The Adoption Mystique: A Hard-Hitting Exposé of the Powerful Negative Social Stigma That Permeates Child Adoption in the United States

I bought Ms. Small’s book because I was interested in the causes for the social disapproval and stigma which we adoptees live with. Unfortunately, I based my purchase upon reviews and jacket blurbs.

While the book does cover some of the same ground as many other better written and edited books and does introduce some good material, it is only the last few chapters. The first 120 pages or so are a jumbled potpourri of citations from dozens of other authors, strung together like note cards for a research paper which was never pulled together into a coherent narrative. I almost quit reading it a number of times, but kept at it thinking there must be some reason for its publication.

The final chapters on the progress of legislative remedies bears reading, and Small does a decent job of explaining the source of much of society’s ignorance and disapproval of birth mothers, adoptive parents and adoptees. Perhaps Ms. Small is a great therapist or riveting speaker, but her prose resembles my income tax recordkeeping – a basket full of fragments. I am familiar with many of the works she cites, and she takes quotes out of context and writes with the tentative passive tense typical of a sophomore.

Read this book AFTER you have read Nancy Verrier and Betty Jean Lifton’s works as well as Brodzinsky’s – they are far more important to adoptees seeking to understand how it has affected our lives. I wish I had had my library order it rather than buying it.
Rating: 2 / 5

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
Rating: 5 / 5

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
Rating: 5 / 5