Critical Praise for The Adoption Mystique: A Hard-hitting Exposé of the Powerful Negative Social Stigma that Permeates Child Adoption in the United States
On November 1, 2007 , USABookNews.com, the premiere online magazine and review website for mainstream and independent publishing houses, announced the winners and finalist of the 2007 National Best Books Awards. Winners and finalists traversed the publishing landscape. They included publishing houses like Simon & Schuster, Penguin-Putnam, HarperCollins, Random House, and McGraw-Hill. Amongst the winners, T he Adoption Mystique: A Hard-hitting Exposé of the Powerful Negative Social Stigma that Permeates Child Adoption in the United States was a finalist in the social change category.
Adoption Book Review: The Adoption Mystique
From Carrie CraftYour Guide to Adoption / Foster Care .
Guide Rating
The Adoption Mystique , as the dust jacket states, is a "hard-hitting expose of the powerful negative social stigma that permeates child adoption in the United States." Author Joann Wolf Small, M.S.W. just doesn't break the adoption myth, she shatters it with her compilation of various research studies, essays, and personal knowledge on the subject of adoption. She is an adoptee. The Adoption Mystique is respectful and not at all anti-adoption, just pro-truth and openness. It simply offers a different viewpoint on the subject of adoption.
Reviewer's Thoughts
I feel that The Adoption Mystique gave me permission not to have to be a perfect parent, or strive to be just a "normal" family. I love the point made by Small when she stated that adoption happens to the entire family, not just the child. The child is not an adopted child, but part of an adoptive family. Another excellent point that stood out to me during my review of The Adoption Mystique is the fact that the child existed before adoption. There was a birth, a family history, birth parents, extended family, and a great loss for all members involved. The Adoption Mystique puts adoption and adoptive families into perspective.
The explaining of adoption to a child is also deeply explored. Tips like sending messages that adoption happens to the parent and the child by eliminating "you" messages and using the word "we" are valuable hints to adoptive parents.
The Adoption Mystique is a powerful book with a message for all members of the adoption triad, but not all members are ready for its message. With statements such as:
| "Only adopted persons are denied their genealogy by law. Likewise, only adoptees are issued a birth certificate that represents a legalized fraud." |
It's clear that this is not your typical handbook to adoption. Nevertheless, I think that it is important and necessary reading for those involved in adoption, especially those looking to make positive and healthy changes to adoption policy and practices. This in my mind includes improving the adoptive family unit as a whole.
About the Author
Joanne Wolf Small, M.S.W. is an adoptee who completed a search for her birth family. She co-organized Adoptees In Search, and obtained a Masters in clinical social work and is serving as the first and only adopted appointee on the Model Adoption Legislation Procedures and Advisory Panel. Her professional experience includes a post-adoption clinical practice, clinical supervision, in-service training, and seminars, lectures, publications, and interviews with over a thousand adoptive family members.
Recommendation & More Information
I highly recommend The Adoption Mystique , it gives us a deeper understanding of how the world seems to see adoption and how that view is less than flattering to those impacted by adoption.
—Carrie Craft, reviewer, 
A focused, politically-minded call for the civil rights of adoptees.
May 8, 2007
By Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA)
Written by Joanne Wolf Small, M.S.W. The Adoption Mystique is not a general book about adoption, but rather a focused, politically-minded call for the civil rights of adoptees, specifically the right to access their own birth records and learn about their birth family's genetic heritage. Many American states deny adoptees the right to learn about their ancestry; others allow it under abrogated circumstances, and many subject those adoptees who inquire to rigorous interviews or worse, treating them practically as potential criminals. The Adoption Mystique examines fundamental myths endemic to the closed-adoption practice, debunks the claim that open birth records will lead more potential mothers to choose abortion over adoption (it hasn't in the two U.S. states that have always had open birth record laws), and calls vociferously for the civil rights of adoptees. The Adoption Mystique is uncompromising in its view that adoption should be a process that considers the rights of the adoptee over the wishes of the birth parents or adoptive parents in instances where no compromise is possible, examines bias against adoptees in the media and society, and debunks the myth that an adopted person is sundered of ties to their heritage, or that they should just "get over" the need to search for their birth record information. Strongly written and highly recommended.
—Michael J. Carson, reviewer, Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA)
“I enjoyed reading it. I found the collection of essays about adoption an interesting and valuable account about the adoption experience.”
—Kenneth W. Watson, M.S.W, member, Editorial Board of Child Welfare; co-author with Miriam Reitz of Adoption and the Family System: Strategies for Treatment.
“Your essays are so thoughtful – and so rich in conveying the historical context for adoption in general and the policies and practices surrounding information sharing, in particular, and in conveying the critical psychosocial issues that lie at the heart of adoption. I am certain that your book will be viewed as a critical resource for policy makers and practitioners seeking to better understand adoption.”
—Madelyn Freundlich, Policy Director, Children's Rights, Inc., former Executive Director, Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute.
“Enjoying your writing and thinking thoroughly. Find something new turning each page. Fascinating sections on discrimination against adoptees. And biological mothers. The.... issue of guaranteeing all children their heritage…The chapter on The Media Bias….So good about denial of adulthood, the infantilization of the adoptee…Found myself totally convinced….there is no way….primal wound, family myth and history people know what they're talking about… Never doubted that …more adopted kids were in trouble… [yet] You dismiss….as prejudice—[since there is] no way anyone could have the data…! Enjoyed your perspective as an adoptive [person]…One I have way too often missed… I way too readily swallowed all the the stuff you questioned.”
—Professor Anne Kimble Loux, author, The Limits of Hope: An Adoptive Mother's Story.
