I don’t like extreme points of view.

I don’t like self-published books.

And, as a writing snob, I don’t like sentences that cause me to think, “Where was the editor?”

Despite all of these things, I do like Mirah Riben’s new book, The Stork Market: America’s Multi-Billion Dollar Unregulated Adoption Industry.

That’s because I view it as a piece of dedicated, tenacious reporting, collecting many disparate facts into one unified whole. By recounting the many ways that the big... more

When I started writing about the book What to Expect When You’re Expecting yesterday, I pulled my pregnancy book of the shelf, thinking it was that book, but it wasn’t. It was Your Pregnancy Week by Week. I guess I’m not that great with titles!

A friend gave me Your... more

What to Expect When You’re Expecting by Heidi Murkoff, Arlene Eisenberg, and Sandee Hathaway is one of those great pregnancy books that is good for just about any pregnant woman, regardless of whether you are making an adoption plan or parenting your first child or fourth. It explains pregnancy and all that goes along with it in general everyday terms that we can all understand.

The information... more

If you’re like most people, you probably have some strong opinions about the topic of teen moms. You might think the statistics prove that such moms are generally doomed to failure, that their kids turn out badly, and that such mothers cause problems for society as a whole.

Not so, says a writer who has published a book about teen mothers. According to her, recent studies show that while teen parents do typically struggle in the initial stages, most eventually do just fine, going on to create stable families and raise good kids. Entitled... more

This book isn’t related to adoption but is (in my opinion) a great book for anyone expecting whether they parent or place their baby for adoption. It was given to me by a dear friend. She purchased a copy for me when she purchased one for her child.

Letters to Baby is a collection of 68 letters to newborns passing along wisdom and inspiration. Each contributor was asked the same question, “What would you tell a newborn baby that you have found to be important in life?

The letters are written by various... more

I was sitting in a doctor’s waiting room the other day, waiting to get some immunizations for travel, when a book on the shelf caught my eye: Parental Loss of a Child by Therese A. Rando.

I had to take it down and look at it, and of course head straight to the index to see how much discussion there was of loss through adoption. I only had time to look briefly, but the content looked pretty accurate. One thing in particular stood out: the notion of adoption as an ambiguous loss, leading to unresolved grief.

What is an ambiguous loss?... more

Allow me to recommend a truly fantastic book for women in unplanned pregnancies.

It’s called Surprise Child: Finding Hope in Unexpected Pregnancy and it’s by Leslie Leyland Fields. Whether you consider yourself too young, too old, too poor, too sick, or too overburdened to welcome a child right now, or you have some other special circumstance (such as rape) that makes you doubt your ability to be a good mother, you will certainly find a story you can relate to in this book. It’s one of the few resources I’ve found that encourages women to look at an unplanned pregnancy... more

Recently I re-read a book that touched on what I wrote in my last two posts, about how parents of women in crisis pregnancies tend to view the baby as a “problem” at first, rather than as a family member.

The book is My Child is A Mother: A True and Happy Story of Open Adoption, by Mary Stephenson. Mary is the mother of Karen, who got pregnant at age 17. The book, written in 1991, chronicles the story of how the Stephenson family dealt with Karen’s crisis.

Karen realizes from the beginning that she cannot give her baby girl up without knowing where her daughter... more

I love books.

I have hundreds of them in my house, and I check out many more from the library every month.

So it makes sense that, as a birthmother and someone who wants to be informed about the perspectives of all triad members, I would have amassed quite a collection of adoption-related books. Some of them are classics, some are duds, and some are rare or out of print...but all of them contain at least a certain amount of worthwhile knowledge.

Below is a list of the adoption books I own. Obviously I don’t have space to review them all, but perhaps... more

When something as big as adoption enters your life, it’s natural to want to write about it. Most people want to share the wisdom of what they have learned and save others from making the same mistakes they did. Unfortunately, some would-be authors just don’t have the skill or the talent to create readable prose, so many memoirs about adoption are just plain bad—-overwrought, poorly crafted, or worst of all, inaccurate.

This is not the case with Jan Waldron’s well-written and occasionally poetic book, "Giving Away Simone." Waldron is a birthmother from the late 1960s who had the... more