Book Review: Secret Thoughts of An Adopted Mother

by Pam Connell | More from this Blogger

10 Jun 2009 11:31 PM

"Dedicated with love to my son's mother and mine," writes Jana Wolff in her memoir Secret Thoughts of An Adoptive Mother. This sentence, as well as Wolff's chapter "Mother's Day or Mothers' Day?" reveal Wolff's understanding spirit, which shines through her memoir even as she discloses the conflicting thoughts and feelings that we all have.

In her introduction, Wolff says that while she was a parent-in-waiting beginning the (domestic newborn) adoption process, she found books and articles about how to adopt, but none which talked about feelings brought up by different stages of the adoptive process. This book is an attempt to fill that void, although Wolff makes no claim to understand anyone but herself-which is why I trust her all the more, knowing she is sharing her own experience with no need to prove that her interpretation of it is the right one.

Wolff has a sense of humor, evidenced by chapter titles and headings such as:

• "Expecting Without Pregnancy: Buy the Crib, but Hang on to the Receipt"

• "What if we get a dud?"

• "Meeting Your Child's Mother: How to Look Without Staring"

• "Of all the babies born tonight, how did you get us? How did we get you?"

• "If This is the Happiest Day of my Life, Why am I so Sad?"

• "A Family of Strangers: Related but not Relatives"

• "Spit-up is Spit-up: Adopted Poop Doesn't Smell Any Different".

Wolff's short chapters (seldom more than six pages each, making this a book new parents could actually read) deal with her feelings about infertility, assembling paperwork, the homestudy, meeting the birthmother (who invited Wolff and her husband to be present at the birth, also detailed here), bringing her son home, comments from others, and a reunion with the birthmother when her son was three.

Wolff does not gloss over differences with the birth parents. She admits to having felt resentment at having to wait for a younger woman to decide they could parent her baby. She allows that, having wanted a child so desperately, it's hard for her to understand a birthmother's decision to place her child in an adoptive home. Yet she also says, "To me, M [her son's birthmother] was the real hero."

Wolff wrote in 1997, when her adopted son was five. She periodically writes essays and reviews in Adoptive Families magazine. Ari is now a teenager and doing quite well. Overall, Wolff believes that racial issues have trumped adoption issues in their import to her family (her son is multiracial). For a companion look at the inner thoughts of Korean birthmothers who have chosen for their babies to be adopted, see I Wish for You a Beautiful Life: Stories from the Korean Birthmothers of Ae Ran Won.

Please also see these related blogs:

Semi-Open and Open Adoption in Domestic Adoption

Inside Transracial 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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gina00 (680) 12 Jun 2009 09:55 AM

Sounds like an interesting book :)