“Race,” Ethnicity & Adoption. Derek Kirton. 2000. 192p. (Race, Health, and Social Care). Open University Press (UK). This important study provides a unique and comprehensive analysis of research into the development of adoption policy and practice regarding black and minority ethnic children in the care of local authorities. What are the needs of adopted minority ethnic children? To what extent can white families meet these needs? Should the emphasis on ethnic matching of children and families in adoption be relaxed? This book reviews the long running and often fierce controversy surrounding the adoption of black and minority ethnic children, either trans racially into white families or into matched “same race” placements. Through analysis of research and the writings of protagonists, the core concepts—namely the nature and salience of racial/ethnic identity, cultural heritage and dealing with racism—are explored and located within broader debates on “race” and the family. The history of the controversy is set out in terms of the competing paradigms offered by liberalism and black radicalism, and more recent “post-structuralist” influences. The author argues the need to see adoption (and especially that of black children) as inherently political and contested. While broadly supporting the case for “same race” adoption, it is suggested that this must rest on acknowledgment of, and engagement with, social and psychological complexities, rather than their suppression beneath doctrinaire formulas. “Race,” Ethnicity and Adoption sets the issues in the wider context of a multiracial society and its politics, and will be of particular interest to social workers and child care professionals, but will also appeal more widely to students of sociology, and social and public policy. About the Author: Derek Kirton is a Lecturer in Social Policy at the University of Kent. He has previously worked as a social worker in the field of adoption and foster care. He is the author of numerous articles on child care including several on “race,” ethnicity and adoption.

Reading Adoption: Family & Difference in Fiction & Drama. Marianne Novy. 2005. 296p. University of Michigan Press.Who am I? Where do I come from? Where am I going? These labor-intensive identity questions take a lifetime to answer. For adopted persons, sharing nature and nurture with two mothers and two fathers, responses are often more complicated. Fiction and drama involving adopted people have provided conscious and unconscious answers, advice and role models to deal with such complex family situations over the centuries. In Reading Adoption: Family and Difference in Fiction and Drama, Marianne Novy, an adoptee who is a Professor of English and Women’s Studies at the University of Pittsburgh, gives astute commentary about adoption literature from Oedipus to the novels of Barbara Kingsolver. As a sensitive memoirist, Dr. Novy also reveals how adoption literature has enhanced and sometimes hindered her own search for self-definition. This author’s goal is to “more of the next generation of adoptees to feel less alone” and to make adopted parents aware (through literature) of the struggles necessary to meeting their children’s needs. If you love reading, if you are connected to the world of adoption, if you crave making connections between literature and drama and people’s interior lives, this is the book you are looking for. As an English teacher and parent by adoption, I found it spoke directly to both my professional expertise and to my personal experiences. I applaud Marianne Novy for her fair, generous and interesting book, the work of a gifted scholar and mature daughter. — Denise Pappas

Readings in Adoption. Evelyn Smith, ed. 1963. 532p. Philosophical Library.

Receiving End, The: Consumer Accounts of Social Help for Children. Noel Timms, ed. 1973. Routledge & Keegan Paul (London). A selection of accounts written by the real “experts,” the children in care, parents looking to adopt and foster parents.

Reconstructing the Household: Families, Sex, & the Law in the Nineteenth-Century South. Peter W Bardaglio. 1998. 384p. University of North Carolina Press. In Reconstructing the Household, Peter Bardaglio examines the connections between race, gender, sexuality, and the law in the nineteenth-century South. He focuses on miscegenation, rape, incest, child custody, and adoption laws to show how southerners struggled with the conflicts and stresses that surfaced within their own households and in the larger society during the Civil War era. Based on literary as well as legal sources, Bardaglio’s analysis reveals how legal contests involving African Americans, women, children, and the poor led to a rethinking of families, sexuality, and the social order. Before the Civil War, a distinctive variation of republicanism, based primarily on hierarchy and dependence, characterized southern domestic relations. This organic ideal of the household and its power structure differed significantly from domestic law in the North, which tended to emphasize individual rights and contractual obligations. The defeat of the Confederacy, emancipation, and economic change transformed family law and the governance of sexuality in the South and allowed an unprecedented intrusion of the state into private life. But Bardaglio argues that despite these profound social changes, a preoccupation with traditional notions of gender and race continued to shape southern legal attitudes. About the Author: Peter W. Bardaglio is associate professor of history at Goucher College in Baltimore, Maryland.

Rehabilitation of Children, The: The Theory & Practice of Child Placement. Edith Baylor & Miriam Hedges. 1939. 560p. Harper & Brothers.

Relative Strangers: History of Adoption & a Tale of Triplets. Hunter Davies. 2004. 346p. Little Brown. Relative Strangers is a history of adoption in Britain, and the true-life tale of the seventy-one-year-old Hodder triplets. The book tells the unique and moving story of how the triplets, adopted as babies in 1932, were reunited in June 2001—the first time the three of them had been together since their birth. Their life stories and how they found each other again are interspersed with the story of adoption, which began as a legal phenomenon in the UK in 1926. The book also describes the twenty-five-year legal battle fought by NORCAP (the National Organisation for the Reunion of Children and Parents) to change the adoption laws, which helped to bring the triplets, and other adoptees, together again. About the Author: Hunter Davies is one of Britain’s most sympathetic and thoughtful interviewers, and the author of over thirty books. He has interviewd the triplets at length and has had access through NORCAP to other case histories, which are themselves profoundly affecting.

Relatives Raising Children: An Overview of Kinship Care. Joseph Crumbley & Robert L. Little, eds. Kinship care, the full-time parenting by children by relatives, has long been practiced informally throughout history. A new phenomenon, though, is the number of relatives becoming permanent or long-term primary caregivers. Relatives Raising Children provides professionals and organizations the information they need to develop and provide services for kinship caregivers, kinship families, children, and parents. Topics discussed are common clinical issues, intervention strategies, legal implications, and policy and program recommendations.

Report of the Child Welfare League of America National Adoption Task Force. Kenneth Watson & Joyce Strom. 1987. CWLA.

Resources for Child Placement & Other Human Services. Armand Lauffer, with contributions by Bonnie Carlson, Kayla Conrad, & Lynn Nybell. 1979. 192p. (Sage Human Services Guides, Volume 6). Sage Publications.

Saying Goodbye to a Baby, Volume 1: A Book About Loss & Grief in Adoption. Patricia Roles. 1989. CWLA. This manual for the professional gives guidelines and practical information on how counselors can help birthparent clients who choose the adoption option—before, during, and after the decision. It also looks at how counselors can work with and influence the larger adoption system.

Russia’s Abandoned Children: An Intimate Understanding. Clementine K Fujimura, with Sally W Stoecker & Tatyana Sudakova. 2005. 184p. Praeger. Researcher Fujimura takes us across history, into Russian society, its orphanages and shelters, and along the streets of the nation to see how abandoned children are stigmatized and shunned. We also come to understand how and why these children, left orphans by death or by choice, form their own culture to find power and to survive. This pioneering work on child abandonment looks at Russian society from a new angle: from the perspectives of abandoned youngsters and their caretakers. Based on direct observation of and interviews with abandoned children, this work shows why any effort to rescue these children calls for a deep understanding of Russian culture, and why any effort to affect abandonment in Russia calls for a joint effort between psychologists, social workers, and the children themselves. About the Authors: Clementine K. Fujimura is an Associate Professor of language and culture studies at the United States Naval Academy, where she teaches Russian and German, culture, and literature courses. She received her doctorate in cultural anthropology from the University of Chicago and has been writing about Russia’s homeless children, abandonment, and its cultural concept of childhood since 1991. She has received numerous grants and fellowships in support of her work on homeless children in Russia. Sally W. Stoecker is a Lecturer in ciminology and criminal law, and a candidate of sciences, at Baikal State University of Economics in Irkutsk, Russia. Her reserach focuses on child homelessness, drug addiction of minors, and juvenile crime. She is formerly Coordinator of the Irkutsk Center for the Study of Organized Crime and Corruption in Irkutsk. Tatyana Sudakova is Scholar-in-Residence at American University’s Transnational Crime and Corruption Center (TraCCC), where she conducts research on human trafficking, child homelessness and exploitation, and juvenile crime. Stoecker also teaches courses on child homelessness and exploitation, and juvenile crime. Stoecker teaches courses on Russian politics in the School of International Service at American University and served as Executive Editor of Demokratizatsiya: The Journal of Post-Soviet Democratization for six years.

Saying Goodbye to a Baby, Volume 2: A Counselor’s Guide to Birthparent Grief & Loss. Patricia Roles. 1990. CWLA. This moving book deals with birthparent grief before and after relinquishment and throughout life. Contents include the original adoption decision, living with the decision later in life, the adoption triangle, searching and reunions, guilt and anger when looking back, and when to get counseling. Written for birthparents by someone who has “been there.”

