Since the early 1990s, transnational adoptions have increased at an astonishing rate, not only in the United States, but worldwide. In "Belonging in an Adopted World, "Barbara Yngvesson offers a penetrating exploration of the consequences and implications of this unprecedented movement of children, usually from poor nations to the affluent West. Yngvesson illuminates how the politics of adoption policy has profoundly affected the families, nations, and children involved in this new form of social and economic migration.

Starting from the transformation of the abandoned child into an adoptable resource for nations that give and receive children in adoption, this volume examines the ramifications of such gifts, especially for families created through adoption and later, the adopted adults themselves. Bolstered by an account of the author's own experience as an adoptive parent, and fully attuned to the contradictions of race that shape our complex forms of family, "Belonging in an Adopted World" explores the fictions that sustain adoptive kinship, ultimately exposing the vulnerability and contingency behind all human identity.

What constitutes a family? Tracing the dramatic evolution of Americans' answer to this question over the past century, "Kinship by Design" provides the fullest account to date of modern adoption's history.
Beginning in the early 1900s, when children were still transferred between households by a variety of unregulated private arrangements, Ellen Herman details efforts by the U.S. Children's Bureau and the Child Welfare League of America to establish adoption standards in law and practice. She goes on to trace Americans' shifting ideas about matching children with physically or intellectually similar parents, revealing how research in developmental science and technology shaped adoption as it navigated the nature-nurture debate.
Concluding with an insightful analysis of the revolution that ushered in special needs, transracial, and international adoptions, "Kinship by Design" ultimately situates the practice as both a different way to make a family and a universal story about love, loss, identity, and belonging. In doing so, this volume provides a new vantage point from which to view twentieth-century America, revealing as much about social welfare, statecraft, and science as it does about childhood, family, and private life.

Why will nobody give little Grace a home? Foster carer Angela is determined to find the answer.

Shunned by her mother, ten-year-old Grace has spent most of her childhood in care, moving from one foster home to the next. Each placement breaks down due to her ‘disruptive' behaviour, yet Grace seems such a friendly and well-meaning little girl. Specialist foster carer Angela is determined to help end her heartbreak, but what is the key to saving Grace?

The Girl with the Suitcase is the seventh book from well-loved foster carer and Sunday Times bestselling author Angela Hart. This is a true story that shares the tale of one of the many children she has fostered over the years. Angela's stories show the difference that quiet care, a watchful eye and sympathetic ear can make to children who have had more difficult upbringings than most.

"In Their Siblings' Voices" shares the stories of twenty white non-adopted siblings who grew up with black or biracial brothers and sisters in the late 1960s and 1970s. Belonging to the same families profiled in Rita J. Simon and Rhonda M. Roorda's "In Their Own Voices: Transracial Adoptees Tell Their Stories" and "In Their Parents' Voices: Reflections on Raising Transracial Adoptees," these siblings offer their perspectives on the multiracial adoption experience, which, for them, played out against the backdrop of two tumultuous, politically charged decades. Simon and Roorda question whether professionals and adoption agencies adequately trained these children in the challenges presented by blended families, and they ask if, after more than thirty years, race still matters. Few books cover both the academic and the human dimensions of this issue. "In Their Siblings' Voices" helps readers fully grasp the dynamic of living in a multiracial household and its effect on friends, school, and community.

Bestselling author and teacher Casey Watson shares the horrifying true story of Kiera Bentley, a 12-year-old girl with a deeply shocking secret she's too young to even understand. When Casey first meets Kiera, a small slight girl who's just lashed out at a fellow pupil in assembly, she immediately senses something's wrong. Something in Kiera's eyes alerts Casey that this is an "old head on young shoulders", and with Kiera's constant tiredness and self-soothing habit of pulling her hair out, she follows her instinct and takes Kiera under her wing. At first the answer seems simple enough; Kiera's parents aren't together and they don't get on, which makes life hard for Kiera as she's so close to her dad. But as the weeks roll on, Casey begins to understand that there's something much darker going on behind closed doors. And when she finally learns the truth, she's terrified she won't be able to save Kiera from it.

Babies and young children who have experienced early adversity miss out on good, nurturing relationships, and the sensorimotor development that goes along with them. Their bodies therefore lack a solid foundation for sensory integration. This book lays out a practice model - the Building Underdeveloped Sensorimotor Systems (BUSS) model - to help identify and assess whether these gaps are present in a child's sensorimotor systems. It also advocates the potential of rebuilding the gaps in these systems - using games and activities that take place within loving parent-child relationships - to offer the child a healthy, attuned base from which to develop sensorimotor skills. Also included is a section on parents' experiences of using these activities with their children. With a positive view of approaching sensorimotor underdevelopment, these strategies and case studies all demonstrate that, with the right kind of attention, these children's systems can be rebuilt.