“When your book came I checked out what would interest me. I checked its index and found me listed. I … hope that you will do well…Genuinely wishing you well.”
—H. David Kirk, Ph. D, sociologist, adoptive parent, author, Shared Fate: A Theory of Adoptive Family Relationships.
“ This fascinating book is a collection of Ms. Small's essays, written over a two year period. The essays look at adoption from a psychosocial or environmental perspective. They outline the history and background of American adoption culture and explore the hidden but powerful religious, social and economic factors that affect adoption's collective image. They are often critical of child welfare's adoption premises, policies, and practices.
The author believes that adoption is an industry that has largely gained power from the desperation, neediness and powerlessness of the birth parents, infertile couples, and adoptees that it serves. We see through these essays how society has invested the adoption industry with an image comparable to that of a sacred cow. Criticism has customarily been taboo. Recent reforms were forced upon the industry by societal shifts. Despite protestations to the contrary, the undercurrent of negative feelings and attitudes generally accorded the adoptive family as a variant, and adoptive status in particular, remain much the same.
You'll find an abundance of compelling arguments that support the theory that secrecy in adoption breeds shame. Any one of these interesting essays could serve as an excellent starting point for stimulating discussion among various adoption groups. They would be extremely valuable when talking with adoptive families, child welfare professionals, support groups, and the media, because these essays come from the most important person in the "adoption mystique," the adoptee herself.”
— Bastard Nation Book Review . Reviewer: Anita Walker Field
“ Great book! This little book of essays takes on big sacred cows both of the adoption industry and the adoption reform movement, and makes hamburger of them! Ms. Small, an adoptee, social worker, and long-time activist for adoptee rights, makes the case that the adoption system as it now exists, a culture of secrets and lies, is itself dysfunctional. She also questions the medical model of adoption (everyone is wounded and in need of therapy) and the pathologizing of adopted persons in such theories as "Adopted Child Syndrome" and the public fascination with adopted killers and other criminals. All of her essays are liberally footnoted, providing both documentation of her research and a whole world of adoption reading that readers may want to follow up on. This kind of careful scholarship is refreshing in a field full of unproven theories, unsupported claims and over-generalized statements.
Ms. Small was the only adoptee on the Model Adoption Legislation and Procedures Committee in 1978.Out of this committee came the Model State Adoption Act, which recommended open records for adopted adults. The National Council for Adoption was formed to combat this progressive act, and we have been battling them ever since. In her many years as an activist, Ms. Small has learned many lessons about politics and adoption reform which she shares in "The Adoption Mystique".
The most valuable and timely part of this book is the section on compromise and legislation, and what happened in Maryland in 1997 when a bill was introduced that featured contact vetoes and an elaborate and expensive mandatory intermediary system. Some adoption reformers supported this bill with the rationale that without compromise nothing could pass, most adoptees could have reunions, and that this was a "baby step" to full adoptee rights. Ms. Small neatly and logically demolishes this flawed argument in her essay.
She makes a clear distinction between unconditional adoptee rights legislation, and search and reunion legislation, and why the latter is always in danger of compromise. Her analysis of the Maryland legislation is clear and well-reasoned and can serve as a guideline for other state groups on what not to do legislatively, and why a real civil rights bill can not have restrictions, vetoes, or conditions to the exercise of those rights. I hope everyone working on legislation in their own state makes this book their bible on what kind of legislation to introduce, support, and hold out for.
This is a well-written, well thought-out book that should be in the library of every adoption activist. Some may not agree with all of the conclusions or ideas, but all certainly can learn and question and begin their own dialogue on legislative activism, and how the mystique of adoption has become so ingrained in popular culture that it is hard to break through with reality and truth. I highly recommend The Adoption Mystique.”
—Mary Anne Cohen, 2006 Congressional Angels in Adoption recipient, editor, Origins: The Original Origins New Jersey: A Birthmother's Group.
“Because I am an adoptee who searched and found my biological family, I read Joanne Small's book "The Adoption Mystique" with great interest. Ms. Small has done a masterful job of debunking the propaganda the adoption industry spews out. We do not need or want the "protection" forced upon us by industry. In a country like ours that places such a high value on personal freedom, it is a shame that there is a necessity for writing such a book as this! This is a "must read" book for adoptees, birth and adoptive parents alike.”
—Shirley B Kent
— New Hampshire State Representative Janet F. Allen
“I am honored that you asked me to read The Adoption Mystique and I wish you all the best with the book and with the meaningful work you've devoted yourself to. Thank you for making a genuine contribution to the wider understanding of adoption .”
—Jana Wolff, adoptive parent, author, Secret Thoughts of an Adoptive Mother
“In the words of Howard Cosell, Joanne Wolf Small “tells it like it is close and personal” in her must read book, The Adoption Mystique. In her well researched critique of adoption, Ms. Small destroys the myth that adoption is or ever was designed to be “in the best interest of the child” as touted by the Adoption Industry. In a series of cogent and insightful essays that are a culmination of both her experience as an adoptee and life's work as a clinical social worker, Ms. Small rips the veneer off the warm and fuzzies of institutional adoption to reveal the rot at its core that even denies adults who were adopted as children the right to obtain a copy of their original birth certificate. In writing The Adoption Mystique, Ms. Small follows in the footsteps of Friedrich Nietzsche who fearlessly exposed the rot of the institutional sacred cows of his day. I applaud her integrity and courage for telling the truth of how adoption affects adoptees, adoptive parents, and birth parents.”
— Msgr. John W. Sweeley, Th.D., adoptee, father of three adopted sons, author, The Historical Jesus: Man, Myth or God and Rights, Liberties, and Social Justice: Why the Radical Religious Right is Wrong