Saving international adoption : an argument from economics and personal experience / Mark Montgomery and Irene Powell.

Author/creator Montgomery, Mark author.
Other author Powell, Irene, author.
Format Book
PublicationNashville : Vanderbilt University Press, [2018]
Descriptionxviii, 270 pages ; 25 cm
Subjects
Intercountry adoption.

Contents Introduction: why is international adoption collapsing? -- The obvious benefits of international adoption -- Whose culture is being defended? -- Is it culture or race? -- Walking while black (WWB) -- Trafficking jam -- Is adoption too commercial? -- Objections: won't less regulation make things worse? -- Repugnant ideas that became mainstream -- Adoption: joy and sadness.
Abstract International adoption is in a state of virtual collapse, rates having fallen by more than half since 2004 and continuing to fall. Yet around the world millions of orphaned and vulnerable children need permanent homes, and thousands of American and European families are eager to take them in. Many government officials, international bureaucrats, and social commentators claim these adoptions are not "in the best interests" of the child. They claim that adoption deprives children of their "birth culture," threatens their racial identities, and even encourages widespread child trafficking. Celebrity adopters are publicly excoriated for stealing children from their birth families. This book argues that opposition to adoption ostensibly based on the well-being of the child is often a smokescreen for protecting national pride. Concerns about the harm done by transracial adoption are largely inconsistent with empirical evidence. As for trafficking, opponents of international adoption want to shut it down because it is too much like a market for children. But this book offers a radical challenge to this view--that is, what if instead of trying to suppress market forces in international adoption, we embraced them so they could be properly regulated? What if the international system functioned more like open adoption in the United States, where birth and adoptive parents can meet and privately negotiate the exchange of parental rights? This arrangement, the authors argue, could eliminate the abuses that currently haunt international adoption. -- Publisher's description.
Bibliography noteIncludes bibliographical references and index.
Issued in other formOnline version: Montgomery, Mark, 1953 August 17- Saving international adoption. Nashville : Vanderbilt University Press, [2017] 9780826521743
LCCN 2017005438
ISBN9780826521729 (hardcover acid-free paper)
ISBN082652172X (hardcover acid-free paper)
ISBN(electronic book)

Availability

Library Location Call Number Status Item Actions
Joyner General Stacks HV875.5 .M66 2018 ✔ Available Place Hold