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Title: Reaching Out: The Guide to Writing a Terrific Dear Birthmother Letter by Nelson Handel ISBN: 0-9716198-2-4 Publisher: EasternEdge Press Pub. Date: 15 August, 2002 Format: Paperback List Price(USD): $17.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.12 (8 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Insightful, Entertaining and Informative
Comment: As an adoption professional, I recommend this book to all of my clients. The author turns the daunting task of drafting an outreach letter into a manageable and enjoyable process. Written with insight, sensitivity and humor, the book guides you from initial idea to final product -- an outreach letter that speaks honestly and compellingly to potential birthmothers.
Rating: 2
Summary: A workable handbook for an appalling premise
Comment: To give the author his due, he has written a helpful how-to for parents in a nearly intolerable situation: "selling themselves" and their self-described, "near-perfect" lives while vying for the attention of a steadily dwindling pool of relinquishing mothers. Only one percent of white women who give birth each year in the United States currently surrender their children to adoption. However sincere and avid the would-be adoptive parents may be--and I don't doubt for a minute that Nelson Handel and his wife fell into this category--those elusive "healthy white newborns" form a sellers' market.
And selling, alas, is what the domestic adoption business boils down to--a business estimated to reap [money amount]per year with an annual projected growth rate of at least 10 percent.
I am neither an adoptive parent nor one who has ever been faced with an unplanned pregnancy. However, there is an adoptee in my family whose agonizing, ongoing life struggles are directly related to her status as a newborn adoptee. My interest in her pain has motivated me to do a great deal of research and thought into the fraught world of adoptions, especially the "closed" variety, and what happens after the teddy-bear-and-pastels of the sales job is over. As the adoptive family forms its bonds, the pointed absence of the child's relinquishing parents hovers, specter-like, over every aspect of the adoptee's growth and development.
Handel's jacket photo shows himself, his wife, and their adopted son all wearing dark glasses. Apart from cute-cute, that says something right there, doesn't it?
This is not a bad book for what it proposes to do--write the pitch. However, the subject itself should give any non-biological parent pause--who "merits" a baby? The highest bidder? The most seductive pitch to a woman or girl in a difficult situation that will alter her life permanently, whether she chooses to abort, parent her child, or relinquish?
Handel's conclusion is that domestic adoption is what it is, and here's how to make the best of what it is. And, unfortunately, airbrushed professional photos, 1-800 numbers, and gobs of cash help.
If you can live with that, this book is for you.
Rating: 5
Summary: Great title, great book
Comment: The "reader from San Jose" has unfortunately never read this wonderful and sensitively written book. In the Foreword, the author clearly explains the use of the term "Dear Birthmother Letter" as the common reference term for these very important letters of introduction. He also directly acknowledges that expectant parents are not properly termed "birthparents" until after they make a placement, and speaks supportively of the expectant father's role in adoption decisions.
This is an extraordinarily helpful book, full of authoritative research, clear guidance, warm humor, and genuine sensitivity to everyone involved in the adoption triad. It was highly recommended to me by both my attorney and my adoption counselor. In the process of helping me write a letter that truly reflected my heart, it also dispelled many of the fears I had, born of misconception. To judge it without reading it does this book, and the adoption community, a grave disservice.
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Title: Dear Birthmother by Kathleen Silber, Phylis Speedlin ISBN: 0931722209 Publisher: Corona Pub Pub. Date: December, 1998 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Open Adoption Experience : Complete Guide for Adoptive and Birth Families - From Making the Decision Throug by Lois Ruskai Melina ISBN: 0060969571 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 17 November, 1993 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Adopting After Infertility by Patricia Irwin Johnston ISBN: 0944934102 Publisher: Perspectives Press Pub. Date: November, 1996 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Secret Thoughts of an Adoptive Mother by Jana Wolff ISBN: 0967214319 Publisher: Vista Communications Pub. Date: September, 1999 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Raising Adopted Children, Revised Edition : Practical Reassuring Advice for Every Adoptive Parent by Lois Ruskai Melina ISBN: 0060957174 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 01 August, 1998 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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