Under the Adoption Incentives program, (Section 473A of the Social Security Act) states earn federal bonuses when they increase adoptions of children who are in need of new permanent families. Funding authorised for this program has been extended twice since it was established, most recently in 2008. This book discusses background related to the Adoption Incentives program, including the longstanding Congressional interest in domestic adoption and the significant increases in adoptions from foster care that have occurred since the middle 1990s. It also discusses the current program, including the incentive structure.

Tried nagging, shouting, taking away screen time, but with no success? Dr Amber Elliott explains why children who have experienced early trauma need something different - therapeutic parenting - a kind of everyday 'superparenting' which champions empathy over punishment. Trying to parent children who have trauma-triggered behaviours is tough, and none of us are perfect. Taking this as a starting point, Dr Elliott provides you with a ten-step process to transform your parenting. From developing self-acceptance and ideas for building motivation through to creative ways to think about structure and routine, the book combines principles with practical advice and exercises you can try out at home. Working together, you and your child can discover the secrets of superparenting and overcome trauma-triggered behaviours!

In a deep dark forest, Little Coyote grows up with a tough gang of big strong coyotes. They are cruel, call him names and order him about all day long. Little Coyote is too small to run away or to stand up for himself, so he learns to do what he's told and makes his body small so nobody notices him. Then, one day he goes on an adventure and ends up discovering new hidden strengths that he never knew he had. This therapeutic picture book is written to help children aged 4-10 and adults to talk about difficult experiences growing up (including things they may still be going through), and explores how they can affect how your body feels and reacts to things. It is followed by easy to read advice for adults on how to help your child.

'I was made in Coffee Bay. Right there on the beach, in the sand.'

From the opening lines, we are drawn in and engrossed by this startling memoir of a singular childhood. Suzan is adopted as a newborn in the late 1960s into a seemingly loving and welcoming family living in Pietermaritzburg. But Suzan is set on a collision course with, most particularly, her adoptive mother, and society, from her very beginning. Suzan's relationship with her mother is fraught with drama, which veers over into a level of emotional abuse and needless cruelty that is shocking.

At the age of thirteen, Suzan is sent to a place of safety as a ward of the state, effectively 'orphaning' her. From there, she spirals out of control – fighting to survive in a world of other neglected, abandoned and abused children. She becomes a 'runner', escaping at every opportunity from her various places of confinement, grabbing her schooling in snatches, living on the edges of a drug and prostitution underworld, finding love wherever she can.

Suzan’s young life was the stuff of movies, but it is her writing, in a voice that is unforgettable and true, that transforms her memories into something magical rarely matched in South African literature. A new classic.

With essays by well-known adoption practitioners and researchers who source empirical research and practical knowledge, this volume addresses key developmental, cultural, health, and behavioral issues in the transracial and international adoption process and provides recommendations for avoiding fraud and techniques for navigating domestic and foreign adoption laws. The text details the history, policy, and service requirements relating to white, African American, Asian American, Latino and Mexican American, and Native American children and adoptive families. It addresses specific problems faced by adoptive families with children and youth from China, Russia, Ethiopia, India, Korea, and Guatemala, and offers targeted guidance on ethnic identity formation, trauma, mental health treatment, and the challenges of gay or lesbian adoptions

Let Me Go is the powerful new memoir from foster carer and Sunday Times bestselling author Casey Watson. Harley is a troubled 13-year-old girl who wants to end her own life and there's only one woman who can find out why. When Harley is sectioned after attempting suicide, she ends up in Casey's care under a 28-day care order. But before Casey can even get her back to the safety of her home, Harley hurls herself out of the moving car. Harley has a family - a widowed mother and older sister Milly. But Milly has left home and her mum, who has addiction issues, feels unable to cope. Despite the dysfunctional family, Casey suspects there is more to Harley's distress and after weeks of gentle coaching, a sudden breakthrough sheds light on the disturbing truth - Milly and her mum are not the only people in Harley's life. There is a man, a very dangerous man indeed.

