Nowadays, most adoptions are completed through licensed adoption agencies and legitimized through the court system. For this reason, most adoptions are conducted with the best interests of the child in mind after a series of interviews/home inspections of the prospective parents have been completed. During the Roman Empire, families were known to adopt children for their own self-centered needs. According to Infoplease.com, wealthy families who did not have a child of their own often adopted a teenager to keep their last name intact. Due to the fact that children are unfairly adopted in this way, adoption fees and criteria continue to increase in an attempt to minimize this outcome in this day and age. Due to the overabundance of orphaned children due to war and poverty after the Roman Empire, the Catholic Church began to encourage adoption as an attempt to bring some of these abandoned children into loving families. Without the influence of the Catholic Church during this time period, the concept of adoption would not have been able to grow and prosper as it has throughout time and into the present.