Adoption book review » Four Against Two

Adoption Book Review: Open Adoption, Open Heart

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Nov 122012

I was asked to participate on a book tour by I’m a Reader, Not a Writer and was happy to join in. The book Open Adoption, Open Heart: An Adoptive Father’s Inspiring Journey by Russell Elkins is a quick read that I think would behoove all perspective adoptive families who are thinking of going through a domestic infant adoption.

While my experience with adoption has been with International Adoption, a good friend of mine is a birth mother in an open adoption and I have learned so much through her on this topic. Several parts of this book were very positive, to name a few:

What an open adoption looks like was nicely portrayed. It is an ever changing relationship that can be tricky at times, but beneficial for all parties involved, especially the child. Elkins pointed out that the agreement of an open adoption is not a legal one and that the adoptive parents may make changes as they wish. This is something I find particularly unethical and hope will change in the future.

His honest emotions of worrying the potential birth mom would change her mind or would want more communication than they wanted may rub some people the wrong way but I respected how he shared his real emotions though, not just the ones that others would approve of. His story telling allowed you to be apart of the journey and show the changes in his thoughts and fears.

The terminology was positive and modern. Birth family, birth mother, birth father was all used and explained with respect. I appreciated that they didn’t treat the potential birth mother as a baby factory as unfortunately some do.

How he and his wife shared their story with their friends, family and church was interesting to read. It always amazes me what people feel they can say to one another with subjects of infertility and adoption.

A couple of things I felt negative towards deals with how this couple dealt with the birth father. They encouraged the birth mom to contact him and let him know of her plans, but I couldn’t help but think that there would be a legal route to go about contacting him so they could learn his side of the story. It seemed they just relied on one side of the story and we all know that every story has two sides. Moving the potential birth mother out of state to their state to circumvent the birth father’s rights is just plain wrong. She had family and a home where she was at. While they all got to know each-other better living together, I cannot help but think that a fifteen year old girl in a strange place with no loved ones close by was a bit intimidated. Most teenager girls I know don’t even want to complain to a waitress that her food is cold, let alone tell a couple who is supporting her that she has changed her mind or is having second thoughts. The situation could have easily been interpreted as coercive, even with the best of people. I felt for his mother, learning that she was a grandma with a grandchild out there somewhere that she couldn’t see. I hope that as time passes there will be more communication between the families so the child will know his birth father and family a bit more.

As I mentioned above I think that Open Adoption, Open Heart is a good book for potential adoptive parents to read. I encourage those at the beginning of the adoption process to think out some of the hard scenarios that may come up, to recognize that an open adoption is no co-parenting. Having more loving people in a child’s life may seem complicated at times, but will be worth it for everyone’s sake in time.

Check out what others have to say about Open Adoption, Open Heart on the blog tour at I’m a Reader, Not a Writer. There is also a $25 gift card up for grabs for this book tour!

This book and review also gives me book number five towards my goal of six adoption books this year for the Adoption Reading Challenge 2012. Three fiction and three non-fiction! Yeah me.

( I was given a free E-book copy of the book above from I’m a Reading, Not A Writer in exchange for my honest review. No other compensation was given.)

Book Review: What Alice Forgot

Books I Have Read, Reading Challenge, Reviews No Responses »

Jul 232012

Once again I accidentally read a book that had an sub-plot of adoption. Loving that I unknowingly have worked on my Adoption Reading Challenge 2012!

What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty is a thought-provoking plot that isn’t too heavy to be considered a light read, which is great for people like me who like to read as a relaxation activity.

The story begins when Alice falls off her bicycle at the gym which causes her to lose the last ten years of her life. She gets to the hospital to discover that her and her beloved husband are in the middle of a messy divorce and the child she thinks is growing in her womb is a crabby pre-teen.

Alice doesn’t like the woman she has become in many ways. She cannot believe how uptight she has become and how did she have three children when the plan was for two? The amazing old house her and her soon to be ex had bought has become the home of their dreams and her mom has become a salsa dancing queen, both positive things, but not expected.

While learning about this new self, she discovers that her and her sister’s relationship has faltered over the missing ten years and there is a void there she wants to fill. Her sister’s story is one of multiple vitro fertilization and subsequent miscarriages, shedding some light on what it is like for infertile couples wanting to have children. The adoption sub-plot is in her story.

Her sister has always stated she would not adopt because of her husband’s experience as an adoptee. Through-out the book the sister and her husband work through their grief. Reading from this perspective was eye-opening. As an adoptive parent who already had two biological children before adopting, I try to be sensitive to people who have adopted through the life experience of infertility. I have no idea how a women who is infertile feels, and do not want to ever try to assume. I do not see adoption as an easy answer to infertility. I do think that What Alice Forgot did a nice job exploring adoption after infertililty.

I don’t want to give any spoilers, but I was very pleased with how the book ended. I was glad it wasn’t a cookie-cutter ending!

Book Review: Betti On A High Wire

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Apr 102011

I know I swore off adoption books for a while, but this one came in from the library and being fiction I thought I’d dive into it right away. This is my second fiction book from the Adoption Reading Challenge hosted by Jenna at Chronicles of Munchkinland. This makes four of my six I have pledged to read this year. In other words I am kicking butt in this challenge! Yeah me.

