it

achieves results.

‘‘It is an effective way of getting children adopted,

particularly siblings who are a difficult group to

place . . . People do want some rapport with the

children and seeing their picture can provide this.

They don’t want to do it, but the damage it does

outweighs the risks of having to wait for adoption.’’

(BBC News Online 1999c)

Here we see the conflicting messages; the

appreciation of the primacy of the child, an

acknowledgement that children do not like the

approach but a resignation to the demands of

performance measurement and of the prospective

adopter. The frequent result is the complaint of a

certain emptiness in child-specific advertisements.

The absence of the child’s voice is bemoaned with

the criticism that the advertisement had been

written by the social worker without due con-

sideration of the child (Ryburn 1992). But this

suggestion only offers a partial explanation for

our unease: some account of the context and

processes in which the child-specific advertisement

is situated is required. To this end perhaps a more

searching explanation can be derived from critical

theory.

Critical theoryand child-specificadvertising

Critical theory is a systematic critique of social

conditions. Utilising an interdisciplinary per-

spective, it aims to encourage people to envision

a better society. It is explicitly concerned with

emancipation of the human subject within capi-

talist society. However, there is no single approach.

Critical theory focuses on the interplay between

subject and object and the consequences for the



human subject. Critical theory has received

significant interest within the marketing discipline

over the last decade. Books and journal articles

(Brown 1995, Brownlie et al. 1999) have sought to

demonstrate how critical theory can offer mar-

keters a new perspective on their concepts and

practices.

Mats Alvesson (1994) has provided perhaps the

most significant account of the role of critical

theory within the marketing discipline. Alvesson

argues that marketing is primarily seen as a tool

for the social elite. Post-1960 marketing was able

to extend its domain of interest outside the profit

organisation and to incorporate a responsibility to

society, but a significant development of market-

ing was not merely in its applicable terrain but in

the representation of its knowledge and technol-

ogy. Through the development of social marketing

with its reliance upon exchange, marketing had

moved from its initial economic emphasis to

representing itself as a value neutral social process.

In other words, the rational business discourse of

marketing has been incorporated within what

Habermas (1981) terms the lifeworld. In doing

so it problematises the dualism between the social

and economic:

‘‘. . .a continuous resort to market mechanisms in

order to monitor and evaluate social relations. It

means in particular, a monetarization and commo-

dification of social relations. In this world, market-

ing can tell us the ‘price of everything, but the value

of nothing’! Anything can be marketed. It does not

have to be the more obvious goods and services; it

can be ‘good causes’, ‘political parties’, ‘ideas’. The

whole world is a market and we are consumers in a

gigantic candy-store, Just sit back and enjoy it!

(Morgan 1992: 143–144)

According to critical theory the use of market-

ing in a social welfare context represents yet

another step in the commodification of natural

environments and human qualities. This has led

Alvesson to suggest that marketing is too import-

ant to be left to the managerialists, and that we

need a reflexive account of the role and conse-

quences of marketing within society.

Particularly relevant to the case of marketing and

child adoption is the work of Zygmunt Bauman

(1987, 1989, 1995). Bauman is interested in the

manner by which subjects are rendered ‘adiaphoric’,

or morally neutral, by means of the removal of

a moral dimension. Drawing upon Emmanuel

Levinas (1989), Bauman defines morality as the

encounter with the other as ‘face’. The more the

‘face’ is eroded, the more moral responsibility

towards the other is diminished. This erosion is

dependent on proximity between those that act

and those that are affected. Bauman (1989) argues

that this moral indifference is achieved through

processes of organising. In particular he is con-

cerned with the way in which the distance between

the action and its consequences is increased so

as to disable the moral concern for the other.

Although Bauman was particularly concerned to

analyse these processes in the context of the

systematic elimination of Jews, gypsies and other

‘unwanted’ groups during World War II, Des-

mond (1998) argues that the theory is pertinent to

the analysis of marketing. Certainly it is easy to

see how these arguments resonate with the

‘commercialisation’ of child adoption.