While many proponents of transracial adoption claim that American society is increasingly becoming "color-blind," a growing body of research reveals that for transracial adoptees of all backgrounds, racial identity does matter. Rhonda M. Roorda elaborates significantly on that finding, specifically studying the effects of the adoption of black and biracial children by white parents. She incorporates diverse perspectives on transracial adoption by concerned black Americans of various ages, including those who lived through Jim Crow and the Civil Rights era. All her interviewees have been involved either personally or professionally in the lives of transracial adoptees, and they offer strategies for navigating systemic racial inequalities while affirming the importance of black communities in the lives of transracial adoptive families. In Their Voices is for parents, child-welfare providers, social workers, psychologists, educators, therapists, and adoptees from all backgrounds who seek clarity about this phenomenon. The author examines how social attitudes and federal policies concerning transracial adoption have changed over the last several decades. She also includes suggestions on how to revise transracial adoption policy to better reflect the needs of transracial adoptive families. Perhaps most important, In Their Voices is packed with advice for parents who are invested in nurturing a positive self-image in their adopted children of color and the crucial perspectives those parents should consider when raising their children. It offers adoptees of color encouragement in overcoming discrimination and explains why a "race-neutral" environment, maintained by so many white parents, is not ideal for adoptees or their families.

Numerous reasons cause adopted teenagers to reconnect with their birth family via Facebook, creating new challenges for adoption today and tomorrow. Incorporating theory, practice, anecdotes, metaphors, diagrams, models and case studies, this accessible book, written by an experienced adopter, clearly explains these complex issues. It maps connections between trauma, child development, grief, adolescence, contact, truth telling and parenting styles; offering fresh perspectives and strategies for parents and professionals.

In Paris during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the practice of adopting children was strongly discouraged by cultural, religious, and legal authorities on the grounds that it disrupted family blood lines. In fact, historians have assumed that adoption had generally not been practiced in France or in the rest of Europe since late antiquity. Challenging this view, Kristin Gager brings to light evidence showing how married couples and single men and women from the artisan neighborhoods in early modern Paris did manage to adopt children as their legal heirs. In so doing, she offers a new, richly detailed portrait of family life, civil law, and public assistance in Paris, and reveals how citizens forged a wide variety of family forms in defiance of social, cultural, and legal norms.

Gager bases her work on documents ranging from previously unexplored notarized contracts of adoption to court cases, theological treatises, and literary texts. She examines two main patterns of adoption: those privately arranged between households and those of destitute children from the Parisian foundling hospice and the HAtel-Dieu. Gager argues that although customary law rejected adoption and promoted an exclusively biological model of the family, there existed an alternative domestic culture based on a variety of "fictive" ties. Gager connects her arguments to current debates about adoption and the nature of the family in Europe and the United States.

Originally published in 1996.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905."

Practical techniques for guiding parents through the stages of adoption and beyond

"This book makes a significant contribution to both a greater understanding of adoption and its complex dynamic constellations as well as to serving those who are or come across adoption families, many of whom count on us adoption-informed mental health professionals to clarify and facilitate the challenges they face."
--From the Foreword by Henri Parens, MD, Professor of Psychiatry, Thomas Jefferson University, Training and Supervising Analyst, Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia

"What most people don't know about adoption could fill a book--and this is the book. Finally sorting myth from science, "Working with Adoptive Parents" will give therapists, and quite a few nonprofessionals considering adoption, the real story of what it means to make this momentous choice. Better yet, it does so without letting the data speak in place of the parents themselves, in all their fear, doubt, and joy."
--Jesse Green, author of "The Velveteen Father: An Unexpected Journey to Parenthood"

Editors Virginia Brabender and April Fallon are clinical psychologists and also adoptive parents whose families are acquainted with both the uncertainty and joy of adoption. In "Working with Adoptive Parents," they offer an in-depth treatment of the distinctive needs, feelings, impulses, expectations, and conflicts that adoptive parents experience through the stages of adoption and beyond. This volume offers a comprehensive picture of adoption through an exploration of the experiences and developmental processes of the adoptive parent.

Featuring contributions from mental health professionals whose careers have focused on work with families through the adoption process, this unique book: Covers the theory, research, and practice of adoptive parenting throughout the life cycleExplores the issues unique to the adoptive mother and adoptive father as they traverse the stages of parentingOffers a close look at families with special needs childrenAcknowledges and explores the great diversity among adoptive families and the kinship networks in which they are embeddedExamines attachment issues between adoptive parent and child

Providing a framework for therapists to conceptualize their work with adoptive parents, "Working with Adoptive Parents "clarifies and facilitates the journey that many of these families face.