Sealed & Secret Kinship, A: Policies & Practices in American Adoption. Judith Modell. 2001. 224p. (Public Issues in Anthrpological Perspectives, Vol 3). Berghahn Books. Long veiled in secrecy and closed records, adoption affects the lives of scores of American families. Stories of celebrity adoptions, birthparents claiming they never agreed to adoption, gay adoption rights, adoptee searches for birth parents, and the question of open records access continues to make headlines. Infertility and later marriages have resulted in rising adoption rates and adoption also touches on matters of life and death, as it has added to the abortion debate. A Sealed and Secret Kinship focuses on the increasing debate about adoption—not just as reported in the media—but also among parents, children, kin and non-kin to adoptive families. Case examples are cited throughout and the book covers such topics as adoption reform, adoptee experiences of searching, the new birth parent, independent adoption, and modern modes for placing children as well as changes in the political climate and in welfare policy. About the Author: Judith Modell is Professor of Anthropology, History and Art at Carnegie Mellon University. She is currently the Director of the Center for the Arts in Society at the School.

Searching to be Found: Understanding & Helping Adopted & Looked After Children with Attention Difficulties. Randy Lee Comfort. 2008. 206p. Karnac Books. Many adoptive parents and foster carers feel they have children in their care who have attention difficulties. They wonder about the relationship between being in care/adopted and having an attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. They are confused about how they can best manage the behaviors of these difficult-to-live-with children. Teachers too are concerned about how to handle such distracted and behaviorally demanding students. Both adoption/being in care and attention difficulties are still widely misunderstood by parents, schools and even social workers and therapists. Searching To Be Found is about children who are adopted or looked after and who present with attention disorder and behavioral difficulties. It differentiates itself from other ADHD/ADD books because its premise is that understanding more about adoption/being in care, about attention deficits, and about brain development will help adults to become more attuned to why these children may be behaving the way they do. In turn, this awareness will enable the adults to devise more effective and sensitive approaches for helping children to manage both their attention disorder and their behavior. This is not a book about jargon, labels, formulae or answers. It is a book about learning how to understand and to help children and their families, teachers, therapists, relatives and neighbors live a more compatible and compassionate life together by implementing individualized, down-to-earth, research based knowledge and management techniques. About the Author: Randy Lee Comfort obtained a Doctorate in Educational Psychology from the University of Denver. She has worked for over 35 years in the fields of family counselling, learning disorders, and adoption and fostering and is the mother of both biological and adopted children. She moved to Bristol, England, where, in 1998, she opened Our Place: a Centre for Families who Foster and Adopt. In addition to running Our Place, she continues to lecture internationally on the topics of learning disorders and adoption/fostering. She is the author of The Unconventional Child, Teaching the Unconventional Child, The Child Care Catalog, numerous journal articles, and chapters in edited books. Since the late 1980s, she has taught teachers and social workers about attention deficit disorders, adoption/fostering issues, and social dysfunctions.

Second Home: Orphan Asylums & Poor Families in America. Timothy A Hacsi. 1998. 304p. Harvard University Press. As orphan asylums ceased to exist in the late twentieth century, interest in them dwindled as well. Yet, from the Civil War to the Great Depression, America’s dependent children—children whose families were unable to care for them—received more aid from orphan asylums than from any other means. This important omission in the growing literature on poverty in America is addressed in Second Home. As Timothy Hacsi shows, most children in 19th-century orphan asylums were “half-orphans,” children with one living parent who was unable to provide for them. The asylums spread widely and endured because different groups—churches, ethnic communities, charitable organizations, fraternal societies, and local and state governments—could adapt them to their own purposes. In the 1890s, critics began to argue that asylums were overcrowded and impersonal. By 1909, advocates called for aid to destitute mothers, and argued that asylums should be a last resort, for short-term care only. Yet orphanages continued to care for most dependent children until the depression strained asylum budgets and federally-funded home care became more widely available. Yet some, Catholic asylums in particular, cared for poor children into the 1950s and 1960s. At a time when the American welfare state has failed to provide for all needy children, understanding our history in this area could be an important step toward correcting that failure.

Self-Image of the Foster Child, The. Eugene A Weinstein. 1960. 80p. Russell Sage Foundation.

Semen for Sale. DO Cauldwell. 1947. Haldeman-Julius Publications. All About Artificial Insemination. How It’s Done. The $2,000 Black Market on Babies. Test Tube Babies. Latest Facts. Husbands for Hire. Fathers by Proxy, and a Condensation of Facts Everyone Wants to Know.

Sex & the Teen-Age Revolution. Simma Holt. 1967. 163p. McClelland & Stewart (Toronto). A serious journalistic study, with many case histories, of the problems faced by young people especially in foster homes and the correctional system. Suggestions to parents and society at large how to prevent the waste of human potential.

Sex, Genes & All That: The New Facts of Life. Anthony Smith. 1997. 500p. Macmillan & Co (UK). An up to-date facts of life book taking into account the fundamental issues of our time, such as: abortion, sex changes, gay adoption and euthanasia. So much of our reproductive process is being altered from contraception to test-tube fertilization, abortion, sex changes, gene manipulation, everything is being amneded and almost always there is controversy. Smith uses anecdote, case history, summary and explanation to enlighten the reader of the current breeding story of the human species.

Sexualized Child in Foster Care, The: A Guide for Foster Parents & Other Professionals. Sally G Hoyle. 2000. 115p. CWLA. The Sexualized Child in Foster Care gives practical advice, information, training tips, and references for those who work with children who have been sexually abused in a previous placement. Chapters include information about sex and sexuality, distinguishing normal from abnormal sexual behavior, treatment methods, research on sexual abuse assessment, and concerns about the sexually aggressive child. Just as important, the book covers the emotional cost of treating sexual abuse survivors and how to care for the caretakers.

Shaping Childcare Practice in Scotland: Key Papers in Adoption & Fostering. Malcolm Hill, ed. 2002. 480p. British Agency for Adoption & Fostering (UK). This invaluable anthology brings together seminal papers published in BAAF’s quarterly journal, Adoption & Fostering, which have contributed to shaping childcare practice in Scotland since 1980. Adoption and fostering policy and practice in Scotland have altered dramatically over the last 20 years. The types of children needing adoptive families are quite different and consequently, the experiences of adoptive families also differ significantly from those of even just a generation ago. What are the important changes and key trends? And what are the major issues and controversies that have preoccupied child care professionals and practitioners?
Contents cover:
•   trends in child placement philosophy
•   children’s legislation in Scotland
•   perspectives on adoption
•   post-adoption services and issues
•   perspectives on foster care
•   placement outcomes, and assessment and meeting children’s needs.
Essential reading for managers, practitioners, researchers, students, academics and all those interested in the issues which have influenced the development of adoption and foster care policy and practice.

Shared Fate: A Theory & Method of Adoptive Relationships. H David Kirk. 1964. Free Press. rev ed. 1984. 215p. Ben-Simon. Shared Fate is a classic of adoption-reform literature. Since its inital appearance in 1964, it has had an incalculable effect on the ways in which researchers, as well as adoptive parents themselves, view the institution of adoption by postulating the theory that adoptive families are different, and that success in adoption requires an “acceptance” of that difference, rather than trying to deny such differences. Dr. Kirk’s follow-up work, Adoptive Kinship, expands upon his original thesis.

Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare. Dorothy Roberts. 2001. 250p. Basic Books. The first book in 30 years to consider the devastating social consequences of the overwhelming numbers of black children in the child-welfare system. The story of foster care in the United States is the story of the failure of the social safety net to aid poor, largely black, parents in their attempt to make a home for their children. Shattered Bonds tells this story as no other book has before-from the perspective of a prominent black, female legal theoretician. The current state of the child-welfare system in America is a well-known tragedy. Thousands of children every year are removed from their parents’ homes, often for little reason other than the endemic poverty that afflicts women and children more than any other group in the U.S. Dorothy Roberts, an acclaimed legal scholar and social critic, reveals the racial politics of child welfare in America through extensive legal research and original interviews with Chicago families in the foster care system. She describes the racial imbalance in foster care, the concentration of state intervention in certain neighborhoods, the alarming percentages of children in substitute care, the difficulty that poor and black families have in meeting state’s standards for regaining custody of children placed in foster care, and the relationship between state supervision of families and continuing racial inequality. About the Author: Dorothy Roberts is a professor at Northwestern University School of Law and a Fellow at the university’s Institute for Policy Research. She lives with her family in Evanston, IL.

Siblings in Adoption & Foster Care: Traumatic Separations & Honored Connections. Deborah N. Silverstein & Susan Livingston Smith, eds. 2008. 216p. Praeger. Normally, our relationships with our brothers and sisters are the longest relationships in our lives, outlasting time with our parents, and most marriages today. The sibling relationship is emotionally powerful and critically important, giving us a sense of continuity throughout life. So what happens when a child loses contact not only with his or her parents, but with siblings too? That is what happens in thousands of cases each year inside the child welfare system. Children are surrendered by parents—or taken by the government—and placed in the foster care system. There, they are often separated and sent to different foster families, or adopted by different couples. In this work, a team of top experts details for us how this added separation futher traumatizes children. This stellar team of internationally known researchers—some of whom are themselves adoptees—shares with us hard, poignant, and personal insights, as well as ways we might act to solve this widespread problem. Contributors address not only the importance of nurturing sibling bonds and mental health strategies to support those relationships, but also the legal rights of siblings to be together, as well as issues in international adoptions. Emerging and standing programs to encourage and facilitate adoptions that keep siblings together are featured, as are programs that at least enable them to stay in contact. About the Editors: Deborah N. Silverstein is Licensed Clinical Social Worker and Vice President at the Kinship Center, an agency that develops and offers mental health programs for families and children. Silverstein is also a psychotherapist in private practice working with children and adults on family, individual, and marital issues. Susan Livingston Smith is Professor Emerita of Social Work at Illinois State University and Program and Project Director at the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute. Also a contract social worker for Mandala Adoption Services, she is a professional trainer who has delivered more than 50 workshops to adoption professionals in several states. A member of the Post Adoption Support and Preservation Task Force of the National Association of Social Workers, she received the Angels in Adoption Award from the U.S. Congress in 2006. She is also a recipient of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Adoption Excellence Award.

