Drawn from the files of BigHugs.com, a successful online search organization, this collection of three touching, inspirational true-life stories describes the reunions of siblings separated by circumstance and time. Original.

Generations of adults who were adopted as children have been kept in the dark about their original identities. The law sealing birth records forever, even to the adopted person, passed in 1935 in California, sweeping adoption´s emotional complexities under the rug and making it possible to keep an adoption itself a secret. Growing in the Dark: Adoption Secrecy and Its Consequences takes you through California´s early adoption laws, highlighting the passage of the original law that sealed records, and discusses the various consequences of this policy as they unfolded throughout the 20th century. To this day in California as in most states, adoptees are still unable to obtain their original birth certificates. Psychological theories, baby sellers, society's harsh view of out-of-wedlock births, and the views of child welfare advocates in the early 20th century are all part of the story. The book ends with the successful ballot initiative in Oregon in 1998 that reversed the sealed records law in that state.The book´s title refers to the frequent experience of adoptees, including those of the baby boomer generation like the author, who grew up "in the dark" about what being adopted meant, in a society that was equally in the dark in its understanding of the harm of secrecy and the importance of both nature and nurture. As the book concludes: "Scientists have discovered what adoptees instinctively know: nature and nurture -- genetic traits and life experiences -- work together in an individual and not in opposition ... in adoptees as in everyone else. It is time for laws and social mores governing adoption to catch up with that reality."

Product Description: Book by Minniti, Jennifer

Product Description: Adoption has long been a controversial subject in the United States as well as in other western countries, but never more so than in the past three decades. Why that is and how public attention affects the decisions made by those who arrange, legalize, and experience adoptive kinship constitutes the subject of this book...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Drawn from the files of BigHugs.com, a successful online search organization, this collection of three touching, inspirational true-life stories describes the reunions of siblings separated by circumstance and time. Original.

A sensitive guide to the adoption process uses real-life stories to prepare adoptees for the often turbulent process of a reunion with birth parents and includes a list of valuable resources to help readers with their search, support groups, and Web sites. Original. (view table of contents)

Product Description: Adoption is a hot topic--played out in the news and on TV talk shows, in advice columns and tell-all tales--but for the 25 million Americans who are members of the adoption triad of adoptees, adoptive parents, and birth parents, the true story of adoption has not been told until now...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Harold Grotevant and Ruth McRoy provide a thorough review of the issues involved in openness in adoption and a clear description of the methods and results of the landmark research project they led. They provide rich data from an exceptional sample of adoptees, their adoptive parents and their birth mothers, and provide a perspective of their experiences as `triangular families' which openness generates...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Advises those who were adopted as children how to organize a search for their natural parents and reviews each state's legal considerations and records centers (view table of contents)

Offers resources for conducting a search for a missing relative, and covers the emotional as well as the practical issues one may encounter

Product Description: In this thoughtful book, sociologist Katarina Wegar offers a new perspective on adoption and the search debate, placing them within a social context. She argues that Americans who are embroiled in adoption controversies have failed to understand how much the debate, adoption research, and the experience of adoption itself are affected by persistent social beliefs that adopted children are different from and somehow inferior to children reared by their biological families...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Book by Schooler, Jayne

A guide for anyone affected by adoption includes guidance on making the decision to search, negotiating legalities, surviving the emotional turbulence of a reunion, and dealing with the impact on adoptive parents

The author describes her upbringing in Ohio, her search for her birthparents in South Carolina after the deaths of her adoptive parents, and her discovery of two half-sisters and a half-brother

Product Description: Book by Aigner, Hal