Adoption Journeys

The primal desire to love and parent a child binds these adoption narratives, based on detailed interviews with 20 adoptive parents, including heterosexual, gay and single parents, those involved in transracial adoptions and foster parents. Turner, who with her husband adopted a baby girl from Thailand, probes the different motivations for adopting, from infertility to altruism, as well as the frustrations with maladroit social workers and numb bureaucrats that adoptive parents can encounter in the process. One couple, Mark and Allison, advocate the practice of ""open adoption,"" in which the adoptive parents and the birth parents meet one another and are all involved in the baby's birth. Looking back on the experience after their adoption was finalized, however, they both discuss their fears that the birth mother would change her mind. Another couple, Carrie and Alex, decided to adopt a child from Lebanon because they had an affinity for the culture, though Alex stated that, he ""did not want the birth mother to become part of our family."" Limited to descriptive anecdotes with happy endings, this study will inspire those seeking to adopt, although it does not address the complex issues that arise as adoptive children grow older, which are explored in recent books such as Joyce Pavo's The Family of Adoption and Lynn C. Franklin's May the Circle Be Unbroken. Agent, Carolyn Krupp. (Apr.)