Child-specific advertising can be seen to render

the child adiaphoric through a number of asso-

ciated processes that generate distance between

the viewer and the child. The agency of the child

is also withdrawn through the absence of the

child’s voice, within the magazine Be My Parent

the child is represented by the adoption agency

who speak as and on behalf of the child (Ryburn

1992). The child is re-represented in a manner that

limits the assertion of their moral status. This is

achieved by re-framing the child as a category,

ordered with respect to their geographical loca-

tion. The child is positioned for the respective

audience, classified as a child in need rather than

a child per se. This process is exemplified by the

accompanying text withi Be My Parent This

provides a formulaic pattern of traits that build

up an image of the child in much the same way

that estate agents develop their own language of

expression. The child is dissembled into aggregates

of functionally-specific traits. Hence we encounter

the parlance of child adoption – ‘hard to place’,

‘the siblings’, ‘behavioural problems’, ‘race’, ‘cul-

ture’. Indeed, Brown (1988) argues that ‘hard to

place’ children are categorised according to degree

of difficulty. Complex questions become simpli-



fied for the prospective adopters. To assist with

this reframing, child-specific advertising plunders

the referent system of ‘happy families’ which is

meaningful to the target market. For example,

the photographs of the child depict the ‘school

photograph’ or ‘the family portrait’. These stable

and trustworthy signs assist in the repackaging of

the child.

However, we also need to appreciate how these

processes are applied to the prospective adopter.

Child adoption in England and Wales not only

minimises the legal agency of the prospective

agency but also their capacity to be seen as people

deserving of moral consideration. Declining num-

bers of people coming forward to adopt and the

requirement to ensure cultural and racial match-

ing of prospective adopter and child has forced

adoption agencies to seek non-traditional pros-

pective adopters. There is an increasing demand

from adoption agencies for research to identify

what makes a ‘good’ adopter and how best to

communicate with them (Brown 1988, Wedge and

Thoburn 1986, Reich and Lewis 1986, Churchill

et al. 1979). Advertising agencies are proposing

the use of psychographics; one agency is develop-

ing a schema to identify ‘best’ adopters that they

hope to sell wholesale to adoption agencies within

England and Wales:

‘‘We also use a technique that we use in recruitment

which is a bit like personality profiling. We try to

find some characteristics that are common through

these people, and we should be able to analyse them,

there are maybe 4 or 5 or 6 criteria which adopters

and fosterers share.’’ (Director of an Advertising

Agency – Personal Correspondence 1998)

The process of categorising and targeting types

of people is justified due to the need to make

efficient and effective use of very limited re-

sources. The demands of matching child and

parent force agencies to generate ever more

complex categories of both child and prospective

adoptive parents (Stubbs 1987). Through these

processes the prospective adopter also becomes a

commodity traded by adoption agencies as they

seek to find a family for a child. Their relative

value is determined by supply and demand and the

needs of the marketplace.

Conclusion

One of the features of Zygmunt Bauman’s analysis

is his emphasis on moral questions residing in

ill-defined spaces. These are arenas where the lack

of institutionalised frameworks or ethical codes

make moral questions and decisions more perti-

nent for the individual actor. His formulation

of the ethical impulse therefore precedes socially

constructed views of proper behaviour; instead it

occurs when, as existentially moral beings, we are

faced with the challenge of ‘being for’ the ‘Other’

(Bauman 1995: 60). We have seen above how the

commercialisation of child adoption techniques re-

duces the participants to specimens or categories.

By regimenting the space within which moral

decisions become challenging, the adoption pro-

cedure legislates the nature of engagement.

Yet there is a danger that we underestimate the

extent to which the effects of marketing techniques

within adoption are regarded as problematic. The

potential adiaphorising effects of these processes

are only part of the story. The literalness, or

perhaps unavoidability, of the ‘face’ of the child

within these campaigns means that some form of

moral contemplation is always present. In fact

there is a certain inevitability about these emo-

tional reactions. Consider the following quotation:

‘‘This may be the age of the consumer but children

should not be dispensed with the brisk efficiency of

a tub of Kentucky Fried Chicken . . . I do not want

to open up my paper in 10 years’ time and see a

full page advert screaming about ‘Top of the range,

cut price babies for sale!’ or ‘Little Amy can be

exchanged if she turns out to be ugly, anti-social or

thick.’ ’’ (Ellen 1996: 31)

Certainly it captures the fears produced by the

encroachment of commercial techniques. But in

doing so it produces some fairly predictable moves.

