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For French families inter-country adoption is a difficult process, and not just mere sensational episodes in the newspapers. The difficulties French families encounter when they want to adopt children from foreign countries have given rise to a recent report known as the Colombani report (issued in March, 2008) that attempts to facilitate inter-country adoption, a phenomenon dating back to the 1970’s. For a historiograph to look at inter-country adoption as a matter for study proves essential as, unlike a great number of human and social scientists who have addressed inter-country adoption as a complex social issue, French historiographs have but rarely addressed the phenomenon as such. And yet there are many actors intervening in an inter-country adoption procedure: parents wanting to adopt a child, associations through which the adoption will be made, the governments concerned, and international organizations whose approaches may or may not be complementary with those of the other actors, and may sometimes even conflict with them. Studying those different approaches, forever interacting and changing, is a key way to form a historical picture of inter-country adoption in France.