Adoption, Identity, and Kinship: The Debate over Sealed Birth Records
by Katarina Wegar
In this thoughtful book, sociologist Katarina Wegar offers a new perspective on adoption and the search debate, placing them within a social context. She argues that Americans who are embroiled

Adoption, Memory, and Cold War Greece: Kid pro quo?
by Gonda Van Steen
This book presents a committed quest to unravel and document the postwar adoption networks that placed more than 3,000 Greek children in the United States, in a movement accelerated by

The Adoption Triangle (reissue)
by Arthur D. Sorosky, M.D., Annette Baran, M.S.W., and Reuben Pannor, M.S.W.
A classic and the first to deal with how sealed and open records affect adoptees, birth parents and adoptive parents. Originally published in 1978," ... it is as true and

Adoptionland: From Orphans to Activists
Edited by Janine Myung Ja, Michael Allen Potter, and Allen L. Vance
This anthology begins with personal accounts and then shifts to a bird’s eye view on adoption from domestic, intercountry and transracial adoptees who are now adoptee rights activists. Along with

Adoption's Hidden History: From Native American Tribes to Locked Lives (Vol. 1)
by Mary S. Payne
Adoptions are finalized daily across America. Like the root system of a giant oak, tentacles of its history are submerged in years of human experience. Native Americans adopted children and

Adoption's Hidden History: Steps to Sealing the Records (Vol. 2)
by Mary S. Payne
An estimated six million Americans are adopted. The development of laws and regulations facilitating this process has been shrouded in mystery. "Adoption's Hidden History" is for anyone who has ever

American Baby: A Mother, a Child, and the Shadow History of Adoption
by Gabrielle Glaser
During the Baby Boom in 1960s America, women were encouraged to stay home and raise large families, but sex and childbirth were taboo subjects. Premarital sex was common, but birth

The Baby Thief: The Untold Story of Georgia Tann, the Baby Seller Who Corrupted Adoption
by Barbara Bisantz Raymond
The story, first told by Barbara Raymond in a magazine article that inspired a 60 Minutes feature, was shocking. Georgia Tann, nationally lauded for arranging adoptions out of her children’s

The Best Possible Immigrants: International Adoption and the American Family
by Rachel Rains Winslow
Prior to World War II, international adoption was virtually unknown, but in the twenty-first century, it has become a common practice, touching almost every American. How did the adoption of

The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking, and the New Gospel of Adoption
by Kathryn Joyce
Adoption has long been enmeshed in the politics of reproductive rights, pitched as a “win-win” compromise in the never-ending abortion debate. But as Kathryn Joyce makes clear in The Child

The Declassified Adoptee: Essays of an Adoption Activist
by Amanda H.L. Transue-Woolston; edited by Julie Stromberg
Throughout this book, readers bear witness to key moments in the unfolding of an adoptee from a quiet, contemplative young woman to an outspoken advocate for the rights of adoptees

Disrupting Kinship: Transnational Politics of Korean Adoption in the United States
by Kimberly D. McKee
Since the Korean War began, Western families have adopted more than 200,000 Korean children. Two thirds of these adoptees found homes in the United States. The majority joined white families

Family Matters: Secrecy and Disclosure in the History of Adoption
by E. Wayne Carp
Adoption is a hot topic--played out in the news and on TV talk shows, in advice columns and tell-all tales--but for the 25 million Americans who are members of the

Finding Fernanda: Two Mothers, One Child, and a Cross-Border Search for Truth
by Erin Siegal
The dramatic story of how an American housewife discovered that the Guatemalan child she was about to adopt had been stolen from her birth mother. Over the last decade, nearly

The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade
by Ann Fessler
In this deeply moving and myth-shattering work, Ann Fessler brings out into the open for the first time the astonishing untold history of the million and a half women who

Global Families: A History of Asian International Adoption in America
by Catherine Ceniza Choy
In the last fifty years, transnational adoption—specifically, the adoption of Asian children—has exploded in popularity as an alternative path to family making. Despite the cultural acceptance of this practice, surprisingly

