Adoption: The Search for a New Parenthood

$205.00

Series: Pediatrics, Child and Adolescent Health
BISAC: SOC047000

Gary Diamond, an American-trained developmental pediatrician, has along with professional colleagues over the past 15 years, counseled and traveled to orphanages around the world in the service of adoptive parents, interested in evaluating the child pre-adoption in his/her native setting, often being in foster care or orphanages in a variety of countries in Eastern Europe and Central America. The book is a collection of 25 true accounts of adoption, post adoption and adolescent and adult experiences with adoption, and presents a unique chronicle of the life cycle of the adoptive family and the adopted individual, with the added dimension of actual accounts of orphanage life. The book, and the stories within, are a chronicle of an individual’s search for identity, which is a universal theme.

The book originates in Israel, where adoptive families actually send physicians, trained in child development, to countries to examine children offered for adoption, enabling adoption professionals to acquire long-standing and intimate insights, into the process of adoption, from its very early stages, when institutionalized children are first exposed to visiting professionals and prospective adoptive parents. There exists no other account in the professional or popular literature of the life cycle of the adopted child/ individual, beginning from such an extremely early juncture in time.

Eva Arbel, MSW, has long experience with adoptive families, she herself being adopted at the age of two months, adds a unique dimension to the book, detailing the psychological processes adoption involves in the individual’s and family’s struggle to define self identity and to reconcile the tug of war between the adoptive and biological realities the adopted child and adult is constantly caught between. The book should be of special interest to professionals in the field of child development, developmental medicine and pediatrics, social work, child psychology and family counseling, as well as to the general public especially interested in human interest accounts of families and development, the search for identity and raising children struggling with issues of adjustment, attachment and belonging. (Imprint: Nova)

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Prologue

Introduction

Chapter 1 – Sealing one’s fate (pp. 1-4)

Chapter 2 – What’s overt and what’s covert (pp. 5-10)

Chapter 3 – International adoption: How it’s organized (pp. 11-14)

Chapter 4 – To be an orphan (pp. 15-18)

Chapter 5 – Orphanages (pp. 19-24)

Chapter 6 – The adoption business (pp. 25-32)

Chapter 7 – Parents as consumers (pp. 33-38)

Chapter 8 – “He’s the One!” (pp. 39-46)

Chapter 9 – When to tell the child the truth (pp. 47-50)

Chapter 10 – Fears (pp. 51-54)

Chapter 11 – Love and prejudice (pp. 55-62)

Chapter 12 – The body doesn’t lie (pp. 63-68)

Chapter 13 – Choice and control in adoption (pp. 69-76)

Chapter 14 – Magdalena’s performance (pp. 77-82)

Chapter 15 – The child of our dreams (pp. 83-90)

Chapter 16 – Waiting for the phone to ring (pp. 91-98)

Chapter 17 – The power of faith (pp. 99-104)

Chapter 18 – A different kind of family (pp. 105-110)

Chapter 19 – ‘Ghosts in the nursery’ (pp. 111-116)

Chapter 20 – ‘Georgia on my mind’ (pp. 117-124)

Chapter 21 – A child from a good home (pp. 125-132)

Chapter 22 – Pages from a social worker’s notebook: Chronicles from encounters with adopting families (pp. 133-136)

Chapter 23 – “So where is your mother?” (pp. 137-140)

Chapter 24 – They say that Mira resembles her mother and father (pp. 141-142)

Chapter 25 – “We saw you, we fell in love with you” (pp. 143-144)

Chapter 26 – I gave her up because I had no choice (pp. 145-146)

Chapter 27 – Leonard writes his parents from there (pp. 147-148)

Chapter 28 – Jared learns what a mother is (pp. 149-152)

Chapter 29 – “Thanks to his parents, you have that wonderful Jared” (pp. 153-156)

Chapter 30 – Princess or frog (pp. 157-162)

Chapter 31 – Like grandma, like mother (pp. 163-164)

Chapter 32 – Choices (pp. 165-168)

Chapter 33 – Family day (pp. 169-170)

Chapter 34 – Only three weeks (pp. 171-174)

Chapter 35 – Caught between two worlds (pp. 175-180)

Bibliography

About the authors

Index

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