Recommended Books

Adoption and Loss: The Hidden Grief. By Evelyn Robinson ."It is obvious that a serious loss is experienced by the women...who gave birth to children who are subsequently adopted by someone else...." She explains why the grief of these women does not diminish with time, but increases in intensity with the passage of time. Her analysis of this phenomenon releases natural mothers from their rusty shackles of shame and guilt. It is clear that not only did natural mothers have little in the way of financial resources to enable them to care for their children, their families, society, social workers and health professionals conspired to disempower and silence them. "

"The author encourages natural mothers to search for the adult children they relinquished to be adopted. She describes her search and subsequent reunion with her son, the difficulties encountered along the way, including telling her other four children that they had an older brother and the ongoing relationship they now have.

"Evelyn Robinson [lost] her son in the early 1970's. Much of what she describes in her book - the pain adoption causes to natural mothers and adopted persons - is now well known by professionals involved with adoption. One must question why this practice continues - who benefits? The last part of Evelyn Robinson's book is a call for an end to the practice of adoption, and an exploration of alternative forms of care for children whose families are unable to care for them." - Reviewer: Maureen Craig, Australia

"Adoption Healing ...a path to recovery" is a book that deals with truth -- not the way people would prefer to see it, but exactly the way it is. Not only does it validate those feelings of doubt, fear, anxiety and loss that so many adoptees and birth mothers feel, but it gives you ways and exercises to help you deal with those feelings. I strongly suggest that everyone read it. It will help you to understand yourself, your sister or brother, your child, your partner or spouse." - an adopted woman from New York.

SHEDDING LIGHT ON THE DARK SIDE of ADOPTION, by Mirah Riben (ISBN: 0-9662060-0-2, available through Barnes&Noble and Amazon.com) (Author's Website)

 "...challenges the commonly held idea that adoption is a winning solution for everyone...this book is to be recommended as one of the few available which balances the more usual happy-ending adoption stories with a birthparent's reality...it is recommended for those who prefer the truth, even if unpleasant, to unquestioned adoption mythology." - RESOLVE newsletter

"Although not an easy book for an adoptive parent to read, this is certainly an important book for anyone striving to understand all sides of the adoption triangle. The good news (for adoptive parents) is that Riben is not slamming adoptive parents...her really big guns are leveled at The System. I recommend that adoptive parents read this book." - Families Adopting Children Everywhere (FACE)

"  We need more social supports for needy families!  Instead of spending the money on high paid social workers and legal systems to take these women's children away and place them in foster care, why can't we use that money for child care, parenting classes, decent housing, job training for single moms. Many moms these days have been abandoned by the babies fathers, putting the entire family into jeopardy."  This incredible book that tells exactly why this happens and who is behind it.

"I encourage anyone who wants to know more about the treatment of women in our society to buy and read this book!

"MEN desert women and MEN desert their children YET women are the ones who are punished and women are the ones left in poverty. It is usually poverty that causes the stress, fear and anxiety that causes women to commit crimes (usually to feed or clothe their children) or cause them to use drugs and drink excessively. It also can cause them to neglect and abuse their children.

"Until society recognizes that women should be honored and protected (and therefore their children also), we will keep suffering for the absence of the fathers of our children. The book says that a woman's greatest social contribution is giving birth. We should be honored and respected for that but instead we are punished.  This, the book says, is because we failed to snare a man who would marry, feed and protect us and our children."

Wake Up Little Susie: Single Pregnancy and Race Before Roe v Wade -- Rickie Solinger. "What Wake Up Little Suzie offers is the explanation for why adoption was so prevalent in the 1950's and 1960's and why it disappearing in recent times. Ricki Sollinger recounts the many pressures on women pregnant out-of-wedlock to relinquish children for adoption in years gone by....

"Ricki than describes expectant-mother homes which functioned as mechanisms to pry babies out of the reluctant arms of their mothers and into the hands of the adoption industry. Most of these homes have long since shut down, but they were a fixture of the fifties and the sixties. "One of the more shameful (and sickening) aspects of the whole process was the way that non-white and their children were treated. Unlike white women, they were discouraged from trying to place their children for adoption because they were told that "no one will want your baby". Adoption agencies had little use for children other than healthy white infants." - a reviewer on Amazon.com

Women As Wombs: Reproductive Technology and the Battle over Women's Freedom by Janice G. Raymond - Discusses advances in reproductive technologies and the battle over women's freedom. She cites numerous frightening legal cases in the US, UK, Canada and Australia to back up assertions that 1) women are increasingly valued because of their reproductive ability and the content of their wombs, 2) that courts increasingly view male ejaculation and sperm donation as equivalent to or even greater than a woman's participation in the creation, gestation and delivery of a child and 3) that often the ownership of a child based on a contract is often deemed more important than the nurturing relationship between a woman and the child she has carried.