Child-selling

Child-selling is the practice of selling children, usually by parents, close persons, or subsequent masters or custodians. After a sale, when the subsequent relationship with the child is essentially nonexploitative, the usual purpose of child-selling is to permit adoption

Georgia Tann, of Memphis, Tenn., was employed by the Tennessee Children's Home Society. According to reporter Barbara Bisantz Raymond, Tann, in 1924–1950, stole many children and sold 5,000 children, most or all of them white. The children were adopted by families in exchange for substantial fees (ostensibly for transport and hotel but Tann charged multiple times for a single trip and collected the money personally rather than through the Tennessee Children's Home Society) and processed the adoptions without investigating adoptive parents except for their wealth. Amounts charged for adoptions ranged from $700 to $10,000 when "reputable agencies ... [charged] almost nothing". Tann, in a 1944 speech accusing others of unlicensed adoption placements, did not admit selling children herself.

According to Raymond, Tann made adoption socially acceptable. Previously, when the first U.S. state adoption law was passed in 1851, adoption was "not immediately popular". Early in the 20th century, adoption was "rare". Low-income birth parents from whom children were taken were generally considered genetically inferior, and the children, considered adoptable, were considered therefore genetically tainted. Before Tann's work, indenture was applied to some children with the duties to educate the children and to provide them with land scarcely enforced, and the Orphan Train Project gathered children and transported them for resettlement under farmers needing labor, using a procedure akin to a slave auction. Some children's custody was changed "through secretive means" between sets of parents, some willing and some unaware. Baby farms, where many children were murdered, sold children for up to $100 each. Tann, apparently disagreeing with the prevailing view, argued (against her own belief) that children were "blank slates", thus free of the sin and genetic defects attributable to their parents, thus making adoption appealing, thus providing a way for children who might otherwise have been dead to survive and receive care, her waiting lists including much of the U.S., Canada, and South America. One person adopted through the Tennessee Children's Home Society was wrestler Ric Flair.

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