Taking Adoption Seriously: Radical Revolution or Modest Revisionism?

Abstract

American and Asian children. It is about children growing up in homes n whlch they are physically brutalized or sexually exploited. It s about children born damaged by drugs and alcohol used during their mothers’ pregnancies, children in need of very special parenting to overcome the damage, but who are sent home to parents whose first love is their drug. It is about childrenwho grow up parenting themselves and their siblings as best they can because the adults in their home are not mentally or emotionally capable of parenting. This book is about the children left to grow up n inadequate homes, but also about the children removed only to be placed in inadequate foster or institutional care. It is about those who will spend the rest of their childhood in state custody, and about those who will spend it bouncing back and forth between foster care and their homes of origin. These are Nobody’s Children. This book is also about the culture that makes it possible to see children as Nobody’s, or Somebody Else’ s, and certainly Not Ours. R tells the story ofhow our child welfare policies came to place such a high value on keeping children in their families and communities of origin without regard to whether this works for children. It envisions a new culture in which the larger community assumes responsibility for the well-being of its children, a culture in which we understand children born to others as belonging not only to them, and not only to their kinship or racial groups, but to all of us.