Growing in the Dark: Adoption Secrecy and Its Consequences
by Janine M. Baer
Generations of adults who were adopted as children have been kept in the dark about their original identities. The law sealing birth records forever, even to the adopted person, passed in

It's Not About You: Understanding Adoptee Search, Reunion, and Open Adoption
Edited by Brooke Randolph, MA, NCC, LMHC
The title of this book can be both inflammatory and comforting; different people need to read it different ways. The reality is that the desire for information has nothing to

Journeys After Adoption: Understanding Lifelong Issues
by Jayne E. Schooler and Betsie L. Norris
What can we learn about the experience of adoption from those who have taken that journey? How can those touched by adoption navigate successfully through the issues of search, reunion,

A Law of Blood-ties: The "Right" to Access Genetic Ancestry
by Alice Diver
This text collates and examines the jurisprudence that currently exists in respect of blood-tied genetic connection, arguing that the right to identity often rests upon the ability to identify biological

Life Lines: Writing Transcultural Adoption
by John McLeod
Adoptions that cross the lines of culture, race, and nation are a major consequence of conflicts around the globe, yet their histories and representations have rarely been considered. Life Lines: Writing

Lost and Found: The Adoption Experience (3rd edition)
by Betty Jean Lifton
The first edition of Betty Jean Lifton's Lost and Found advanced the adoption rights movement in this country in 1979, challenging many states' policies of maintaining closed birth records. For

Origin Narratives: The Stories We Tell Children About Immigration and International Adoption
by Macarena García-González
The first of its kind, this volume unpacks the cultural construction of transnational adoption and migration by examining a sample of recent children’s books that address the subject. Of all

Outsiders Within: Writing on Transracial Adoption
Edited by Jane Jeong Trenka, Julia Chinyere Oparah, and Sun Yung Shin
Many adoptees are required to become people that they were never meant to be. While transracial adoption tends to be considered benevolent, it often exacts a heavy emotional, cultural, and

Phantom Parents: Memoir of an Adoptee
by David Enker
An unusual adoption, a gruesome family discovery, a lonesome journey through North America, a miraculous death escape at the 7/7 bombings in the London Underground and a life-altering diagnosis are just

Reading Adoption: Family and Difference in Fiction and Drama
by Marianne Novy
Explores the ways in which novels and plays portray adoption, probing the cultural fictions that these literary representations have perpetuated. Through careful readings of works by Sophocles, Shakespeare, George Eliot,

Romania For Export Only: The Untold Story Of The Romanian Orphans
by Roelie Post
The untold story of the Romanian 'orphans' gives an insider’s look into the adoption kitchen, where the most used ingredients are political pressure and emotional blackmail. A nexus of adoption

Rooted in Adoption: A Collection of Adoptee Reflections
by Veronica Breaux and Shelby Kilgore
Rooted in Adoption: A Collection of Adoptee Reflections is a collection of short narratives from those who have been adopted. Adoptees of various ages, backgrounds, and experiences were asked discuss

Strangers and Kin: The American Way of Adoption
by Barbara Melosh
Strangers and Kin is the 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 Politics of Reproduction: Adoption, Abortion, and Surrogacy in the Age of Neoliberalism
Edited by Modhumita Roy and Mary Thompson
The Politics of Reproduction: Adoption, Abortion and Surrogacy in the Age of Neoliberalism uniquely brings together three sites of reproduction and reproductive politics to demonstrate their entanglement in creating or restricting options for

A Timeline of the Injustice of Adoption Law
by Darryl Nelson
A Timeline of the Injustice of Adoption Law traces Australian laws affecting thousands, back to the US theories of eugenics, then back to Britain. It highlights the various notions of

To Save the Children of Korea: The Cold War Origins of International Adoption
by Arissa H. Oh
To Save the Children of Korea is the first book about the origins and history of international adoption. Although it has become a commonplace practice in the United States, we