The book is Betti On a High Wire written by Lisa Railsback. It is classified as a Young Readers book and I agree. First an overview of the story:

Babo is around ten years old and is living in an unnamed war-torn country. She is the eldest of a group of orphans who are all stained from the effects of the local violence. Some have missing arms, legs and fingers others have mental deficits. The author’s descriptions of the kids, the old circus camp they live in and the surrounding area is rich in detail, but leaves you room to imagine as well. Babo is adopted by an American family with one other daughter (younger than Babo) and comes to the states with another one of the group, a younger boy George. George is in love with his new home and family and Babo (who’s name is changed to Betti) doesn’t feel the same way. The story shows us the twists and turns of bringing an older child home through adoption, but shows them through the eyes of the child, through Betti.

The biggest reason for my enjoyment of this book is that is showed me the perspective that Mita and Enu must of had when they first came home to us. The easy confusion with words and meaning, the overwhelming thoughts that can come from a closet full of new clothes. The bath tub! A lot of memories of the girls’ early days came flooding back to me when reading this.

As some of you know I am not a fan of changing older adopted children’s names, and by older I mean about two and up. I think it adds confusion to the child’s identity and tells them that they are not good enough as they are, that they need to change. The fact that they changed Babo’s name to Betti rubbed me the wrong way as is was changed “to make things easier as an American.” My thoughts are this: People can learn how to say an unusual name, it may take a bit of time, but let them deal with it, not the child. Okay, a bit long winded there, you can probably tell that the naming things is a hot-button issue for me!

I have given it to Meg to read and have told Mita that she may enjoy it as well. She isn’t sure if she is going to read it and that is fine. I will ask both girls to write a review if they wish, to give you an idea on what eleven year olds with adoption links think about it. I’ll post them when they have them done (or should I say if?!)

This is a definite read to adoptive parents of older children, especially if they are not English speaking. It gives you your child’s perspective to think about and learn from. It is a fun and easy read. Railsback does an excellent job getting into and older-adoptive child’s mind. I wish more people were this pre

Book Review: “The Girls Who Went Away”

Adoption, Books I Have Read, Reading Challenge, Reviews 1 Response »

Mar 222011

It may seem like I am on a roll in my adoption book challenge and I guess I am, if not by choice, by the fact the library had the last two books in and sent to me at the same time! I hate waiting on books, so I wanted to read these while I had them. I do have to say that back-to-back non-fiction adoption books can be a bit heavy and I have promised my self some time off the heavy reading for a while. I need some fluff – mind numbing fluff!

The title of this book says so much, The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade . Written by Ann Fessler, and adoptee, this book’s heart-wrenching stories and startling facts make it a difficult book to read at times. The book was published in 2006, so it is fairly recent and very much tells a story that one of your (or my) own family members could have lived through.

I have listened to my mom talk of having to wear skirts to school because pants on girls where not allowed or how my mother-in-law was on a basketball team that organized themselves becauses schools didn’t have athletics for girls. These stories make me shake my head. So much has changed in just a few decades it really is like two different worlds in many ways.

Fessler points out that it was the post WWII years of conformity that brought about this time of adoptoin coersion. I don’t even know if coersion is the right word as deceit and unlawfulness was the normal to unwed mothers and there children were basically stolen from them. I’m sure that not all adoptions were this way, but after reading this book you cannot help but see the similarities of the stories. So many girls were told that their baby was going to a new family of a “Doctor and stay at home mom” or were asked “Do you want your child to be called a bastard on the playground?”. As one birth-mother said in the book, it was as if they had a script on how to get a pregnant woman to give up her baby.

I am not surprised that the parents of the pregnant women were upset. I do find it reprehensible that so many went way passed upset and were just plain mean and cruel to their own daughters and grandchildren. Socital pressure was that strong? Unbelievable. This again reaffirms to me that there has never been a time of “good old days” that people look fondly at.

Hearing these stories from birth mothers and adoptees reinforcess how imperative it is that there is more openness with adoption. If not fully open adoptions, medical histories, photos, letters and for heaven sake OPEN RECORDS.

It is 2011 the age of at our fingertips is mind whirling and yet there are people who have been told they have no right to find out who and where they came from. If more people would just stop and think about this issue, I dare to say that records wouldn’t be closed anymore. It just makes sense.

While the numbers of “girls” who disappear for an unplanned pregnancy have diminished, there is still a lot of ethical problems with adoption. You don’t have to look hard to find articles of pregancy distress centers working with adoption agencies or authority figures telling pregnant moms that their baby deserves better. As sick as it sounds adoption is big business and when there is big business there seems to be a flourish of ethical issues.

It is imperative that adoptions are ethical. I have heard so many comments of how adoption is to complicated, that adoptive parents have to wait to long, that if a child needs a home she should have it now and not have to wait for paperwork. I have personally felt all of those things during my adoption process, but I can honestly say that knowing that my adoption was ethical is so comforting to me now. If there had been any doubt in my mind that my girls’ family was coerced, paid, bribed or even worse my conscience would forever be marked.

If you know of a family member or friend who has had a “quiet” adoption in her past I encourage you to read this book, try and see the experience she is having and be a very good friend to her. This is also an informative book for all members of the adoption triad.