Signposts in Adoption: Policy, Practice & Research Issues. Malcolm Hill & Martin Shaw, eds. 1998. 292p. British Agencies for Adoption and Fostering. Adoption policy and practice have altered dramatically over the last 20 years. The types of children needing adoptive families are also significantly different from those of a generation ago. What are the important changes and key trends? And what are the major issues and controversies that have preoccupied adoption workers? This unique anthology brings together seminal papers published in BAAF’s quarterly journal, Adoption & Fostering, which have contributed to shaping adoption practice in recent years. An essential text—described as a comprehensive refresher course in adoption—it will be invaluable for practitioners, academics, students and all others who take an interest in what continues to be a complex yet fascinating area.

Small Feats: Unsung Accomplishments & Everyday Heroics of Foster & Adoptive Parents. Richard J Delaney. 2002. 92p. Wood ’N Barnes. This inspirational book is written to promote hope in foster and adoptive parents contending with youngsters and youth. Small Feats describes the results achieved by the daily, one-step-at-a-time, challenges that face parents of difficult behavioral children. Also a testimony to the “Everyday Heroes” that commit themselves to love and nurture these special children. Richard J. Delaney, Ph.D., is an internationally known trainer and consultant who has worked with troubled youth since 1970. He has consulted with foster and adoptive parents, caseworkers and child care agencies over the past twenty-five years. Dr. Delaney received his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Loyola University of Chicago in 1973. But his real education began when he met foster and adoptive parents.

Social Change, Social Work & the Adoption of Children. Alan Teague. 1989. 155p. Avebury (UK).

Social Work in Adoption: Collected Papers. Robert James Niebuhr Tod, editor. 1971. 158p. Longman (London).

Social Worker’s Role in Adoption, The. C Anderson. 1987. 15p. (rev ed). CUB.

Sociology of Adoption. Elfreeda Momin. 2008. 235p. Rawat Publications (India). Adoption connotes the establishment of a socially constructed and legally sanctified parent-child relationships between those who do not share this biologically. As a universal custom, adoption has existed across large parts of the world since ancient times. However, cultural norms and practices related to it vary from society to society. Though there is a substantial and growing literature on adoption in Western countries, there is a virtual dearth of systematic, comprehensive and empirically-based studies on the subject in India. Much of the existing literature on adoption in the country remains sketchy and fragmentary. This book, which is the first full-length, empirical sociological study of adoption in India, fulfils this vacuum. It considers adoption as a processual and dynamic phenomenon and views the complexities, challenges and problems associated with it in a holistic perspective. Adoption is seen as a long-term, unfolding process, involving an enormous amount of emotional investment—including the complex issues of coping and adjustment—on the part of both adoptive parents and adoptee children. The study focuses on the social, familial and psychological problems and challenges faced by the adoptive parents before, during and after the decision to adopt a child, and on post-adoption services and counselling provided by adoption agencies and NGOs. It is hoped that this study will be useful to adoptive parents, adoption agencies, NGOs, social workers and counsellors. About the Author: Elfreeda Momin has had her higher education from the University of Mumbai from where she obtained both her Masters and PhD degrees in Sociology. With over three decades of teaching experience, she retired as Head of the Department of Sociology at Elphinstone College in November 2006. She has also participated in several seminars, workshops and conferences.

Solomon’s Sword: Two Families & the Children the State Took Away. Michael Shapiro. 1999. 331p. Crown Publishing group. In an era when headlines often seem dominated by horrific stories about abused children, Solomon’s Sword weaves together the elements of two painful custody battles into a memorable book that no reader who cares about children will be able to put aside. The first story unfolds around Gina Pellegrino, who, in 1991, hours after giving birth to a daughter, abandons the child in a Connecticut hospital, and Cynthia and Jerry LaFlamme, a childless New Haven couple who have waited five years for an adoptive baby. When asked by a caseworker to name their highest priority—do they prefer a boy, a girl, an infant, a toddler—the LaFlammes say they simply want a “risk-free baby,” one who can’t be taken from them under any circumstances. Four months after the baby girl has come to live with them—and soon before their adoption would become legal—Pellegrino reappears, hoping to reclaim the child. Next, Michael Shapiro describes the Melton sisters, living with nineteen children amid squalor and vermin in a drafty Chicago rowhouse. One snowy night in February 1994, policemen discover the children and evacuate them as a TV camera rolls, searing into our collective conscience shameful images of the officers emerging from the house with child after child in their arms. Though the children are not victims of outright abuse, their neglect compels authorities to hold the threat of permanent removal over their hapless mothers. In examining the collision between Gina Pellegrino’s belated commitment to her daughter and the LaFlammes’ threatened adoption of the girl, as well as the Meltons’ inability to understand their parental shortcomings, Shapiro meets judges, lawyers, social workers, clergy, and therapists who must advocate a course of action not only in these two cases, but in thousands more every year across America. Reading about these dedicated people who are in the vanguard of new approaches to the problem of mistreated children will leave readers hopeful that we are finally learning how to ameliorate this enduring national disgrace. Solomon’s Sword sheds new light on a dire social problem in a powerful book that will influence public policy for years to come. About the Author: Michael Shapiro’s work has appeared in The New Yorker, Esquire, Sports Illustrated, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times Magazine. The author of three previous books, he teaches at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and lives in New York with his wife, Susan Chira, and their two children.

Somebody’s Child: Stories from the Private Files of an Adoption Attorney. Randi G Barrow. 2002. 256p. Perigee Books. After two heartbreaking losses, an adoptive couple find that “the third time’s a charm.” A birth mother is abandoned by her adoptive sponsors—only six weeks before her due date. A birth mother is caught in a torturous cycle of drugs, theft, and prison, where she bears one child while handcuffed to her bed. An African-American couple adopts a biracial child—only to find racism on both sides of the fence. Today, adoption can be a complex legal procedure, a high-stakes game of chance, an expensive investment, and a heart-wrenching drama. Here are personal narratives from birth mothers and adoptive parents alike, framed by the perspective of an adoption attorney. These stories touch on many issues surrounding adoption including adoption scams, gay adoption, and open adoption, and touch on the hopes and fears on both sides of the adoption agreement. About the Author: Randi Barrow received her law degree from Loyola Law School and has since been practicing as an adoption attorney. A leading voice in both adoption and fertility issues, she is a frequent speaker at RESOLVE seminars, the national infertility support organization, and has given California State Bar courses on adoption. She has contributed a chapter to the book Infertility Counseling: A Handbook for Clinicians.

Soul of Adoption, The. Catherine E Poelman. 2000. 254p. Eagle Gate. The author begins with the premise that each individual is in possession of a divine spirit as she examines the adoption circle and the challenges for each of the souls in it. Numerous case studies and accessible writing make this an interesting read for anyone involved in, or contemplating, adoption.

Special-Needs Adoption: A Study of Intact Families. James A Rosenthal & Victor K Groze. 1992. 264p. Greenwood. Adoption is one of several child welfare services that have undergone major policy and practice reforms in the past 20 years. The resulting emergence of special-needs adoption as a new social welfare program is best represented by the shift in focus from finding children for childless couples to finding families for children who need them. Special-needs adoption places older children, children of color, those who have physical or mental disabilities, and children in sibling groups with many different types of families. In this highly readable book, which reports on their study of 799 adoptive families, Rosenthal and Groze make an important contribution to understanding the families’ experiences in adopting children who would formerly have been considered unadoptable. Their work confirms practice wisdom about the high rates of success and family satisfaction in special-needs adoption and underscores the need for highly specialized recruitment, preparation, and post-placement supports for adoptive families. — Choice
Rosenthal and Groze provide a valuable service by documenting, with richness and breadth, the outcomes of adoption and how they relate to the characteristics of adoptive parents and adopted children. By providing added insight into the relationship of the makeup of adoptive families and their outcomes, they are both able to raise further questions for researchers in this area as well as offer practice recommendations for practitioners in the area. ... It is important reading for anyone researching or practicing in this area. — Children and Youth Services Review
About the Authors: James A. Rosenthal is Associate Professor of Social Work at the University of Oklahoma, Norman. Victor K. Groze is Assistant Professor at the University of Iowa School of Social Work in Iowa City.

