Book Review: Making Sense of Adoption by Lois Ruskai Melina

by Pam Connell | More from this Blogger

13 Aug 2007 04:19 PM

Lois Melina's Making Sense of Adoption is unique in that it deals with questions asked not only by adoptees from traditional adoptions, but by children and young people conceived using assisted reproduction techniques such as egg or sperm donation or surrogacy. These persons also, whether a legal adoption proceeding took place or not, must deal with knowing that they either have genetic parents who are not the parents raising them, or that they were born to someone other than their birthmothers.

Melina, an adoptive parent of two, is the author of Raising Adopted Children and has been a frequent writer for adoption magazines and speaker on adoption issues for many years.

The strength of this book, relatively compact given its subject matter, is its sample questions, responses and dialogues. These help parents begin thinking about how they will address these issues with their children. Melina helps parents consider their own feelings about difficult issues, such as infertility and needing help to have children. She also considers adoptive parents' and adoptees' feelings about birthparent issues such as prostitution, abuse, and abandonment. Adoptive parents must come to grips with their own feelings about these issues in order to present them to their children in a way that is compassionate and free of shame.

One dialogue in the book is from a father whose daughter was conceived by donor insemination and says in essence, "We were sad that Daddy's body wasn't working right to make a baby, but glad that you could still come from Mommy and that I get to be your Dad."

The book has plenty of material for adoptive parents in traditional adoptions, whether domestic, international, or through the foster care system. Examples of questions, responses and conversations are included for all of these types of adoption.

One dialogue has a parent using her experience of miscarriages to relate to her child's contradictory feelings of wishing he hadn't been separated from his birthparents, but knowing that would mean he wouldn't have his beloved adoptive parents.

Another unique aspect of Melina's book is that, although she strongly believes the current wisdom that children should be told from a very young age that they were adopted, she nevertheless includes a chapter on "How to Tell Now if You Haven't Before".

In my experience, reading how other families have talked about these issues, whether I agree with their responses or not, helps me to prepare for issues that come up in my own family. I appreciated the concrete suggestions in this book, as well as the window into experiences that are different from my own.

Please see these related blogs:

What is Artificial Insemination?

What To Expect: Artificial Insemination

Embryo Adoption

Learn more about Pam Connell

Pam Connell is a mother of three by both birth and adoption. She has worked in education, child care, social services, ministry and journalism.

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centraloregonmom (295) 15 Aug 2007 01:07 PM

Coincidentally, I also just finished reading this wonderful book. I wish I'd read it about a year ago before my daughter started asking questions I wasn't sure how to answer. A couple other parts of the book I found incredibly insightful: Examples of age appropriate responses to questions (something I've struggled with) - at seven years old my daughter is not ready to hear every detail (some painful) of her birth, but the author focuses on making sure that what we do choose to tell our kids when they are young should NEVER contradict the truth they will hear when they are old enough to understand. Also, she has a section (small, but there nonetheless) for those of us who also have birth children at home... to make sure that in our quest to share our adopted kids' birth/adoption stories, we don't neglect sharing how much we love and cherish what we have with our birth children. Sometimes I think it's easy to just assume they know they are loved just as much as our "chosen children" (a term the author is quick to point out is not as great as we'd like to think).

Pam Connell (2658) 15 Aug 2007 01:13 PM

I've also struggled with not wanting to overemphasize talking about my son's birth, baby pics, etc. In another book I read one mother said her adopted kids were fascinated by her son's birth story--it was their only personal connection to a birth story and didn't seem to upset them at all. Yesterday we watched a short video of each of our girls in korea, sent by the adoption agency before their arrival. So then I put on my son's ultrasound video as well. They seemed interested, didn't seem to have issues with it.