New review from Library Journal (June 1 issue):
“This intricate investigation of adoption ethics and religion is an incisive, evenhanded corrective to the view of child adoption as benign and salvific. Journalist Joyce (associate editor, Religion Dispatches; Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement) examines the rise of adoption as a practice and cause among American evangelical communities eager to save souls (by raising them in Christian households), prevent abortions, and care for the poor (thereby reclaiming a biblical mandate frequently dissociated from conservative Christianity). But the more than 150 million so-termed orphans and vulnerable children worldwide frequently have living family members, even grieving mothers, capable of raising them, circumstances seemingly lost in the mix of aggressive agencies, inadequate regulation, vulnerable families lacking understanding of the concept of adoption as permanent, and adoptive families with emotional and financial resources invested. Joyce details cases involving children from Haiti, Ethiopia, Liberia, Rwanda, South Korea, and the United States, shares the voices of a huge array of interviewees, and allows the facts to reveal how removing children from poverty has come to be seen as a virtue. Grim but not downbeat, Joyce’s reporting also indicates signs of hope for reform. VERDICT This exemplary study deserves a wide audience among all readers involved with adoption, from policymakers to prospective adoptive families.”
—Janet Ingraham Dwyer, State Lib. of Ohio, Columbus