Special Skills in International Adoptive Parenting: Case Study of Five Finnish International Adoptive Parents. Nina Talmen. 2008. 80p. VDM Verlag. The amount of international adoptions in Western countries is rising year by year. This book tries to answer the question: what kind of special skills these international adoptive parents feel they need in international adoptive parenting? This case study looks closely to the views and experiences of five Finnish international adoptive parents. It also presents many practical examples of the challenges these families have faced in their everyday life.The writer has combined Lee’s (2003) cultural socialization theory that Lee has modulated particularly to international adoptive families, and Vonk’s (2001) model she has developed from the basis of earlier adoption studies. This model presents the areas international adoptive parents need to focus and gain skills, knowledge and awareness in, so that they can develop their own cultural competence. The most significant results presented in this book are the four special skills the interviewed parents feel they need most in international adoptive parenting. This book also presents recommendations that are named Special Skills in International Adoptive Parenting. About the Author: Nina J. Talmén, M.A., studied Intercultural Communication at University of Jyväskylä. She is a Professional journalist at Iltalehti newspaper, Finland.

Spiritual Kinship as Social Practice: Godparenthood & Adoption in the Early Middle Ages. Bernhard Jussen. Translated by Pamela Selwyn. 2000. 362p. University of Delaware Press. This book deals with kinship in the early Middle Ages. Most scholars agree in theory that kinship is not a biological fact but a universally deployable system for structuring social relations. In empirical practice, however, research on kinship has focused almost exclusively on descent and alliance. This book addresses kinship beyond these concepts. It is a study of godparenthood and adoption in Frankish society at the time when Roman adoption was disappearing and godparenthood was being invented as a social tool.

State-By-State Guide To Women’s Legal Rights. Shana Alexander & Barbara Bruno. 1975. 244p. Wollstonecraft, Inc. A reference book of women’s rights.

Statistics of Adoption: 2000 Edition. Lori Carangelo, ed. 2000. 50p. Access Press. Current and last available statistics obtained from governmental, private/nonprofits, media and other sources cited. A rare, eye-opening reference book for writers, counselors, researchers. Subjects include: Abortion, Adoptees, Adoption, Adoptive Parents, Birthparents, Black Market Adoption, Child Abuse, Costs, Donor Insemination, Foster Children, Infertility, Heritage, Incest, Orphanages, Marriage, Medical Aspects, Open Records Polls, Rape, Searching, Sex...and more. Updated annually.

Staying Connected: Managing Contact In Adoption. Hedi Argent, ed. 2002. 244p. British Association for Adoption & Fostering (UK). Adopted children need to maintain some degree of contact with their birth families in order to help them make lasting new connections. But making and managing contact arrangements with birth parents, wider birth family members and other people who are significant to the child is a hugely complex and challenging task. How is this best achieved? Who should have contact? How often, when and where? Should contact arrangements be face-to-face or indirect? Supervised, supported or independent? What does it feel like for all those involved? Arrangements must be driven by the child’s needs, wishes and feelings—what happens when these inevitably change? All the contributors to this anthology are involved in making, sustaining or evaluating contact arrangements, either as social workers, academics or adoptive parents. They offer examples of varied practice to explore what works and what does not and why. They describe many ways of remaining in touch but they all emphasise the same essential aspects of managing arrangements: flexibility and the opportunity to review arrangements as time goes on and circumstances change. They all stress the importance of keeping the interests of the child in the forefront at all times. At the heart of the book, adopted children and young people and their families give their own opinions and share their own experiences, illuminating all that can be said about managing contact arrangements. No practitioner making contact plans for children can afford to be without this book!

Stolen Birthright: America’s Adoption Travesty. Sandy Musser. 1991. 150p. Adopt Aware Press.

Stork Market, The: America’s Multi-Billion Dollar Unregulated Adoption Industry. Mirah Riben. 2007. 260p. AdvocatePublications.com. Exposé of the privatization of the adoption industry; the indistinguishable line between gray and black market; the scams and rip-offs; exploitation in both domestic and international infant adoption markets where the children are the commodity and prices are set based on quality (i.e. age, race, health) while 143,000 children linger in foster care. Extensively researched and documented inside report of the lack of regulations that allow anyone to call themselves an adoption “professional” and arrange adoptions. Questions whether the money can be removed from adoption and return it to a service which puts the best interest of children first instead of simply allowing anyone who pay—including pedophiles—to “adopt” a child. Goes further than Riben’s first book—Shedding light on...The Dark Side of Adoption (1988) and reveals for the first time Riben’s involvement in the notorious Lisa Steinberg murder case in NYC. About the Author: Mirah (aka Marsha) Riben has been researching, writing and speaking about the need to reform, humanize, and de-commercialize American adoption practices since 1971. Excerpts of The Dark Side of Adoption have appeared in Utne Reader; Social Issue Resources Series, Inc.; and Macrocosm USA. Additionally, her articles have appeared in The Women’s Newspaper of Princeton, Suburban Parent, Jersey Woman, The New York Times Op Ed, The Jewish Press, The Adoption Therapist, Mothering, Nurturing, and Family Journal. Riben, a former Director-at-Large of the American Adoption Congress, is co-founder of Origins, a New Jersey-based national organization for women who have lost children to adoption. Speaking publicly since 1979, Riben has appeared on several national television programs, including Joan Rivers to discuss the Steinberg/Nussbaum murder of their illegally adopted child. She has been keynote speaker for the American Adoption Congress; and has spoken at countless other conferences including Parents of Tomorrow, Adoption Forum, Council on Equal Rights in Adoption, Origins, and Concerned United Birthparents. Riben was an invited speaker at the 7th Annual NJ Research Conference on Women, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, NJ. She has substitute taught at Staten Island College and guest lectured at Rutgers University. Riben is the mother of four, one of whom was lost to adoption shortly after birth and is now deceased.

Stranger Who Bore Me, The: Adoptee-Birth Mother Relationships. Karen Ruth March. 1995. 192p. University of Toronto Press. In The Stranger Who Bore Me sixty adult adoptees discuss the difficulties they have encountered in a world where biological kinship governs. Each of their stories reveals the personal dilemma created by the societal demand for secrecy and the deep pain and intense joy associated with adoptees making contact with their birth mother. Karen March has created a compelling and informative analysis of this need of some adoptees. Little research has been done on the actual outcome of adoptee-birth parent reunion and most arguments in this controversial area are based on personal anecdotal reports. This book offers the first systematic study of the consequences of reunion. As such it is an invaluable guide for any member of an adoptive triad as well as for professionals and government officials in the field of adoption.

Strangers & Kin: The American Way of Adoption. Barabra Melosh. 2002. 326p. Harvard University Press. Strangers and Kin is a history of adoption, a quintessentially American institution in its buoyant optimism, generous spirit, and confidence in social engineering. An adoptive mother herself, Barbara Melosh tells the story of how married couples without children sought to care for and nurture other people’s children as their own. It says much about the American experience of family across the twentieth century and our shifting notions of kinship and assimilation. Above all, it speaks of real people striving to make families out of strangers.

Study in Negro Adoption, A. David Fanshel. 1957. 108p. CWLA.

Study of Adoption Fees. Compiled & prepared by Helen Fradkin. 1962. 23p. CWLA.

Study of Adoption Practice, A. Michael Schapiro. 1956. Two Volumes (Volume 1: Adoption agencies and the children they serve; Volume 2: Selected scientific papers presented at the national conference on adoption, January, 1955). CWLA.

Study of Adoptive Children, A. J R Wittenborn, with the collaboration of Myrtle A Astrachan, et alia. 1956. 115p. American Psychological Association.

Study of Black Adoption Families, A: A Comparison of a Traditional and a Quasi-Adoption Program. by Elizabeth A Lawder & Child Welfare League of America Staff. 1971. CWLA.

Substitute Parents: A Study of Foster Families. Mary Buell Sayles 1936. 309p. Oxford University Press.

Success & Failure in Permanent Family Placement. June Thoburn. 1990. 112p. Ashbury.

Successful Adoptive Families: A Longitudinal Study of Special-Needs Adoption. Victor Groze. 1996. 161p. Greenwood. This study, done over a four-year period, focuses on children who are older than infants when placed for adoption, children who are members of a sibling group, and children with physical, emotional, or behavioral difficulties. There are an estimated 35,000 such children each year who need assistance in placement. The book explores issues of separation from siblings, adoption experiences of children who had been physically or sexually abused, and social support. The purpose of this book is to provide empirically grounded knowledge and information that will help social workers practice more effectively with special needs placements. About the Author: Victor Groze is Associate Dean of Academic Affairs and Associate Professor of the Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences at Case Western Reserve University.

Teaching Children From Complex Backgrounds. Georgine Dellisanti. 1994. 81p. Children’s Home Society of Washington. Teaching Children from Complex Backgrounds offers information on two related subjects: “Sensitivity to Family Diversity—Adoption Awareness in the Classroom” and “Children who have Experience Trauma—A Perspective for Educators.” Awareness of the issues children face can aid teachers in developing sensitive lesson plans, building skill-oriented curricula and planning strategies that are attuned to the diversity of children in today’s classroom.

Termination of Parental Rights & Adoption in Foster Care: A Foster Care Decision on Child Maltreatment. Minkyoung Song. 2007. 180p. VDM Verlag Dr Mueller. Termination of parental rights (TPR) is not only a matter of the family anymore. Now, we face termination of parental rights as one of social institution on what should be guided for child rearing practice and why we should make a decision to intervene the State into the family. This study seeks to provide empirical evidence that examine why and to what extent children who have been exposed to child maltreatment and placed in foster care experience TPR and permanency outcome of adoption. The discussion of this study includes the deliberate discussion on the parentchild relationship and the primary principles of the State intervention into the family in cases of child abuse and neglect with a review on the legal standards/ grounds for the involuntary TPR for foster children according to the changes of child welfare policy goals in the American society. Since the ASFA of 1997 was enacted, in particular, it has been widely accepted that TPR proceedings for foster children who cannot be reunified with their natural parents should be pursued. Thus, it can be argued that the involuntary TPR becomes an alternative to family preservation/reunification and an essential mechanism to achieve the permanency outcome for children in foster care. This book is addressed to social workers and policy makers in the child welfare field as well as practitioners in family law. It is also directed towards researchers in social practice and policy, child welfare and family services.

