This Act and its 1962 Amendment upheld the principle of secrecy via ‘closed adoption’. Legislation inferred the transparency inherent to ‘whangai practices [was] somehow detrimental to the child and their whangai parents.’[i]
Footnotes
[i] go to main content Joan Metge, New Growth From Old: The Whānau in the Modern World, Wellington, 1995, p. 251.