Adam Pertman's Adoption Nation: How the Adoption Revolution Is Transforming America

Great book if you're involved in an adoption or just interested in the ever-changing shape of the American family. Pertman summarizes the major shifts in adoption and their implications for American culture.

These shifts emerged largely in the 60s when sex and childbirth outside marriage were destigmatized. No more need to hide or lie; no more sealed records or altered birth certificates. In their place emerged the open adoption process now endorsed by most reputable agencies. Those years also introduced "getting in touch with yourself," a quest that might lead some adoptees to seek out their birth parents to learn about their first days on the planet and their own biological and medical makeup. Finally, the shifts also include the entrance into parenthood of many different folks--disabled people, middle-aged infertile couples, and gay lads like my husband and me--a move that will continue to trigger ethical and legal controversies.

Although Pertman is himself an adoptive parent, he manages to bring the various viewpoints of the adoption triad--adoptees, birth mothers, adoptive parents--into a rich and honest dialogue. Not an easy task because these viewpoints often conflict. (Case in point: assertions by adoptee rights advocates that adoptive parents are unwitting pawns in child trafficking who end up depriving adoptees of vital connections to biological parents and ethnic heritage.) He's a strong promoter of open adoption, and an equally strong critic of the greed and corruption in many parts of the current adoption system both here and internationally. Right on! But I wonder about a few things he says...

On the plane from Seattle the other day, I told the woman next to me Pertman's claim that birth parents and their children must reconnect with each other if only for the sake of their own mental and spiritual health. Birth parents, he asserts, "overwhelmingly want to be found." She then told me she had relinquished her son 37 years ago with no regrets or conflicted emotions, and today feels no need to reconnect. Her son could easily find her through Google, and although she would not refuse the contact, she's afraid he'd be disappointed that she's felt no compulsion to seek him out, no incompleteness, no lack of resolution. Is she repressing something? Though Pertman and others imply that she is, I doubt it.

In the same way that many, though not all, women who choose abortion can feel a genuine peace with their difficult decision, so a birth mother can feel a rightness about relinquishing her child. People are different. Same is true of adoptees: Some, but not all, may simply feel no need to reconnect with birth parents.

Another issue: Pertman suggests that many parents adopt internationally to dodge the birth parents who threaten their own role as "real" parents. He may be right about the dodge, but he misses the real reason behind it.

In fact, it's not insecurity about parenthood but the risk of financial ruin that international adoption alleviates.

Financially, open adoption often favors the birth mom. Over the course of her pregnancy, she can receive several thousands of dollars worth of medical and personal care from the adoptive parents, then decide at the last minute to keep her child. The adoptive parents then simply forfeit the money with nothing to show for it. (In our case, the total cost of adopting from Guatemala including two mandatory trips and lodging came to a whopping 30K. It was a lot, but not nearly what some adoptive parents have paid when a birth mom changes her mind and they have to start the entire expensive process over.)

Simply put: Not all adoptive parents can assume the financial risk that can be part of open adoption, and this is why some of us look abroad--not to shore up an insecure sense of ourselves as parents, but to stave off financial ruin. This financial risk is a problem for adoptive parents in open adoption.