This is what happened the year I met my other mother.In 1965, Robin, unmarried and pregnant, comes to Melbourne to give birth and give her baby up for adoption, then returns to Perth to resume her life having never seen her baby. After 10 days alone, the baby, is taken home, named Susannah, and made part of a wonderful family that loves her. The adoption laws at the time guarantee that there can be no contact between birth mother and child. Ever.In 1984, th...

In 1994 an American writer named Emily Prager met her new daughter LuLu. All she knew about her was that the baby had been born in Wuhu, a city in southern China, and left near a police station in her first three days of life. Her birth mother had left a note with Lulu's western and lunar birth dates. In 1999 Emily and her daughter–now a happy, fearless four-year-old--returned to China to find out more. That journey and its discoveries unfold in this lovely, touching and sensitively observ...

Through words, pictures, photographs, certificates and other 'little treasures', a Life Story Book provides a detailed account of the child's early history and a chronology of their life.   This clear and concise book shows a new family-friendly way to compile a Life Story Book that promotes a sense of permanency for the child, and encourages attachments within the adoptive family. Joy Rees' improved model works chronologically backwards rather than forwards, aiming to reinforce the child'...

An international textbook designed as a quick introduction for students from around the world studying sociology of family, this text provides comprehensive coverage of the major topics in the sociology of family life.Written in an easy access style it opens with a chapter on defining family and family structures. It then moves on to discuss over a dozen major topics; from interaction and meaning in families to sexuality. David Cheal provides coverage of these topics by drawing on ...

Transnational surrogacy – the creation of babies across borders – has become big business. Globalization, reproductive technologies, new family formations and rising infertility are combining to produce a 'quiet revolution' in social and medical ethics and the nature of parenthood. Whereas much of the current scholarship has focused on the US and India, this groundbreaking anthology offers a far wider perspective.Featuring contributions from over thirty activists and scholars from ...

In recent decades the concept of kinship has been challenged and reinvigorated by the so-called “repatriation of anthropology” and by the influence of feminist studies, queer studies, adoption studies, and science and technology studies. These interdisciplinary approaches have been further developed by increases in infertility, reproductive travel, and the emergence of critical movements among transnational adoptees, all of which have served to question how kinship is now practiced.

More than just one woman's search for information about the biological mother she believed had died in childbirth, this book explores the mind and feelings of an adopted child. Call Me Ella is a heartwarming and uplifting story about a young girl who considered her adoptive parents her "real parents," yet needed to know more. She needed to know her roots. Her heritage. With a burning desire to have someone who "looked like her," she couldn't wait to marry and have children of her own. She ...

Children are frequently cared for by relatives and friends when parents, for whatever reason, are unable to care for their children themselves. Yet there has been very little information about how well children do when placed with kin or how safe they are in these placements.This book compares formal kinship care to traditional foster placements in order to ascertain which children are placed with kin, in what circumstances, how well such children progress, and how often these plac...

This book is full of the techniques that we have used successfully over the years. Many we have adapted to suit their needs and many we have made up ourselves. What we have become particularly good at is not giving up!'A mother of two adopted children, Celia Foster wrote Big Steps for Little People as a personal `insider's guide' to parenting adopted children.Drawing on the hard-won wisdom gained in her own family life, the book offers a thoughtful account of life with adop...

The Imprint of Another Life: Adoption Narratives and Human Possibilityaddresses a series of questions about common beliefs about adoption. Underlying these beliefs is the assumption that human qualities are innate and intrinsic, an assumption often held by adoptees and their families, sometimes at great emotional cost. This book explores representations of adoption—transracial, transnational, and domestic same-race adoption—that reimagine human possibility by questioning this assu...

While many proponents of transracial adoption claim that American society is increasingly becoming "color-blind," a growing body of research reveals that for transracial adoptees of all backgrounds, racial identity does matter. Rhonda M. Roorda elaborates significantly on that finding, specifically studying the effects of the adoption of black and biracial children by white parents. She incorporates diverse perspectives on transracial adoption by concerned black Americans of various ages, ...

If You are Thinking of Becoming a Gay Dad, or if You are Already a Gay Dad ─ This Book is for You!Are you ready to have kids? More and more gay men are turning to adoption and surrogacy to start their own families. An estimated two million American LBGTQ people would like to adopt and an estimated 65,000 adopted children are living with a gay parent. In 2016, The Chicago Tribune reported that 10 to 20 percent of donor eggs went to gay men expandi...