'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.' -- Ellen Herman, Department of History, University of Oregon

Between 1930 and the mid-1970s, several thousand Canadian-born children were adopted by families in the United States. At times, adopting across the border was a strategy used to deliberately avoid professional oversight and take advantage of varying levels of regulation across states and provinces. The Traffic in Babies traces the efforts of Canadian and American child welfare leaders—with intermittent support from immigration officials, politicians, police, and criminal prosecutors—to build bridges between disconnected jurisdictions and control the flow of babies across the Canada-U.S. border.

Karen A. Balcom details the dramatic and sometimes tragic history of cross-border adoptions—from the Ideal Maternity Home case and the Alberta Babies-for-Export scandal to trans-racial adoptions of Aboriginal children. 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 the birth mothers, adopted children, and adoptive parents who disappeared into the spaces between child welfare and immigration laws in Canada and the United States.

"‘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.’" - The American Historical Review; vol 117:03:2012

"‘Magnificent study of Canada-US adoption… The Traffic in Babies is a model of transnational scholarship and a major contribution to the study of Canada-US relations.’" - Canadian Historical Review, vol 93:04:2012