cover image My Child is a Mother: Discovering New Meanings for the Word Family

My Child is a Mother: Discovering New Meanings for the Word Family

Mary Stephenson. Corona Publishing Co., $17.95 (253pp) ISBN 978-0-931722-87-5

When her 17-year-old daughter, Karen, unwed and about to become a mother, faced a choice, the author of this affecting memoir knew that she herself ``could not be a passenger on this journey--only an observer waving encouragement from the shore.'' Stephenson writes about the fortuitous arrangement made through an adoption center that brought together her daughter and Norman and Russell Gibbons, candidates for adoptive parenting. The process of open adoption--Karen's right to choose her daughter Livia's parents and to stay in contact with them and her baby afterward--was not without hurdles. Yet, as the Gibbonses, who have since adopted another child, state here, the growth of trust and love between these San Francisco Bay Area families is a gift mutually cherished for the happiness it brings to them all. As advocacy for the practice of open adoption, the book provides an inspiring model. (Mar.)