The Question of Secrecy Pertaining to Origins in “Traditional” Societies (Research Note) This research note is an analysis of attitudes and reasons given against, or for, secrecy surrounding birth, among societies that are regulated mostly by oral and traditional laws. The author postulates an analogy of situations between these societies, rejecting biological parents, or, to the contrary, practising an adoptive circulation of children, and fast changing industrialised societies with written laws, searching to provide families with descendants through medically assisted procreation. Some recommend that gamete donors or surrogate mothers be anonymous. Others, following the model most often used in “traditional” societies, suggest that transparency between the various actors and toward the child may be socially better suited to these new practices.