The child is compared to fast food, an industry

where the qualities of the standardised product

have receded into the background, replaced with

a singular concern for effective distribution. The

most vulgar forms of advertising are juxtaposed

with the emotional presence of the child, whilst the

‘guarantee of sale’ suggests a particularly un-

savoury trend towards social engineering.



To what extent can an argument cautioning

against the adiaphorising effects of marketing

techniques in child adoption be sustained given

the existence of these concerns? They are not

particularly unusual. The fear of ‘babies for sale’ is

an ‘expected’ response. The need to preserve the

interests of the child is always stressed. Of course

the pressures within the child adoption system that

drive the implementation of different methods

creates tensions. But this is something different

from saying that the morality of the relationship

has been somehow displaced. Quite the reverse.

The tendency is a preoccupation with the child’s

presence.

Bauman’s notion of morality as the encounter

with the other as ‘face’ has no more literal ex-

pression than in the context of the child. Perhaps

it is nowhere as easy to reduce responsibility and

dependence to an existential presence. How then is

this reconciled with some of the initiatives we have

examined above? Take for instance the publi-

cation Be My Parent. Here we have seen that

the adoption agency represents a child who is to

some extent re-framed as a category. There are

a number of cues available here. There is the

intellectual framing of advertising. Audiences are

well versed in the persuasiveness of its imagery

and are familiar with its regimes of order and

styles of looking. To a degree the framing of child-

specific advertising helps define the manner in

which the child is encountered. Be My Parent

resonates with the familiar ‘catalogue’ format

where the potential ‘consumer’ desultorily peruses

a variety of ‘products’.

Consequently we have to recognize that the

parameters of this engagement have been pre-

dominately developed in the commercial domain.

However, many concerns about advertising have

also been produced here. There is no reason to

suppose that these concerns will not be carried

forward into this new area; contemporary con-

sumers have been found to be reasonably sophis-

ticated analysers of marketing methods (Brown

1995, Nava et al. 1997). The result is that famili-

arity with the cynicism of advertising is combined

with equally familiar emotions associated with ‘the

child’. Ellen’s (1996) ‘Kentucky Fried Chicken’

quotation is a product of this familiarity. It takes

the brute mechanisms of the mass market and

shoves them against an equally brute sensitivity of

childhood.

Can we interpret this familiarity as reassurance?

In other words, should we be more sanguine about

the encroachment of marketing techniques into

sensitive social areas such as child adoption given

our apparent intimacy with its moral territory?

Possibly. Certainly this intimacy questions the

creation of moral indifference via the distancing

effects of methods of categorisation. Rather we

seem almost over-tuned to their effects, producing

instead somewhat well rehearsed expressions of

revulsion. These in turn might be interrogated for

‘moral content’. In this context, it is not efface-

ment that is most significant, but rather the

working through of the fear of effacement.

Notes

1. This legalisation of child adoption was initially

provided in the Adoption of Children Act 1926,

which was repealed and consolidated by the later

Acts of Parliament, notably the Adoption Act 1958,

Children Act 1975 and schedule 10 to the Children

Act 1989.

2. This date represents the Publication of the Child

Adoption White Paper March 1996.

3. In 1999 Derby County Council hit the national

news headlines when it posted photographs of the

children and descriptions of children who are

looking for prospective parents. This was the first

time that a British agency had used actual photo-

graphs of children in advertisements for child

adoption on the Internet. For further information

read: BBC News Online (1999) ‘Net offers adoption

hope’ http://news6.thdo.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/

newsid_474000/474324.stm

References

Alvesson, M. 1994. ‘Critical Theory and Consumer

Marketing’. Scandinavian Journal of Management,

10:3, 291–313.

