The contribution aims to analyse the political and cultural debate on adoptions, with particular emphasis on the enactment of the law on special adoption n. 431 of 5 June 1967, in the broader context of changes in the family during the 1960s and 1970s. The Special Adoption law, although not as well taken into account in the field of historical analysis as the family law, the divorce and the abortion, because of its symbolic significance, is rightfully part of the reforms that characterized these decades of transition and the modernization of Italian society.
