Product Description

In this powerful book, Elizabeth Bartholet attempts to make sense of the worlds of adoption and fertility treatment by combining a moving personal narrative with compelling policy analysis. Family Bonds is conveniently available at a time when more children than ever are waiting to be adopted and when infertility treatment is becoming an increasingly popular, sophisticated, and expensive technology.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #407276 in Books
• Published on: 1999-10-05
• Released on: 1999-10-05
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 8.50" h x .65" w x 5.50" l, .81 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

From Publishers Weekly
After suffering 10 frustrating years of infertility treatments and various obstacles to adoption, Harvard law professor Bartholet, a divorced mother of a grown son, finally succeeded in adopting two Peruvian infant boys now four and seven--children "clearly meant for me." In this engrossing account addressed both to women undergoing often futile, costly infertility treatments and to those fighting to adopt children, she eloquently advocates making international adoptions more available by reforming legal systems, as well as by screening and racial matching policies. The author further favors access to sealed birth records. Although she affirms that adoption is an honorable, "positive alternative to biologic parenting," she also notes that "parenting should not imply that the parent owns the child's affections or has a right to exclude alternative relationships."
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Bartholet, a single mother and Harvard Law School professor, journeyed to Peru in 1985 to adopt a child. In this account, she argues that the whole adoption business is antichild, antifamily, and antiparent. Nurturing should be central to parenting, not biological destiny, she claims, and adoption records should be open, not sealed. She persuasively argues that discrimination by age of parents, sexual preference, race, disabilities, and country of origin should be outlawed. Bartholet also maintains that society must reject the lie that adoptive families are second-best to biologically based families. The author backs her assertions with studies showing that adoption, even across racial lines, generally works well. Her book is thought-provoking, controversial, and sure to be discussed. Extensive footnotes are included. Highly recommended.
- Linda Beck, Indian Valley P.L., Telford, Pa.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
A seminal volume on the worldwide mind-set that allows orphaned or unwanted children to waste away in institutions while childless adults struggle to breach the barriers that keep them from building families. Harvard Law School professor Bartholet writes from both personal and professional experience. She's the mother of a now- adult son born during a youthful marriage, as well as of two younger sons--aged four and seven--adopted when they were babies and she was a not-so-young divorced professional who wanted another child but could no longer conceive. Bartholet went through the humiliating process familiar to many, from facing doctors who explored and experimented with her reproductive system--with the implicit suggestion that she was unworthy since she could not become pregnant--to making applications for adoption and taking subsequent tests that probed her personal history from her early relationships with her parents through her current sex life. The author ultimately found her children in Peru--but only after enduring desperate weeks of frustration and fear as authorities sent her to and fro for physical and mental exams and in search of documents, official stamps, and verifications of her worthiness. Bartholet admits that she was lucky: Her knowledge of the system; the flexible schedule that enabled her to take months off while she navigated the Peruvian bureaucracy; her financial resources and Harvard credentials--all let her take home the infants she fell in love with. But why should it be so difficult? she asks. Why should there be barriers against interracial and international adoptions when the need is so great for both children and their potential parents? By combining expert legal discussion with affecting personal memoir, Bartholet offers an important exploration of the societal barriers to adoption, as well as invaluable support to would-be parents who face these seemingly insurmountable obstacles. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.