The Open Adoption Book: A Guide to Making Adoption Work for You - Softcover

Rappaport, Bruce M.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0028621700 ISBN 13: 9780028621708

Publisher: Macmillan, 1998

Synopsis

Updated for a New Paperback Edition, the Definitive Guide to Open Adoption, by the founder of the Open Adoption Movement The exploding popularity of open adoption today underscores what adopting parents, birthparents, and many adoption experts now maintain: Open adoption is the healthiest, most humane, and fastest method available. It's better for the birthmother, because she (not lawyers or social workers) decides the future of her child. It's better for children, because they're raised without the shroud of secrecy and stigma that accompanies most closed adoptions. And it's better for adopting parents, because it dramatically shortens the time it takes to obtain a baby, from an average of seven years to under one year. As director of one of the country's leading open adoption agencies and founder of the first nationwide network of open adoption organizations, Bruce Rappaport has facilitated thousands of successful open adoptions and acquired an intimate understanding of the most common and heartfelt concerns of parents seeking to adopt a baby. Interweaving personal stories and real-life experiences of adopting parents, birthparents, and adopted children, he answers the questions clients most frequently ask:
* What is an open adoption? How does it differ from traditional adoption?
* Will I ever feel like a real parent if my child's biological mother knows I'm raising her child? Will she interfere?
* What if the birthmother changes her mind after the adoption?
* How long will it take to get a child?
Documenting answers with extensive personal experience and research, Dr. Rappaport paints a reassuring yet realistic picture of the open adoption process. The result is a highly informative, deeply moving book that will help many people realize the greatest joy life can offer.

About this title

About the Author

Bruce M. Rappaport, Ph.D., is founder and Executive Director of the Independent Adoption Center in Pleasant Hill, California, and founder of the National Federation for Open Adoption Education. A nationally known expert on open adoption, he has worked in education, counseling, infertility, and adoption for more than twenty years and has been interviewed on these subjects by "Nightline," CNN, "The Today Show," The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and elsewhere. Dr. Rappaport lives in Oakland, California, with his daughter.

From Library Journal

In his detailed, step-by-step guide to open adoption, the founder of the Independent Adoption Center in California declares that one in five people of childbearing age face infertility problems and have little hope of adopting a healthy child within the confines of traditional procedures. In open adoption, the natural parents are actively involved in all phases of the process, and children are informed of their origins. Rappaport fully addresses the many questions and concerns raised by open adoption, telling the reader what is in store for the adoptive parents. An appendix of adoption organizations is included. This should be a first choice for anyone considering open adoption.
- Jan Wiedemann, Vernon, Tex.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Macmillan
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0028621700
• ISBN 13: 9780028621708
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 195