Adoption and Loss


Book Description

Evelyn Robinson, OAM, has written four books about adoption separation and reunion. This is her first book. What becomes of women who are separated from their children by adoption? Why do so many adopted people feel such a strong desire to seek out their families of origin? In what ways are families with adopted children different from other families? This book by Evelyn Robinson provides the answers to these questions and many others.'Adoption and Loss - The Hidden Grief' was first published in 2000. A revised edition was published in 2003 and the 21st Century edition was published in 2018.




Adoption


Book Description




Seven Core Issues in Adoption and Permanency


Book Description

Based on a hugely successful US model, the Seven Core Issues in Adoption is the first conceptual framework of its kind to offer a unifying lens that was inclusive of all individuals touched by the adoption experience. The Seven Core Issues are Loss, Rejection, Shame/Guilt, Grief, Identity, Intimacy, and Mastery/Control. The book expands the model to be inclusive of adoption and all forms of permanency: adoption, foster care, kinship care, donor insemination and surrogacy. Attachment and trauma are integrated with the Seven Core Issues model to address and normalize the additional tasks individuals and families will encounter. The book views the Seven Core Issues from a range of perspectives including: multi-racial, LGBTQ, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, African-American, International, openness, search and reunion, and others. This essential guide introduces each Core Issue, its impact on individuals, offering techniques for growth and healing.




Adoption, Identity, and Kinship


Book Description

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 in adoption controversies have failed to understand how much the debate, adoption research, and the experience of adoption itself are affected by persistent social beliefs that adopted children are different from and somehow inferior to children reared by their biological families. Wegar begins by considering the historical and legal development of adoption and of sealed-records policies, showing how kinship ideology, the helping professions, and gender issues intersect to frame adoption policies and the ongoing debate. Drawing on articles in social work and mental health journals, activist newsletters, and autobiographies by search activists, as well as on popular images of adoption portrayed in talk shows and other media, she analyzes the rhetoric to reveal the unconscious biases that exist. She concludes with a discussion of ways in which adoption reformers can avoid perpetuating harmful and confining images of those who participate in adoption.




A Question of Adoption


Book Description

A Question of Adoption gives a richly detailed, immensely readable account of the ideology and practice of closed stranger adoption in New Zealand, from pregnancy through to the final adoption order and its aftermath. Anne Else’s scrupulous, moving narrative explores social and moral attitudes towards ‘unmarried mothers’, ‘unwanted children’ and ‘childless couples’ during the 1950s and 1960s. She shows how the resulting system took shape, how it worked (or failed to work), and its lifelong effects on everyone involved, then sets out how and why change began to occur. This new e-book edition, written with Maria Haenga-Collins, includes seven ground-breaking new chapters providing a comprehensive account of creating and transferring children through the related processes of adoption, state care, donor conception and surrogacy. It details how so many Māori children were and still are cut off from their whānau and whakapapa through adoption and state care, both stemming from racist colonial ideology, and how the Adoption Act 1955 came to be seen as glaringly at odds with contemporary concepts of children’s rights and best interests. It examines New Zealand’s complex history of using ‘third parties’ to create children through reproductive technology, and the lengthy unresolved debates over regulation. The final chapter looks at local and global risks now facing human reproduction, connection, and reproductive justice.




Handbook of Adoption


Book Description

'Handbook of Adoption' addresses topics in adoption that reflect the many dimensions of theory, research, development, race adjustment and clinical practice which can affect adoption triad members.




Adoption and Law


Book Description

Using a socio-legal framework, this book explores the experiences that birth mothers face in state sanctioned adoption proceedings in the UK. Featuring personal, in-depth interviews and conversations with 32 birth mothers, the book highlights perspectives and voices that are seldom the focus in leading discourses of professional practice in this area of law. The book also demands that the statutory rights, support and care of birth mothers are recognised and strengthened. This book delivers a comprehensive insight into many aspects and controversies of legal child adoption, including the development and reform of adoption law over history, giving the reader insight into the deep-rooted political and social tensions around the use of adoption. The uniqueness of birth mothers’ subjective stories of adoption contrasts powerfully with the legal theory providing the reader with an intimate paradigm of adoption. The book includes discussion of obiter dicta and authoritative guidance on adoption practice from the Supreme Court and Court of Appeal in Re B (A Child) (Care Proceedings: Appeal) [2013] UKSC 33 and Re B-S (Children) (Adoption: Leave to Oppose) [2013] EWCA Civ 1146. It also considers Court of Appeal’s recent ruling on post adoption contact in Re B (A Child) (Post-Adoption Contact) [2019] EWCA Civ 29, the first case to come before the court since section 9 of the Children and Families Act 2014 amended the Adoption and Children Act 2002, with the new insertion of section 51A and 51B providing for court ordered post adoption contact. This book is ideally suited to undergraduate students, as well as a more multi- disciplinary audience.




The Politics of Adoption


Book Description

Adoption has always had a political dimension. Its potential use to achieve political ends has been evident throughout history and in many different cultures. In Roman 1 times an emperor would adopt a successful general to continue his rule. In Ireland under the Brehon Laws the reciprocal placements of children between clans was 2 an accepted means of cementing mutual allegiances. In Japan the adoption of non-relatives was traditionally seen as a means of allying with the fortunes of 3 the ruling family. The willingness of governments to use adoption as a political strategy was apparent, for example, in Australia where it was used to further 4 the assimilation of indigenous people. It is now present in the phenomenon of intercountry adoption where the ?ow of children, particularly in the aftermath of war, is often politics by proxy and which arguably attracts the involvement of 5 some countries for reasons of economic and political expediency. Adoption does not function in isolation. It plays a distinct role within the c- text of family law proceedings. The extent to which it is available as a resource for children in the public care system or as an adjunct to marriage proceedings is essentially politically determined. It is itself susceptible to political in?uence. 6 In fact direct political leadership, exercised ?rst by President Clinton and then 1 See, Gibbons, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Harrap, London 1949 at p. 30.




Families and Adoption


Book Description

Do parents with adoptive children see themselves as similar to or different from nonadoptive parents? Is the stigma attached to adoption lessening? Does open communication about adoption contribute to the family's well-being? How successful are adoptive adults at putting their adolescent turmoil behind them? These and many other important and complex questions are addressed in Families and Adoption, an informative guidebook that shows you how adoption is both a condition and a lifelong process. Families and Adoption discusses legislation that can serve the needs of various members of the adoptive experience to deepen your understanding of the key legal issues associated with consent and openness. It also provides you with detailed coverage of changes in adoption law, open adoption research results, transracial and transethnic adoption, and the consequences of placing versus parenting for unmarried, teenage women who give birth. Graduate students, social workers, adoption professionals, members of adoptive families, and couples wishing to adopt will find there isn't a rock that Families and Adoption leaves unturned. It presents you with vital information on the following topics: the developmental stages of reunion between an adoptive child and birth parent, notions of adoption, parenthood, and kinship and how these notions are challenged after a reunion has taken place, the institution of adoption as it has existed for decades in American society, international adoption, respecting the bonds children have and helping them develop critical attachment skills, those who “accept” open-adoption and those who “embrace” it, flexible parenting styles and their positive effect on developmentally vulnerable adoptees. A skillful blend of personal adoption experiences and research studies, Families and Adoption explores the special issues adoption presents and how all parties involved can work together to improve placement decisions, ensure that a woman is confident in her decision to relinquish her child, and help families select the most appropriate adoption arrangement. The book's main strength is that it doesn't just look at the initial considerations of adoption; it prepares you for the issues that will arise along the way.