These are Our Children: Jewish Orphanages in the United States, 1880-1925. Reena Sigman Friedman. 1994. 298p. Brandeis University Press. Studies three representative orphanages—New York’s Hebrew Orphan Asylum, Philadelphia’s Jewish Foster Home, and Cleveland’s Jewish Orphan Asylum—placing them in the context of the Progressive movement as well as the evolving child welfare field in the U.S. Friedman aims to demonstrate that the main function of Jewish orphanages, after providing basic shelter and food, was to Americanize their East European charges with middle-class values through vocational training and religious education in Reformed Judaism.

Thicker Than Blood: Bonds of Fantasy & Reality in Adoption. Salman Akhtar & Selma Kramer, editors. 2000. Jason Aronson. Akhtar and Kramer (psychiatry, Jefferson Medical College) collect ten contributions that look at the joys, heartaches, benefits and problems of adoption. Drawing on broad clinical and personal experience, they focus on such critical topics as separation-individuation theory, the complexities of bonding, transracial adoptions, cultural issues, intrauterine and genetic factors, intervention strategies, government-based regulations, and the value of psychoanalytic treatment as a remedial tool when necessary. — Book News, Inc.®, Portland, OR

Thinking Psychologically About Children Who Are Looked After & Adopted: Space for Reflection. Kim Golding, Helen Dent, Ruth Nissim, & Liz Stott. 2006. 398p. John Wiley & Sons. This innovative collection makes thinking psychologically about looked after and adopted children accessible and, in doing so, provides an insight into the world of these children. Informed by research, practice and psychological theory, this volume provides an overview of the area and considers the context for helping children change and develop. It goes on to describe in detail the techniques and approaches used by clinicians, and explains how interventions can be developed and adapted for children and young people living in residential, foster and adoptive care. Careful consideration is also given to carers and families living with these children. With its multi-disciplinary approach, Thinking Psychologically About Children Who Are Looked After and Adopted will appeal to all professionals involved in the care and education of placed children. It will also be of interest to policy makers and lecturers and students of social work. About the Authors: Kim S. Golding, BSC (Hons), MSc (Clinical Psychology), DClinPsy, is a chartered clinical psychologist, employed by Wyre Forest Primary Care Trust inWorcestershire, providing clinical leadership for the Integrated Service for Looked After Children (ISL). She was part of a small group who developed the Primary Care and Support Team (now part of ISL). The team provides support and training for foster, adoptive and residential carers. Kim has a longstanding interest in parenting, and collaborating with parents or carers to develop their parenting skills tailored to the particular needs of the children they are caring for. Within ISL she has developed a group for foster carers based on attachment theory, and has carried out research exploring the use of the consultation service.Kimcoordinated a national network for clinical psychologists working with looked after and adopted children for a number of years. Additional to her clinical work Kim was, for 15 years, an associate lecturer for the Open University teaching Introduction to Psychology and Child Development. Helen R. Dent, BA (Hons), MPhil, Ph.D., is a chartered clinical and forensic psychologist, currently employed as Programme Director of the Doctorate in Clinical Psychology at the Universities of Staffordshire and Keele. Her previous post was Consultant Clinical Psychologist in an Inter-Agency team with children looked after by the local authority. She is continuing her work in this area, and has a contract with North Staffordshire Combined Healthcare NHS trust as Honorary Consultant Clinical Psychologist. She is particularly interested in strategic and systemic interventions,and in neuropsychological development. Prior to training as a clinical psychologist at the Institute of Psychiatry, Helen gained a PhD from the University of Nottingham, for which she carried out pioneering research into children as witnesses. She has held various academic and clinical appointments and has edited three previous books, including Children asWitnesses (1992) with Rhona Flin. Ruth Nissim, BA (Hons,) M.Ed., Ph.D., is a consultant clinical psychologist and UKCP registered family therapist who has been in practice since qualifying in 1977. Since the early 1980s she has specialized in children living away from home in substitute families and in residential care. She has worked in all three agencies: Education, Social Services and the NHS, as well as for a private adoption agency. Since taking early retirement Ruth has worked on a freelance basis with a particular focus on supporting adoptive families. In 1999 she completed a research doctorate looking at the outcomes for children placed in adoptive or foster families longer-term. Liz Stott, M.Sc. (Hons), M.Sc. (Clinical Psychology), is a chartered clinical psychologist who has been working with children for the past 16 years. She has worked in both residential adolescent units and outpatient CAMHS before taking up specific posts to work with looked after children and their carers. She is interested in systemic and psychodynamic approaches to consultation and uses these ideas to inform practice when working with larger organizations such as Social Services, smaller organizations such as children’s homes and also in consultation with carers. She is currently employed by Partnership Trust in Gloucestershire.

Tough Choices: Bearing an Illegitimate Child in Japan. Ekaterina Hertog. 2009. 240p. Stanford University Press. As is the case in Western industrialized countries, Japan is seeing a rise in the number of unmarried couples, later marriages, and divorces. What sets Japan apart, however, is that the percentage of children born out of wedlock has hardly changed in the past fifty years. This book provides the first systematic study of single motherhood in contemporary Japan. Seeking to answer why illegitimate births in Japan remain such a rarity, Hertog spent over three years interviewing single mothers, academics, social workers, activists, and policymakers about the beliefs, values, and choices that unmarried Japanese mothers have. Pairing her findings with extensive research, she considers the economic and legal disadvantages these women face, as well as the cultural context that underscores family change and social inequality in Japan. This is the only scholarly account that offers sufficient detail to allow for extensive comparisons with unmarried mothers in the West. About the Author: Ekaterina Hertog is a Career Development Fellow in the Sociology of Japan at the University of Oxford.

Transnational Adoption. Toby Alice Volkman & Cindi Katz, eds. 2003. 127p. Duke University Press. What are the implications of the massive movement of children from poor nations to the affluent West? How is adoption made possible by globalizing forces, facilitated by new media technologies such as the Internet, and inflected by the cultural politics of multiculturalism? In this special issue, scholars—several of whom are adoptive parents—from a variety of disciplines focus on the culture and politics of transnational adoption, exploring relationships between the sending and receiving nations. Until the mid-1970s, adoptive families were pressured to forget the child’s past and birth culture and to create “as if” biological families. Since then, the culture of adoption has moved dramatically toward openness, generating preoccupations with origins and loss, as well as new kinds of border-crossing movements such as orphanage visits, homeland journeys, and culture camps established by sending nations now eager to embrace the adoptees. This collection of essays examines the complex interplay of race, culture, identity, kinship, and belonging in this contemporary form of family building. Contributors: Lisa Cartwright, Claudia Fonseca, Cindi Katz, Eleana Kim, Toby Alice Volkman, Barbara Yngvesson. About the Authors: Toby Alice Volkman is Visiting Scholar in the Department of Anthropology at New York University. Cindi Katz is Professor of Geography in Environmental Psychology and Women’s Studies at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York.

Transnational Adoption: A Cultural Economy of Race, Gender, & Kinship. Sara K Dorow. 2006. 329p. New York University Press. Each year, thousands of Chinese children, primarily abandoned infant girls, are adopted by Americans. Yet we know very little about the local and transnational processes that characterize this new migration. Transnational Adoption is a unique ethnographic study of China/U.S. adoption, the largest contemporary intercountry adoption program. Sara K. Dorow begins by situating the popularity of the China/U.S. adoption process within a broader history of immigration and adoption. She then follows the path of the adoption process: the institutions and bureaucracies in both China and the United States that prepare children and parents for each other; the stories and practices that legitimate them coming together as transnational families; the strains placed upon our common notions of what motherhood means; and ways in which parents then construct the cultural and racial identities of adopted children. Based on rich ethnographic evidence, including interviews with and observation of people on both sides of the Pacific—from orphanages, government officials, and adoption agencies to advocacy groups and adoptive families themselves—this is a fascinating look at the latest chapter in Chinese-American migration. About the Author: Sara K. Dorow is assistant professor of sociology at the University of Alberta. She is the author of When You Were a Child in China: A Memory Book for Children Adopted in China and I Wish for You a Beautiful Life: Letters from the Korean Birth Mothers of Ae Ran Won to Their Children.

