New book review at The New Republic:
It’s hard to find an honest account of an open adoption that works: one where adoptive parents and birthparents have agreed that they will stay in touch and share the milestones of their child’s life, and then do so. Most of the birthmothers who have spoken with me over the years did so after planned open adoptions have failed. The adoptive parents may have pulled out, reneged on stated or implied promises, often claiming that, as the child grew old enough to grasp the deep ambiguity of the arrangement, ongoing contact became confusing. Sometimes birthparents draw back. Sometimes adoptive parents appear to get jealous. In most states, the law offers no protection for what is usually a non-binding, voluntary agreement.
The revelation of God and Jetfire: Confessions of a Birth Mother, Amy Seek’s lyrical and open-hearted new memoir, is that even in the best of all possible adoption worlds, the wounds of an open adoption resist easy healing…
