Caring for troubled adoptive/foster care children can be both harrowing and heroic. Many of today's foster and adopted children come from backgrounds where they experience not only the loss of previous caregivers, but have also suffered from abuse, sexual exploitation, or neglect. Individuals who invite these children into their homes often find themselves in a therapeutic role that can tax and exhaust. Troubled Transplants focuses on these children, their backgrounds, and their deleterious impact on the interaction and environment with the foster or adoptive family. The authors provide suggestions about behavioral roots and practical strategies to address and improve these issues.

Here is a major new volume for practitioners, researchers, and those concerned with future policies to promote the welfare of children and families. The patterns of support and the ability of family members to care for each other have changed along with the problems for the health and functioning of families. In Families as Nurturing Systems, respected scholars examine the new and emerging directions in the design and implementation of family resources and support programs. They describe and analyze a wide range of program models in the areas of prevention, social support, family resource, and empowerment that have been implemented in schools, the Afro-American church, early intervention programs, the workplace, and the public policy arena, reflecting the needs of families at different stages in the family life cycle.

First Published in 2017. In this book the authors move easily and often between the worlds of policy, practice, and research in child and family welfare. Their own research delineates— better than any other to date— the particular factors associated with success>ful and unsuccessful older, special-needs adoptions.

MORE THAN LOVE is a candid account of contrasting emotions - hope and lost hope, joy and despair, perseverance and helplessness – that resulted from parenting three Attachment Disorder adopted boys. It also describes the adoptive parents’ frustration at the system for not providing the help they were promised prior to the adoption. The book takes the reader through the emotional roller coaster experienced by both of the adoptive parents as they searched for answers from therapists, psychologists, social workers, clergy, teachers, friends, and family. It also provides explicit details of the boys’ deviant behaviors and describes the behaviors observed by outsiders. Others only witnessed charming, sweet, and "good" boys. Unfortunately, children with attachment problems are experts at manipulation and often dupe others, including those trained to detect such deceitfulness. Tragically, these adoptive parents finally had no choice but to let go of the boys in order to protect their family, friends, and society.

After an overview of historical and contemporary perspectives, the authors explore various theories that have addressed the issue of psychological risk associated with adoption.

The movement from young adulthood through coupling and the transition to parenthood may be among the most universal adult developmental transitions. These passages hold interest for all of us, but especially for those who study the psychological, familial, and sociocultural components of development, all of which interact and influence each other. This book enhances understanding of family-life development by shedding light on the meanings that family members ascribe to the developmental process of becoming a family. This is achieved through qualitative analysis of narratives through which individuals and families explain themselves, their thinking, and their behavior. These family narratives are windows into individual and family identity, as well as descriptions of connections to others. The book addresses issues including identity, child characteristics, social support, and work. Each chapter includes a review of seminal literature, parents' comments and ideas about the topic, and a discussion of practice, policy, and research implications.