Treating Attachment Disorders: From Theory to Therapy. Karl Heinz Brisch. Translated by Kenneth Kronenberg. 2002. 294p. The Guilford Press. English Translation of Bindungsstorungen: Von der Bindungstheorie zur Therapie. Attachment theory and research have greatly enhanced our understanding of the role of parent-child relationships in the development of psychopathology. Yet until now, little has been written on how an attachment perspective can be used to actively inform psychotherapeutic practice. In this invaluable work, Karl Heinz Brisch presents an attachment-oriented framework for assessing and treating patients of all ages. Rich, extended case examples form the core of the book. Demonstrated are the ways attachment-oriented interventions can effectively be used to treat a wide range of patients: couples trying unsuccessfully to conceive, women with severe postpartum depression, children and adolescents with behavioral and emotional disturbances, adults with relationship difficulties and work problems, and others. Applications in short- and long-term psychotherapy are discussed, as well as use of the model in such other contexts as prevention in infant mental health, family therapy, and group work. A vital resource for practitioners, this book is also a compelling text for graduate-level psychotherapy courses. About the Author: Karl Heinz Brisch, M.D., is a child and adolescent psychiatrist and psychotherapist, as well as an adult psychiatrist and neurologist; a training psychoanalyst at the Psychoanalytic Institute; and head of the Department of Pediatric Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy at the Children’s Hospital at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich, Germany. Dr. Brisch’s primary research is on the development of infants and children with high-risk conditions and the development of attachment and its disorders. He has led longitudinal research projects on attachment disturbances and early psychotherapeutic interventions. He is a member of the World Association of Infant Mental Health and of the Society for Research in Child Development.

Treating Children in Out-of-Home Placements. Marvin Rosen. 1998. 197p. Haworth Press. If you’re in the market for a detailed, pragmatic knowledge base for dealing with discipline, relationships with regulatory and funding agencies, and staff training, you’ll find all you need and more in Treating Children in Out-of-Home Placements. This unique and insightful volume gives you the information you need to successfully manage quality assessment and improvement in out-of-home placements, especially in a managed care environment. Treating Children in Out-of-Home Placements reviews for you the field of residential treatment of adolescents in the child welfare system. With this crucial knowledge base, you’ll be equipped to face and surmount the challenges that accompany the provision of services to behaviorally disturbed youngsters. Some of the areas you’ll become fluent in are: approaches to child welfare for children at risk; models of treatment; family counseling; diagnostic criteria for conduct and behavior disorders; psychotropic medication; and training staff to become agents of change. For over 150 years, we’ve seen the aftershocks of a problematic system for treating children placed in the custody of child welfare. Through Treating Children in Out-of-Home Placements, you can understand the problems of implementing and administering such a program. You will want to open this book and place yourself and your staff members on the road to a more ideal plan of care for children placed in custody.

Treating the Aftermath of Sexual Abuse: A Handbook for Working With Children in Care. Margaret Osmond, Duane Durham, Andrew Leggett, & John Keating. 1998. 165p. CWLA. Treating the Aftermath of Sexual Abuse is a handbook for working with children in care who have been sexually abused. The authors review the impact of sexual abuse on a child’s physical and emotional development and describe the effect of abuse on basic life experiences. What distinguishes the authors’ approach is the importance they place on the child’s “story.” This handbook will guide caregivers and other professionals as they learn to understand the child’s story in the signs and signals that she gives them through her behavior. As caregivers become careful, thoughtful listeners, they will be able to use day-to-day events in helping the child tell her story, understand how abuse has shaped her life, and find the path to healing.

Treating the Changing Family: Handling Normative & Unusual Events. Michelle Harway, ed. 1995. 374p. John Wiley & Sons. The past quarter century has been a time of historic social and cultural upheaval, and nowhere is that more evident than in the changing face of the family. In an effort to keep pace with the many challenges that confront the modern family in all its varied new forms, this groundbreaking book offers a broad-ranging, carefully integrated review of contemporary trends in family therapy, research, and practice. In Treating the Changing Family, nearly twenty-five distinguished experts from across North America, including psychologists, marriage and family therapists, social workers, and others, re-examine the family and the many contemporary challenges to its function, and provide practical advice for therapists who treat troubled families. Comprehensive in scope, Treating the Changing Family deals with the full array of non-normative events confronting today’s family, including violence and abuse, addiction, long-term and chronic illness (with a special chapter on AIDS in the family), divorce, adoption, trauma, ethnicity, and others. It explores the impact these factors can have on family function and provides intervention strategies and techniques that have proven successful in the treatment of families affected by them. Receiving special attention are the structure, dynamics, and unique problems of families that do not fit the traditional mold. Experts in these areas share their findings and provide clinical guidelines for treating bi-nuclear, single-parent, gay and lesbian, and other nontraditional families. Offering the combined knowledge and expertise of some of the nation’s foremost researchers and practitioners in their fields, Treating the Changing Family: Handling Normative and Unusual Events is a valuable resource for couples and family therapists, counselors, clinical psychologists, social workers, psychiatrists, and all mental health professionals who treat today’s changing family.

Understanding Adoption: Clinical Work with Adults, Children, & Parents. Diana Siskind, Kathleen Hushion & Susan B Sherman, eds. 2006. 352p. Jason Aronson Inc. Adoption is a transformational process bringing parenthood to those who long for but cannot bear children and giving stranded children home, family, and their place in the world. But every adoption is preceded and followed by its story and when these stories are told in the offices of psychotherapists we begin to understand the impact of adoption in all its complexity. We learn from parents how their quest to have and raise a child has played out in real life, and what shadows might have fallen between the dream and the reality. And we learn from the children the many ways that being adopted shaped their development, their sense of identity; what went wrong along the way and how we may help. Clinical work with parents and children as well as with adults who were adopted is the focus of Understanding Adoption. Because adoption has become widely practiced, accepted, and accessible, and because is has greatly changed the composition of families, it is a timely subject for study. The authors of this book undertake exploration of this important terrain of loss and connection, and of the fragility and resilience of human bonds. List of Contributors: Christopher Bonovitz; Jerrold Brandell; Jane Hanenberg; Kathleen Hushion; Paul Hymowitz; Carole Lapidus; Cathy Siebold; Jeffrey Seinfeld; Sandy Silverman; Diana Siskind; Janet Shapiro; Vivian Shapiro; Susan Sherman; Laurie Sloane; Alice van der Pas; Susan Warshaw. About the Editors: Diana Siskind, a practicing psychotherapist, psychoanalyst, supervisor and teacher is on the staff of the New York School for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy and is a former senior staff member of the Child Development Center and a former teacher at Smith School for Social work. In addition to writing journal articles and book chapters she has written 3 books: The Child Patient and The Therapeutic Process (1992), Working with Parents (1997) and A Primer for Child Therapists (1999), all published by Jason Aronson Publishers. Dr. Siskind is on the editorial board of Journal of Infant, Child, and Adolescent Psychotherapy and the book review editor of the National Membership Committee on Psychoanalysis in Clinical Social Work Newsletter. She was named Distinguished Practitioner by the National Academy of Practice. Susan Sherman is a psychoanalyst and psychotherapist with a practice of adults, adolescents, and children. She is on the faculty of the Advanced Training Program, Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services and the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Study Center. She previously taught at the Columbia University School of Social Work and the Adelphi University School of Social Work. She has published articles in clinical journals. Dr. Sherman was named Distinguished Practitioner by the National Academy of Practice. Kathleen Hushion is a psychotherapist and psychoanalyst working with children, adolescents and adults. She is a member of the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research (IPTAR) and the International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA). She is also faculty member and supervisor for IPTAR’s Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy Training Program.

Understanding & Helping Adopted & Foster Children. Michael M Katz, PhD. (4-hr videotape). 100.00-425.00. [Avail fr Psychotherapy Center for Adoptive Families, 7600 Grand River, Ste 290, Brighton, MI 48116.]

Understanding Attachment & Attachment Disorders: Theory, Evidence & Practice. Vivien Prior & Danya Glaser. 2006. 224p. Jessica Kingsley Publishers. A thorough and robust examination of the available evidence on attachment theory and disorder, Understanding Attachment and Attachment Disorders will be a valuable guide to best practice and a key reference for all those working with or interested in children with attachment issues. In the first of five sections, the authors provide an outline of attachment theory, its applicability across different cultures, and the effect of multiple caregivers. In Sections Two and Three they consider the different methods of assessing attachment, theoretical models and the available literature on parenting and attachment. Section Four discusses attachment disorder and proposes a new model for its conceptualisation and comprehension, based both on attachment theory and evidence base. In the final section, the authors provide an overview of successful interventions designed to help individuals form secure attachments. As a summary of the existing knowledge base and an appraisal of the scientific research, this book will be an extremely useful theoretical and practical tool for social workers, psychologists, psychiatrists, teachers, researchers, students, and foster and adoptive parents.

Unlearning Adoption: A Guide to Family Preservation & Protection. Jessica DelBalzo. 2007. 158p. BookSurge Publishing. Unlearning Adoption: A Guide to Family Preservation and Protection is the culmination of ten years worth of research into past and present adoption practices, the aftermath of adoption for surrendering parents and adopted people, and the unethical laws and lies that permeate adoption today. Written by an activist who is neither an adoptee nor an exiled parent, this book examines the complex issues created by adoption and cites numerous ways individuals, social workers, doctors, and other professionals can assist struggling families. Offering alternatives to adoption for children in need and addressing the various situations that lead to adoption today, Unlearning Adoption was crafted for those who want to examine adoption from all angles. Researchers and students will appreciate the comprehensive foot notes accompanying the text. Relevant to both social work and women’s studies courses, Unlearning Adoption offers future professionals the opportunity to approach adoption from a fresh perspective, yet to been seen in traditional media coverage of adoption. Prospective adopters and expectant parents contemplating the surrender of their children will gain a true understanding of what it means to be adopted or to lose a child to adoption. Our society is all too familiar with cliched adoption phrases like “loving option” and “best interests of the child.” Now it is time to dig deeper, past the media hype, past the deep pockets that fuel the adoption industry, and into the blinding reality that is adoption for so many dismembered families. In its most basic sense, “unlearning” means throwing out everything you thought you knew to make room for new and more valid ideas. As a culture, we desperately need to unlearn adoption and all the myths that accompany it. By deconstructing the adoption experience, re-evaluating the costs and benefits of adoption, and seeking out better ways to handle children and families in need of assistance, we can forge new paths toward compassion, support, and justice for all the individuals who would have previously been subject to the adoption industry.