Andreasen, A. 1993. ‘A Social Marketing Research

Agenda for Consumer Behaviour Researchers’. In

Rothschild and McAlister (Eds.), Advances in Con-

sumer Research, 20, 1–5.



Andreasen, A. 1994. ‘Social Marketing: Its Definition

and Domain’. Journal of Public Policy and Market-

ing, 31:1, 108–114.

Andreasen, A. 1997. ‘A Perspective on a 25 Year Old

Intellectual Field’. Social Marketing Quarterly, 3:4,

3–5.

Arndt, J. 1978. ‘How Broad Should the Marketing

Concept be’? Journal of Marketing, 42, 101–103.

Ballantyne, N. 1996. ‘Child Care, Social Work and the

Internet’. Adoption & Fostering, 20:2, 50–56.

Bartels, R. 1974. ‘The Identity Crisis in Marketing’.

Journal of Marketing, 38, 73–76.

Bauman, Z. 1987. Legislators and Interpreters. London:

Polity Press.

Bauman, Z. 1989. Modernity and the Holocaust.

London: Polity Press.

Bauman, Z. 1995. Life in Fragments: Essays in Post-

modern Morality. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.

BBC News Online 1999a. Government Outlines Adop-

tion Targets. http://news2.thls.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/

health/newsid%5F370000/370848.stm

BBC News Online 1999b. Children Miss Out on

Adoption. http://news2.thls.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/

uk/newsid%5F313000/313557.stm

BBC News Online 1999c. Net Offers Adoption Hope.

http://news6.thdo.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/newsid

%5F474000/474324.stm

BBC News Online 2000a. Vietnam Baby Trade Trial

Opens. http://news2.thls.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/

asia%2Dpacific/newsid%5F608000/608944.stm 18th

January.

BBC News Online 2000b. Guatemalan Baby Trade.

http://news2.thls.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/americas/

newsid%5F693000/693892.stm 28th March.

BBC News Online.2000c. Blair Reviews Adoption Law.

http://news2.thls.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk%5Fpolitics/

newsid%5F646000/646571.stm

Bromley, P.M. and Lowe, N.V. 1992. Family Law, 8th

Ed. London: Butterworths.

Brown, E. 1988. ‘Recruiting Adoptive Parents for

Children with Developmental Disabilities’. Child

Welfare, 47:2, 123–135.

Brown, S. 1995. Postmodern Marketing. London:

Routledge.

Brownlie, D., Saren, M., Wensley, R. and Whitting-

ton, R. 1999. Rethinking Marketing: Towards Critical

Marketing Accounting. London: Sage.

Churchill, S.R., Carlson, B. and Nybell, L. 1979. No

Child Is Unadoptable. London: Sage.

Desmond, J. 1998. ‘Marketing and Moral Indiffer-

ence’. In Parker, M. (Ed.), Ethics and organizations,

173–196. London: Sage.

Ellen, B. 1996. ‘Why it’s Politic to be PC on Adoption’.

The Observer, 29th December, 31.

Fine, S. 1990. Social Marketing: Promoting the Causes

of Public and Nonprofit Agencies. New York: Allyn

and Bacon.

Habermas, J. 1981. Reason and Rationalisation of

Society. Trans. T. McCarthy. London: Heinemann.

Harvey, D. 1990. The Condition of Postmodernity.

Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Hill, M. 1991. ‘Concepts of Parenthood and their

Application to Adoption’. Adoption & Fostering, 15:

4, 16–23.

Howe, F. 1990. ‘Marketing for Nonprofit Organis-

ations: A Snare and Delusion’. In Lovelock, C. and

Weinberg, C. (Eds.), Public and Nonprofit Market-

ing: Readings and Cases I, 141–175. New York: The

Scientific Press.

Kennedy, D. 1996. ‘Government Acts To Cut Red Tape

Holding Back Adoption’. The Times, 20th March, 4.

Kotler, P. 1972. ‘A Generic Concept of Marketing’.

