Cultural variations in adoption

There are several notable cultural variations in adoption, which is an arrangement by which a child whose biological parents are unable to care for it is "adopted" and given the same legal and social status as though he/she were the biological child of the adoptive parents. While all societies make provision for the rearing of children whose own parents are unavailable, not all cultures have the same system or understanding of adoption as in the western sense.

For example, under a system of adoption, if a parent dies intestate, the adopted child stands in exactly the same position regarding inheritance as a biological child. In adoption systems, the child can also inherit the parent's hereditary rank. Thus, in pre-modern Japan, which had a system of true adoption, a child could inherit the parent's aristocratic title or samurai rank, whereas in the United Kingdom (which only introduced legal adoption in 1926), only a biological child could inherit an aristocratic title, even if raising or providing for parentless children was a common practise.

In Arab cultures, if a child is adopted, he or she traditionally does not become a “son” or “daughter”, but rather a ward of the adopting caretaker(s). The child’s surname is not changed to that of the adopting parent(s), who are publicly recognised as “guardians”, making it close to other nations' systems for foster care. Other common rules governing adoption in Islamic culture address inheritance, marriage regulations, and the fact that adoptive parents are considered trustees of another individual's child rather than the child's new parents. In addition, Islamic countries such as Iraq and Malaysia have prohibitions against a child of Muslim parents being adopted by non-Muslim individuals.

In traditional Korean culture, adoption almost always occurred when another family member (sibling or cousin) gives a male child to the first-born male heir of the family. Adoptions outside the family were rare. This has also been the reason why most orphaned Korean children have been exported to countries such as the United States. This is also true to varying degrees in other Asian societies. To this day orphanages are still common all over South Korea.

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