Today, in the Western world, adoption is seen as a means for couples who are unable to have children to experience parenthood. In general, the idea is that people with a strong commitment to raising children will be able to take over children whose situation is in some way substantially impaired.

In the recent past, relatively large numbers of unwanted children became available in this way. An element that has changed is the attitude to sole parenting, and children resulting from unplanned pregnancies are more often retained than adopted out. Community attitudes have shifted considerably, and it is now seen as psychologically desirable for the child to be brought up in its birth family, if possible, rather than to be reassigned.

The result is that adoptees have to be sought from further away, from parts of the world where it is economically impossible for the birth family to bring up the child, or where social conditions, including famine and war, have created large numbers of orphans. Children brought in under these conditions raise complex issues such as the paternalism of rich countries, which lead on to other controversies, for example the cultural displacement of the children.

Rome from its inception was a different type of community, and conditions of family life differed substantially. The presence of slaves as well as an enormous gulf between rich and poor is only a beginning.