Describes what being a foster mom is really like, the effects of foster care on the whole family, and how the foster care system fails severely abused children. Foster children are society's throwaway kids, the children no one wants-until someone finally does. Saving Michael provides an inside look Keri Vellis' struggle to secure the best possible services for two severely abused and traumatized siblings. Some doors opened, but too many closed during her ten-year journey as the voice for children in her care who have no voice of their own within the current system. Readers get a glimpse of Keri and her family's day-to-day life as she went from mother of three to adoptive mother of three more children and then the temporary caregiver of another seventeen. Saving Michael delves into issues bigger than one family's experiences and determination. Now an author and child advocate, Vellis provides a profoundly personal look into what it takes to get the best for each of the children she's had in her care. Her journey started from the first day of her first foster care situation and the urgent need for diagnoses and treatment. It continued despite the many obstacles thrown in her path to securing services for the vulnerable children in her family's care. Along the way, she details the many ups and downs, challenges and triumphs, her whole family experienced as part of the foster care system. All children deserve permanent, safe homes. The effort to obtain those for every child is a tremendous one not for the faint-hearted. But the rewards reverberate for everyone when it works. Follow Keri and her family on this heartfelt journey of love and persistence.

Life isn't all fairytales and glass slippers... 'Cinderella', I wish! is the powerful true story of Dominique DeVeraux's life. Beginning with her early childhood as a young black child living with loving white foster parents, Dominique is content and adored. But when Nanny dies suddenly, Dominique is taken away from the loving home that she knew and thrust into a world of trouble. Dumped in a new home with strangers, Dominique's life turns to one of difficulty and misery. In her fight for happiness she faces more and more abusers, domestic violence, rape and murder. Ploughing on regardless, Dominique chooses love as her weapon and shield. In this story of courage, our protagonist rises above the challenges she faces to celebrate life and to love herself indubitably.

Her biological clock ticking louder each day, Sharon Simon felt her heart sink as yet another "Mr. Wonderful" turned out to be a frog---not the prince she was waiting for. But when the right man did come along, their journey toward parenthood seemed more like a machete trail through a jungle than the smooth path of her dreams. Enduring multiple failed IVFs and the loss of their unborn twins, Sharon and her husband decided to adopt---taking a whirlwind trip to Russia and navigating the rough waters of international adoption red tape. Their journey ended, or rather began, when two baby boys were placed in their arms for the long trip home.
Part love story, part adoption memoir, and all heart, "Mom at Last "is the story of one woman's fierce determination to become a mother. Full of setbacks and emotionally devastating pitfalls, ultimately the journey leads her to true love and pure joy. "Mom at Last" will inspire women who find themselves on that sometimes difficult journey to motherhood, giving hope that motherhood is possible and encouraging women to never give up on their dreams. While every journey to motherhood is different, "Mom at Last" lets women know they are not alone in the struggle toward motherhood.

Seeking Solace is Chani Barlow's story of following God's plan despite a series of unforeseen obstacles, in order to find true meaning and peace. Though Chani Barlow grew up going to church on Sundays, she never really knew if God was real or just a name mentioned over the pulpit. As a teenager, she jaywalked across a busy highway and found Him waiting for her in the recovery room. God gifted her powerful dreams, snapshots of a little boy and girl meant to join her family. But the search wasn't easy. Infertility, financial setbacks, mental illness, and rejection led her to wonder if God had forgotten her-but was she really paying attention? Seeking Solace tells the story of REAL miracles. It puts an arm around the reader's shoulder and points out how their coincidences might not just be coincidences.

All families of children affected by trauma are on a journey, and this book will help to guide you and your family on your journey from trauma to trust. Sarah Naish shares her own experiences of adopting five siblings. She describes how to use therapeutic parenting - a deeply nurturing parenting style - to overcome common challenges when raising children who have experienced trauma. The book describes a series of difficult episodes for her family, exploring both parent's and child's experiences of the same events - with the child's experience written by a former fostered child - and in doing so reveals the very good reasons why traumatized children behave as they do. The book explores the misunderstandings that grow between parents and their children, and provides comfort to the reader - you are not the only family going through this! Full of insights from a family and others who have really been there, this book gives you advice and strategies to help you and your family thrive.

In 1990, disturbing television footage emerged showing the inhumane conditions in which children in Romanian institutions were living. Viewers were shocked that the babies were silent. The so-called 'Romanian orphans' became subjects of several international research studies. In parallel, Romania had to reform its child protection system in order to become a member of the European Union. This book sheds light on the lived experiences of these children, who had become adults by the time the country joined the EU. Uniquely, the book brings together the accounts of those who stayed in institutions, those who grew up in foster care and those who were adopted, both in Romania and internationally. Their narratives challenge stereotypes about these types of care.