Marion Crook interviewed 50 adoptees. Teens tell what they really think and feel about adoption, their adoptive parents, and their birth parents
[Book Review] Birthmarks: Transracial Adoption in Contemporary America
Birthmarks: Transracial Adoption in Contemporary America, by Sandra Patton, is a multilayered synthesis of interviews conducted with 22 transracial adoptees. Read more!
[Book Review] The Russian Word for Snow: A True Story of Adoption
Lily Heyen-Withrow reviews The Russian Word for Snow, by Janis Cooke Newman, a tale of infertility, adoption, and all the complications along the way to parenthood.
How I Explained Adoption to the First Grade
Using a favorite doll and a logic children can follow, one mother enlightens her daughter's curious class about adoption.
The Top 10 Secrets of Successful Adoption Travel
The adoption trip is a defining moment in a family's life, the event that brings parent and child together at last.
Readers’ Favorite Adoption Parenting Guides
Readers pick their favorite books to guide parents through the adoption process.
Timing of Adoption Update: 2010-2011
The results of the 2010-2011 Adoptive Families Cost and Timing of Adoption Survey.
Timing of Adoption Update: 2009-2010
The results of the 2009-2010 Adoptive Families Cost and Timing of Adoption Survey.
Getting the Adoption Call
We asked our readers to share their stories about getting the adoption call. Where were you? How did you react? Read how they received the joyful news!
When Your Child Stops Talking About Adoption
Has your grade-schooler suddenly gone silent on adoption? Here's how to keep the conversation going.
When Your Teen Uses Adoption As a Weapon
Try to resist joining in your teen's power struggles.
Keep the Adoption Conversation Going
Let your child know you are open to talking about her birth family.
Ask AF: Sudden Secrecy About Adoption
When your child reaches his preteen years, he may deny his adoption to fit in with peers. Ronny Diamond explains how parents can cope.
Ask AF: Birth Family Request for a Closed Adoption
Our child's birth family does not want any contact with our family. How can we explain this to our son?
“Tripped Up During the Adoption Process By…My Fingerprints?”
As we marched through the approval process, my nerve was steady, my spirits high. But my fingertips failed me.
“Can You Talk to My Friend About Adoption?”
A family we barely knew gave us the encouragement we needed to adopt. I repay their kindness by doing the same for others.
Pursuing a Second Adoption
Parents who confidently dove into the unknown for their first child are sometimes more hesitant when it comes to doing it again.
[EXCERPT] Those Three Words
Christine Bauer’s revealing memoir begins when she hears those three words (“You are pregnant”) and faces an unplanned pregnancy, and takes readers through her open adoption decision, and the ensuing three decades as a birth mother and mother. In this excerpt, Bauer relates the complicated emotions that accompanied her second pregnancy, 11 years after placing her daughter for adoption, and the birth of her oldest son.
Ask AF: Sharing Difficult Details with a Seven-Year-Old
A mother seeks advice on sharing difficult birth family details with her daughter, and how this might affect their open adoption relationship.
The Paternity Test, Part 2: “The Results”
After meeting a man who thought he might be our daughter’s birth father, we were all invested in the idea of an open adoption relationship—but how would the test come back?