Marian Quartly, Shurlee Swain and Denise Cuthbert, in The Market in Babies: Stories of Australian Adoption (Monash Unversity Publishing), tell the history of adoption in Australia from its beginnings in the nineteenth century to its decline at the beginning of the twenty-first. As the rate of adoptions in Australia falls to a historic low, and parliaments across the country are apologising to parents and babies for the pain caused by past practices, this book identifies an historical continuum between the past and the present and challenges the view that the best interests of the child can ever be protected in an environment where the market for babies is allowed to flourish.