Unlocking the Past: The Impact of Access to Barnardo’s Childcare Records. Gillian Pugh. 1999. 128p. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd (UK). From Booknews: Looks at the motivations and experiences of adults who grew up in care of a network of children’s homes in the UK, Canada, and Australia, who gained access to their personal files from these institutions. Part I examines the literature on adults who grew up in care and seek information about their origins, and explores the historical context in which a culture of secrecy about origins has led to some adults growing up in ignorance of their past. Part I also discusses what the literature reveals about issues of separation, loss, and substitute care. Part II explores attitudes of people who sought access to their records. Part III discusses implications for social work policy. Annotation © Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

Voluntary Termination of Parental Rights & Adoption: A Practical Handbook for Judges, Lawyers, & Human Services Providers. Judith Sperling Newton. 1990. 275p. St Bar of WI.

Waifs, Foundlings, & Half-Orphans. Mary Ellen Johnson. 2009. 104p. Heritage Books, Inc. During the Orphan Trains Era, from 1854 until 1929, an estimated 200,000 orphaned, abandoned, or homeless children and families were relocated from major metropolitan east coast cities to new homes in the west traveling aboard trains. Children relocated via these trains were called Riders. In the early 1850s, the term orphan referred to children living without adult supervision. Some of these homeless children were actual orphans, while others were half-orphans with one parent living but unable to care for the child. A fair number of these street children were turned out to fend for themselves as the result of extreme poverty. This slender volume helps preserve the life experiences of the Riders—information that has affected foster children today. The traumatic early lives of the Riders demonstrated the need of siblings to keep in touch if they must be separated and the positive affect that work has on self-esteem. Two moving first-hand accounts precede an examination of the impact of mass migration, followed by a discussion of orphanages and institutions, a helpful section on research and resources, and finally, references and a reading list. A full name index adds to the value of this work. About the Author: Mary Ellen Johnson established the Orphan Train Riders Research Center and Museum, and founded the Orphan Train Heritage Society of America. This book is based upon her work.

Walk a Mile in My Shoes: A Book about Biological Parents for Foster Parents & Social Workers. Judith A B Lee & Danielle Nisivoccia. 1989. 87p. CWLA. This book will help foster parents and caseworkers “get into the shoes” of birth parents. Foster parents may use it as a self-help guide. Workers will find it helps attune them to the tasks both foster and birthparents face. Agencies will find it especially effective for use in the separate and joint training of caseworkers and foster parents and for use by teachers and students in learning about biological families.

Wanting a Daughter, Needing a Son: Abandonment, Adoption, & Orphanage Care in China. Kay Ann Johnson & Amy Klatzkin. 2004. Yeong & Yeong Book Company. Kay Johnson has done groundbreaking research on abandonment and adoption in China. In Wanting a Daughter, Needing a Son, Johnson untangles the complex interactions between these social practices and the government’s population policies. She also documents the many unintended consequences, including the overcrowding of orphanages that led China to begin international adoptions. Those touched by adoption from China want to know why so many healthy infant girls are in Chinese orphanages. This book provides the most thorough answer to date. Johnson’s research overturns stereotypes and challenges the conventional wisdom on abandonment and adoption in modern China. Certainly, as Johnson shows, many Chinese parents feel a great need for a son to carry on the family name and to care for them in their old age. At the same time, the government’s strict population policy puts great pressure on parents to limit births. As a result, some parents are able to obtain a son only by resorting to illegal behavior, such as “overquota” births and female infant abandonment. Yet the Chinese today value daughters more highly than ever before. As many of Johnson’s respondents put it, “A son and a daughter make a family complete.” How can these seemingly contradictory trends—the widespread desire for a daughter as well as a son, and the revival of female infant abandonment—be happening in the same place at the same time? Johnson looks at abandonment together with two other practices: population planning and adoption. In doing so, she reveals all three in a new light. Johnson shows us that a rapidly changing culture in late twentieth-century China hastened a positive revaluation of daughters, while new policies limiting births undercut girls’ improving status in the family. Those policies also revived and exacerbated one of the worst aspects of traditional patriarchal practices: the abandonment of female infants. Yet Chinese parents are not literally forced to abandon female infants in order to have a son. While birth-planning enforcement can be coercive, parents who abandon are rarely prosecuted. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of Chinese parents informally adopt female foundlings and raise them as their own. Ironically, as Johnson shows, in some places adoptive parents are more likely than abandoning parents to incur fines and discrimination. In addressing all these issues, Johnson brings the skills of a China specialist who has spent over a decade researching her subject. She also brings the concerns of an adoptive parent who hopes that this book might help others find answers to the question, What can we tell our children about why they were abandoned and why they were available for international adoption? From the Author: Proceeds from Wanting a Daughter, Needing a Son support medical care for AIDS orphans in China.

Wasted: The Plight of America’s Unwanted Children. Patrick T Murphy. 1997. 192p. Ivan R Dee. This is a book about how a system designed to help children is instead helping to destroy them. By trying to preserve families, Patrick Murphy charges, the child welfare system is too often placing children in danger. State agencies and the courts are stuck in hundred-year-old realities and the politics of the 1960s and the 1970s. As the Public Guardian of Cook County, Illinois (an office unique in the United States), Mr. Murphy for almost thirty years has represented abused and neglected children in court cases at every level of the state and federal judiciary, including the U.S. Supreme Court. He has labored in the trenches of the child welfare and juvenile justice systems—“looking after the fish, not the fishermen,” as he likes to say. In other words, worrying about the children. In Wasted, Mr. Murphy argues that trying to keep families together by lavishing public resources on abusive parents who can’t and won’t change their behavior is harming their children—who ought to be the system’s first concern. In sharply drawn stories of individual children, he shows how too many of them suffer continued abuse, degradation, neglect, injury, even death. Wasted pulls no punches in describing this mess, but Mr. Murphy also offers a prescription for fixing what’s broke.

We, The Tikopia: A Sociological Study of Kinship in Primitive Polynesia. Raymond Firth. 1963. 497p. Stanford U Press.

Weaving a Family: Untangling Race & Adoption. Barbara Katz Rothman. 2005. 272p. Beacon Press. Barbara Katz Rothman, a noted sociologist who has explored motherhood in four previous books and has more recently explored the social implications of the human genome project, now turns her eye toward race and family. Weaving together the sociological, the historical, and the personal, Barbara Katz Rothman looks at the contemporary American family through the lens of race, race through the lens of adoption, and all—race, family, and adoption—within the context of the changing meanings of motherhood. Drawing on her own experience as the white mother of a black child, on historical research on white people raising black children from slavery to contemporary times, and pulling together work on race, adoption, and consumption, she offers us new insights for understanding the way that race and family are shaped in America today. This book is compelling reading, not only for those interested in family and society, but for anyone grappling with the myriad issues around raising a child of a different race—an estimated seven million American families in 2005.

Well-Functioning Families for Adoptive & Foster Children: A Handbook for Child Welfare Workers. Joyce S Cohen & Anne Westhues. 1990. 162p. University of Toronto Press. Revised edition of How to Reduce the Risk: Healthy Functioning Families for Adoptive and Foster Children (1987), this volume proceeds from an analysis of successful and unsuccessful adoptive and fostering families to a training program for adoption/foster workers.

West Meets East: Americans Adopt Chinese Children. Richard C Tessler, Gail Gamache & Liming Liu. 1999. 189p. Preager. Who are the new families that are appearing on city streets, in suburban malls, and at Fourth of July celebrations? The parents, in their 40s and 50s, are obviously Caucasian, and their very young daughters are obviously Chinese. This book is about these new “American & Chinese” families that are being formed through the mechanism of international adoption. About the Authors: Richard Tessler is Professor of Sociology and Associate Director of the University of Massachusetts’ Social and Demographic Research Institute; Gail Gamache is Professor Sociology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst; Liming Liu is a Ph.D candidate in Sociology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a research assistant at the Social and Demographic Research Institute.

