Authored by one of the nation's leading adoption attorneys, ADOPTING IN AMERICA is the ultimate "how to" book for anyone thinking of adopting. Written in a clear style, it details every type of adoption. This includes not just the standard types (domestic independent, agency and international) covered in other books, but a total of 14 subtypes, including little-known options like non-resident adoption, permitted in 26 states. (These states allow adoptive parents from other states to complete their adoption in their state even though the adoptive parents don't live there, if the minor is born there. This gives adoptive parents greater flexibility to complete their adoption in a state with more favorable adoption laws, procedures and options than their home state.) Particular attention is given to the adoption desired by most adoptive parents: a healthy newborn, including how to network for, and be selected by, a birth mother. The book also includes: Special strategies for success in adopting quickly (particularly when seeking a newborn adoption) known only to top adoption attorneys; a review of key legal issues and how to navigate them safely; how to spot red flags to a risky adoption; how to select the best adoption agency or attorney; how to obtain free medical benefits for the baby; the federal adoption tax credit of $12,650; a review of each state's unique adoption laws, with biographies of each state's members of the American Academy of Adoption Attorneys (over 300 nationally). There are also sample photo-resume letters and networking cover letters. Includes detailed appendices and index.

A New York Times Notable Book The shocking truth about postwar adoption in America, told through the bittersweet story of one teenager, the son she was forced to relinquish, and their search to find each other. “[T]his book about the past might foreshadow a coming shift in the future… ‘I don’t think any legislators in those states who are anti-abortion are actually thinking, “Oh, great, these single women are gonna raise more children.” No, their hope is that those children will be placed for adoption. But is that the reality? I doubt it.’”[says Glaser]” -Mother Jones During the Baby Boom in 1960s America, women were encouraged to stay home and raise large families, but sex and childbirth were taboo subjects. Premarital sex was common, but birth control was hard to get and abortion was illegal. In 1961, sixteen-year-old Margaret Erle fell in love and became pregnant. Her enraged family sent her to a maternity home, where social workers threatened her with jail until she signed away her parental rights. Her son vanished, his whereabouts and new identity known only to an adoption agency that would never share the slightest detail about his fate. The adoption business was founded on secrecy and lies. American Baby lays out how a lucrative and exploitative industry removed children from their birth mothers and placed them with hopeful families, fabricating stories about infants' origins and destinations, then closing the door firmly between the parties forever. Adoption agencies and other organizations that purported to help pregnant women struck unethical deals with doctors and researchers for pseudoscientific "assessments," and shamed millions of women into surrendering their children. The identities of many who were adopted or who surrendered a child in the postwar decades are still locked in sealed files. Gabrielle Glaser dramatically illustrates in Margaret and David’s tale--one they share with millions of Americans—a story of loss, love, and the search for identity.

Explores the role played by missionaries in the twentieth-century transnational adoption movement Between 1953 and 2018, approximately 170,000 Korean children were adopted by families in dozens of different countries, with Americans providing homes to more than two-thirds of them. In an iconic photo taken in 1955, Harry and Bertha Holt can be seen descending from a Pan American World Airways airplane with twelve Asian babies—eight for their family and four for other families. As adoptive parents and evangelical Christians who identified themselves as missionaries, the Holts unwittingly became both the metaphorical and literal parental figures in the growing movement to adopt transnationally. Missionaries pioneered the transnational adoption movement in America. Though their role is known, there has not yet been a full historical look at their theological motivations—which varied depending on whether they were evangelically or ecumenically focused—and what the effects were for American society, relations with Asia, and thinking about race more broadly. Adopting for God shows that, somewhat surprisingly, both evangelical and ecumenical Christians challenged Americans to redefine traditional familial values and rethink race matters. By questioning the perspective that equates missionary humanitarianism with unmitigated cultural imperialism, this book offers a more nuanced picture of the rise of an important twentieth-century movement: the evangelization of adoption and the awakening of a new type of Christian mission.

One of the nation's leading adoption attorneys provides detailed information about 15 types of adoption. Not just independent, agency and intercountry adoption, but many subtypes where the key to success is often found. Unique strategies for quick success are given and a state-by-state review details each state's unique adoption laws.

This revised edition of Pertman's award-winning book features updated information on every aspect of adoption and its changing role in American society. Pertman, a Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist and father of two adopted children, offers an unflinching study of adoption policy and processes.

From Adoptive Families magazine, the country’s leading resource on adoption, this warm, authoritative book is full of practical, realistic advice from leading attorneys, doctors, social workers, and psychologists, as well as honest, intimate stories from real parents and children. You Can Adopt answers every question–even the ones you’re afraid to ask: • When should I shift from fertility treatment to adoption? • How do I talk to my spouse about adoption? • Can we find a healthy baby? • Do I need an attorney? An adoption agency? • Can the birth mother take the baby back? • How much will this really cost? How long will it take? • Aren’t all adopted children unhappy? • Can I love a child who “isn’t mine”? • How can I ease the rest of my family into this decision? Complete with checklists and worksheets, You Can Adopt will help make your dreams of family come true.

American literature abounds with orphans who experience adoption or placements that resemble adoption. These stories do more than recount adventures of children living away from home. They tell an American story of family and national identity. In narratives from the seventeenth to the early twentieth century, adoption functions as narrative event and trope that describes the American migratory experience, the impact of Calvinist faith, and the growth of democratic individualism. The roots of literary adoption appear in the discourse of Puritan settlers, who ambivalently took leave of their birth parent country and portrayed themselves as abandoned children. Believing they were chosen children of God, they also prayed for spiritual adoption and emulated God's grace by extending adoption to others. Nineteenth-century adoption literature develops from this notion of adoption as salvation and from simultaneous attachments to the Old World and the New. In domestic fiction of the mid-nineteenth century, adoption also reflects a focus on nurture in childrearing, increased mobility in the nation, and middle-class concerns over immigration and urbanization, assuaged when the orphan finds a proper, loving home. Adoption signals fresh starts and the opportunity for success without genealogical constraints, especially for white males, but inflected by gender and racial biases, it often entails dependency for girls and children of color. A complex signifier of difference, adoption gives voice to sometimes contradictory calls to origins and fresh beginning; to feelings of worthiness and unworthiness. In writings from Cotton Mather to Edith Wharton, it both replicates and offers an alternative to the genealogical norm, evoking ambivalence as it shapes national mythologies.