Adoption in the Queen's story

One thing I found interesting in Liliuokalani's story was the adoption of the children amongst the nobility. In Western society, most adoptions occur because the parents are unable to take care of the children for whatever reason. But, in the time of Liliuokalani, the noble families adopted each other's children, almost as if they were trading, in order to form a bond amongst the different groups. The adoptions were a lot like today's open adoptions, where the birth parents were able to contact their children. However, Liliuokalani stated that her adoptive parents were the parents that she acknowledged as her own. I thought that it was an interesting change of perspective, considering that most adopted children in today's society and the media are so interested in finding their birth parents. I like the idea of a more porous sense of family, and although it is very unconventional by today's standards, I think that the native Hawaiians were on to something because their society did seem to be a lot more peaceful than those that we're seeing today, but perhaps that was only because they were so isolated for so long from the bigger, more powerful societies.