What Works in Foster Care?: Key Components of Success From the Northwest Foster Care Alumni Study. Peter J. Pecora, Ronald C. Kessler, Jason Williams, A. Chris Downs, Diana J. English, James White, and Kirk O’Brien. 2009. 320p. Oxford University Press. On any given day, nearly half a million children are served by foster care services in the U.S. at an annual cost of over $25 billion. Growing demand and shrinking funds have so greatly stressed the child welfare system that calls for orphanages have re-entered the public debate for the first time in nearly half a century. New ideas are desperately needed to transform a system in crisis, guarantee better outcomes for children in foster care, and reduce the need for out-of-home care in the first place. Yet little is known about what works in foster care. Very few studies have examined how alumni have fared as adults or tracked long-term health effects, and even fewer have directly compared different foster care services. In one of the most comprehensive studies of adults formerly in foster care ever conducted, the Northwest Foster Care Alumni Study found that quality foster care services for children pay big dividends when they grow into adults. Key investments in highly trained staff, low caseloads, and robust supplementary services can dramatically reduce the rates of mental disorders and substance abuse later in life and increase the likelihood of completing education beyond high school and remaining employed. The results of this unparalleled study document not only the more favorable outcomes for youth who receive better services but the overall return when an investment is made in high quality foster care: every dollar invested in a child generates $1.50 in benefits to society. These findings form the core of this book’s blueprint for reform. By keeping more children with their families and investing additional funds in enhanced foster care services, child welfare agencies have the opportunity to greatly improve the health, well being, and economic prospects for foster care alumni. What Works in Foster Care? presents a model foster care program that promises to revolutionize the way policymakers, administrators, case workers, and researchers think about protecting our most vulnerable youth.

Whatever Happened to Adam?: Stories of Disabled People Who Were Adopted or Fostered. Heidi Argent. 1998. 256p. British Association for Adoption & Fostering (UK). This remarkable book tells the stories of 20 young people with disabilities and the families who chose to care for them. Their compelling stories—told by the families and by the adopted people—are a testament to the commitment they offer to children whose physical and emotional disabilities present a lifetime of challenges. All the “children” are now more than twenty years old and Whatever Happened to Adam? follows their stories from joining their families, through childhood and adolescence and into preparation for adulthood.

When a Stranger Calls You Mom: A Child Development & Relationship Perspective on Why Traumatized Children Think, Feel & Act the Way They Do. Katherine Leslie, PhD. 2nd ed. 2004. 235p. Brand New Day Publishing. When A Stranger Calls You Mom is a child development and relationship perspective on why traumatized children think, feel, and act the way they do. Dr. Leslie shares her unique perspective derived from (a) years of experience working with thousands of foster/adoptive families, social workers, and therapists who live or work with abused and neglected children, and foster and adopted children, (b) personal experience as a foster and adoptive mother of four special needs children, (c) research into the structure and function of parent-child relationships.

When Home is No Haven: Child Placement Issues. Albert J Solnit, et al. 1992. 176p. Yale University Press. In a book that will be an essential guide and resource for child protective service workers, a psychoanalyst, a social worker, and a research scientist provide practical guidelines for workers who must make decisions about the placement of neglected or abused children. The authors discuss 35 cases of abuse and neglect of children of a range of ages and ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds, illustrating a variety of placement issues.

Where Are the Children? a Class Analysis of Foster Care & Adoption. Betty Reid Mandell. 1973. Lexington Books.

When Adoptions Go Wrong: Psychological & Legal Issues of Adoption Disruption. Lita Linzer Schwartz, PhD. 2006. 139p. Haworth Press. When adoptions fail to happen, the effects can be devastating on children and the families who chose to adopt them. What if you were an adopted child and someone tried to remove you from the family you had grown to love? In the last twenty years, changes in laws, judicial decisions, social welfare practices, and the availability of American children for adoption have led to an increase in disrupted adoptions. When Adoptions Go Wrong: Psychological and Legal Issues of Adoption Disruption examines the psychological and forensic aspects of adoption with an emphasis on how negative events can affect children and the families that choose to adopt them—and how you can prevent those events from happening. When Adoptions Go Wrong is a comprehensive resource on the causes of interrupted adoptions, including changing profiles of adoptive parents who have new reasons for wanting to adopt. With the help of detailed case examples, this powerful book explores the impact of disruptions on the children, the legal issues of determining in whose “best interests” decisions are made, and possible methods of reducing the negative affects of those decisions on the children. It also stresses how important it is, for the professionals involved, to be aware of child development in the adoption process. Topics discussed in When Adoptions Go Wrong include: children’s rights; legal rights of gays to adopt; tribal rights (Native Americans); open adoption; individual state laws concerning adoption; the media’s coverage of child custody cases; types of adoption; the “Baby Jessica” case; the Evan Scott case; the “Internet Twins”; inadequate social services; family court; and much more. When Adoptions Go Wrong also suggests legislative measures to create uniformity in the way states handle adoption issues to help natural and adoptive parents in making difficult decisions. The book is invaluable for psychologists, judges and lawyers, social workers, and prospective adoptive parents.

Where Children Live: Solutions for Serving Young Children & Their Families. Richard N Roberts & Phyllis R Magrab, eds. 1999. 369p. Ablex Publishing. Where Children Live is a natural extension of the Advances in Applied Developmental Psychology Series. It extends our coverage and concerns for children and families in their natural habitats. The message of this volume is that effective delivery of child and family services, a comprehensive theoretical model, is needed so that efficient delivery can take place, as well as an evaluation of the quality of those services. About the Editors: Richard Roberts is Director of the Early Intervention Research Institute at Utah State University. Phyllis Magrab is Director of the Georgetown University Children’s Development Center, Department of Pedicatrics.

Where to Find Adoption Records: A Guide for Counsellors. Georgina Stafford. 1985. 84p. (1993. 88p.; 2002. 200p.). British Association for Adoption & Fostering (UK). This book has been an invaluable source of information for professionals working with adopted people and for birth relatives who are trying to find more information relating to the adoption, such as the location of any records that could provide further details.

White Mother to a Dark Race: Settler Colonialism, Maternalism, & the Removal of Indigenous Children in the American West & Australia, 1880-1940. Margaret D Jacobs. 2009. 592p. University of Nebraska Press. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, indigenous communities in the United States and Australia suffered a common experience at the hands of state authorities: the removal of their children to institutions in the name of assimilating American Indians and protecting Aboriginal people. Although officially characterized as benevolent, these government policies often inflicted great trauma on indigenous families and ultimately served the settler nations’ larger goals of consolidating control over indigenous peoples and their lands. White Mother to a Dark Race takes the study of indigenous education and acculturation in new directions in its examination of the key roles white women played in these policies of indigenous child-removal. Government officials, missionaries, and reformers justified the removal of indigenous children in particularly gendered ways by focusing on the supposed deficiencies of indigenous mothers, the alleged barbarity of indigenous men, and the lack of a patriarchal nuclear family. Often they deemed white women the most appropriate agents to carry out these child-removal policies. Inspired by the maternalist movement of the era, many white women were eager to serve as surrogate mothers to indigenous children and maneuvered to influence public policy affecting indigenous people. Although some white women developed caring relationships with indigenous children and others became critical of government policies, many became hopelessly ensnared in this insidious colonial policy. About the Author: Margaret D. Jacobs is a professor of history and the director of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. She is the author of Engendered Encounters: Feminism and Pueblo Cultures, 1879–1934 (Nebraska 1999).

Whose Best Interest?: A Fight to Save Two American Kids. Rene Howitt. 2007. 256p. Tate Publishing & Enterprises. We have approximately 500,000 children in this country living in foster homes, kinship homes, or group homes. There are probably another 500,000 that should be in the system, however, there is just no place to send them. In author Rene Howitt’s book, Whose Best Interest, she tells the true story of a fight to save two children from abuse and neglect. Parents are given one chance after another to put their lives together. Children are taken away from their parents, only to be returned to them time and again. The children become like ping-pong balls bounced back and forth between these temporary homes and then back to their parents. By the time that Family Services concludes that there is no changing the parents, years have passed by and the children are irreparably damaged. About the Author: Rene Howitt resides in Missouri, has been married for 26 yerars, and has three daughters. She is currently working toward meaningful changes whcih would prompt social services to quicken their decision-making processso that children do not have to lose several years of their childhoods.

Wings of Compassion. Vera Covey White. 1976. 276p. Firm Foundation Publishing. History of the Children’s Home of Lubbock by woman who, along with her husband, worked at the facility, who recounts their efforts of missionary work in this book.

Without Burnt Offerings: Ceremonies of Humanism. Algernon D Black. 1974. 231p. Viking Press.

Working With Adoptive Families Beyond Placement. Ann Hartman. 1984. 61p. CWLA.

Working With Older Adoptees: A Sourcebook of Innovative Models. Lorenetal Coleman, ed. 1989. University of Southern Maine. While adoptive families may experience difficulties at any point in the adoption process or during the life of the family, problems are more likely to surface in the child’s adolescent years. Some issues that are particular to adoptive families may warrant special consideration in the assessment of a problem and the subsequent recommendations. The purpose of Working With Older Adotpees is to present a range of models for providing mental health and other supportive services to older adopted children and their families.

Wrongful Adoption: Law, Policy, & Practice. Madelyn Freundlich & Lisa Peterson. 1998. 96p. CWLA. The past decade has seen an increase in cases where adoptive parents fail to receive accurate and complete information about a child’s physical, emotional, or developmental problems—or about a child’s birth family and history. In such cases, adoptive parents, confronted with extremely expensive medical or mental health care, have sought assistance through the courts. Wrongful Adoption examines the history of disclosure, cases that have shaped the laws, key policy and practice issues, and recommendations for quality practices.

You’re Our Child: A Social-Psychological Approach to Adoption. Jerome Smith & Franklin I Miroff. 1981. 110p. Uinversity Press of America.