Journal of Marketing, 36, 46–54.

Kotler, P. and Levy, S.J. 1969. ‘Broadening the Con-

cept of Marketing’. Journal of Marketing, 33, 10–15.

Kotler, P. and Zaltman, G. 1971. ‘Social Marketing:

An Approach to Planned Social Change’. Journal of

Marketing, 35, 3–12.

Laczniak, G.R., Lusch, R.F and Murphy, P.E. 1979.

‘Social Marketing: Its Ethical Dimension’. Journal of

Marketing, 43, 29–36.

Levinas, E. 1989. The Levinas Reader. Oxford: Black-

well.

Luck, D.J. 1969. ‘Broadening the Concept of Market-

ing – Too Far’. Journal of Marketing, 33, 53–55.

McCracken, G. 1990. ‘Matching Material Cultures:

Person-Object Relations Inside and Outside the Ethno-

graphic’. In Belk, R. (Ed.), Advances in Nonprofit

Marketing, 3rd. Ed., 27–49. Greenwich: JAI Press.

McWhinnie A.M. 1967. Adopted Children; How They

Grow Up. A Study of their adjustment as adults.

London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Mihill, C. 1995. ‘Women’s Lot Is Still Less Pay, More

Work’. The Guardian, August 9.

Morgan, G. 1992. ‘Marketing Discourse and Practice:

Towards a Critical Analysis’. In Alvesson, M. and

Willmott, H. (Eds.), Critical Management Studies,

136–158. London: Sage.

Nantel, J. and Weeks, W.A. 1996. ‘Marketing Ethics:

Is there more to it than the utilitarian approach?’

European Journal of Marketing, 30:15, 9–19.

Nava, M., Blake, A., MacRury, I. and Richards, B.

1997. Buy This Book: Studies in Advertising and

Consumption. London: Routledge.



O’Cass. A. 1997. ‘Commercial Marketing Applied to

Politics: What are the Ethical Implications?’ Market-

ing Educators Group Conference Proceedings, 16–17.

O’Shaughnessy, N. 1996. ‘Social Marketing and Social

Marketing: A Critical Difference?’ European Journal

of Marketing, 30:10/11, 62–76.

Parker, M. 1998. ‘Introduction: Ethics, the Very Idea?’

In Parker, M. (Ed.), Ethics and Organisations, 1–14.

London: Sage.

Pascall, G. 1984. ‘Adoption’. In Bean, P. (Ed.),

Adoption, 1–17. London: Tavistock Publications.

Platt, D. 1999. ‘The 8th Annual Report of the Chief

of Social Services Modern Social Services – A Com-

mitment to Improve’. http://www.doh.gov.uk/scg/

mssacti.htm

Pringle, M.L. 1967. Adoption facts and fallacies: a Review

of Research in the United States, Canada and Great

Britain between 1948 and 1965. London: Longman.

Reich, D. and Lewis, J. 1986. Placements by Parents for

Children. London: BAAF.

Reid, J.H. 1971. ‘Principles, Values and Assumptions

Underlying Adoption Practice’. In Tod, R. (Ed.)

1971. Social Work in Adoption, 1–14. London:

Longman.

Rompf, E.L. 1993. ‘Open Adoption: What does the

‘‘Average Person’’ think?’ Child Welfare League of

America, 72:3, 219–230.

Ryburn, M. 1992. ‘Advertising for Permanent Place-

ments’. Adoption & Fostering, 16:2, 8–16.

Service First 2000. Charter Division http://www.cabinet

office.gov.uk/servicefirst/local.htm

Stubbs, P. 1987. ‘Professionalism and the Adoption of

Black Children’. British Journal of Social Work, 17,

473–492.

Tod, R. 1971. ‘Introduction’. In Tod, R. (Ed.), Social

Work in Adoption. London: Longman.

Triseloitis, J. 1973. In Search of Origins. London:

Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Wedge, P. and Thoburn, J. 1986. Finding Families for

Hard to Place Children. London: BAAF.



engaging the commodified face: the use of marketing in the child adoption process

Documents