Welcome Home!: An International and Nontraditional Adoption Reader

By Kaslow Associates, Lita Linzer Schwartz, Florence Kaslow

Examine the pros and cons of nontraditional adoption

Welcome Home An International and Nontraditional Adoption Reader is an essential guide to the process, pros, and cons of adopting children from outside the United States, with special needs, and/or from a different racial/cultural background. The book documents every aspect of the adoption procedurefrom working with facilitators, adoption agencies, and attorneys to mixed reactions over a child's possible loss of heritage as the result of a transracial or multicultural adoption. Parents and adoptees offer unique, firsthand perspectives on the cautions and benefits of nontraditional adoption.

Americans adopted more than 20,000 children from other countries in 2001, a number that reflects humanitarian motives, the desire to adopt a child from a specific country, and/or frustration with the domestic adoption system. Including a foreword by United States Representative Ted Strickland, Welcome Home is a practical resource for anyone thinking of establishing a family or adding to their own. The book provides insight into the adoption process, open adoption, biracial adoption, adopting a special needs child, cultural attitudes, and how to handle an adopted child's questions in later years. It also addresses specific adoption issues, including: how to verify an agency's credentials; how an agency negotiates with the birth mother; state and country laws and practices; tax benefits; and expenses, including legal and medical costs; and includes research findings on the Northeast-Northwest Collaborative Adoption Projects (N2CAP)

Welcome Home tells the stories of: Naomi and Fred, an intermarried couple (she's Jewish, he's not) who adopted a Greek baby in 1962 Tina and Lee, a lesbian couple, who adopted a baby from China Marianne, a professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of Lund in Sweden, who adopted babies from Iran and Thailandseveral years after her divorce Pamela, a divorced mother of four biological children who has adopted babies from Viet Nam and China All of her biological children MildredPamela's mother and the children's grandmother Karen, adoptive mother and national chairperson for Families for Russian and Ukrainian adoption (FRUA) William, adoptive father of miracle sisters from Romania and many more

Welcome Home is an invaluable source of unusual insight for psychologists, psychiatrists, marriage and family therapists, adoption agencies, counselors, social workers, attorneys, physicians, academics, and, of course, anyone considering adoption.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0789017733
• ISBN13: 9780789017734
• Release Date: October 2003
• Publisher: Routledge
• Length: 282 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.3" x 8.8"

Customer Reviews

Great International adoption book

As a parent going thru the adoption process as a "Virgin", i found this book extremely helpful, and a great read. There are so many heartwarming stories about international adoption, told by the parents themselves, and also with the siblings perspective and the kids perspective as they got older. Not all stories are "love at first sight", but dealt with attachment issues and stories of abuse. I read them with tears , but it's just amazing what love and patience can do. I really enjoyed the book and I really learned a lot. I just feel like we are ready to deal with whatever comes our way with this baby, and I know God would not give us something we couldn't handle. GREAT book and very heartwarming, even the sad stories.