Overview

This exploration of the experiences of adopting parents and children offers unusual insight into adoption's complexity and its profound impact on family life. Based on the author's research in Germany, where she lived and taught, The Adopted Child has a great deal to say about child rearing and identity, as well as offering insights into similarities and differences in family life and adoption in Germany and the United States. Hoffmann-Reim takes the reader through the decision to adopt, the adoption placement procedure, and the transition from ""applicant"" to ""mother and father."" She explores differences between emotions experienced in adopting a baby, a toddler, and an older child, and how these emotions can affect relations with the world outside the nuclear family. A central concern is secrecy and disclosure with regard to the adopted child's origins. Based on case studies and extensive interviews, The Adopted Child has fascinated American readers as it did those in Germany. Professionals as well as those interested in adoption and family life in general will find it significant. Sociologists will find it solidly grounded in concepts and traditions from a diversity of related disciplines. And anyone interested in Germans and German society will find the materials revealing, and the author's interpretation insightful and wise.

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9781412862967

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Reviews

Based on a qualitative study of 30 adoptive families in West Germany, the book is organized sequentially from the decision to adopt and work with the placing agency through the lifelong processes of becoming a family... Hoffman-Riem's study has relevance for students, scholars, policymakers, and practitioners in all countries where the ratio of childless couples to available, healthy, white infants is high, and where adoption agencies are the legal intermediaries between supply and demand. -B. A. Pine, Choice This insightful book will be of interest to those who work in the area of adoption... An important work (as Hoffman-Riem argues it should be) for sociologists who are interested in understanding families. As she convincingly argues, an examination of adoptive parenthood allows the researcher to break through the 'taken for granted' barrier of 'normal' parenthood, in order to gain insight into the meaning of parenthood through the 'deviant' case. -Kerry Daly, Contemporary Sociology

Based on a qualitative study of 30 adoptive families in West Germany, the book is organized sequentially from the decision to adopt and work with the placing agency through the lifelong processes of becoming a family... Hoffman-Riem's study has relevance for students, scholars, policymakers, and practitioners in all countries where the ratio of childless couples to available, healthy, white infants is high, and where adoption agencies are the legal intermediaries between supply and demand. --B. A. Pine, Choice

""Based on a qualitative study of 30 adoptive families in West Germany, the book is organized sequentially from the decision to adopt and work with the placing agency through the lifelong processes of becoming a family... Hoffman-Riem's study has relevance for students, scholars, policymakers, and practitioners in all countries where the ratio of childless couples to available, healthy, white infants is high, and where adoption agencies are the legal intermediaries between supply and demand.""-B. A. Pine, Choice ""This insightful book will be of interest to those who work in the area of adoption... An important work (as Hoffman-Riem argues it should be) for sociologists who are interested in understanding families. As she convincingly argues, an examination of adoptive parenthood allows the researcher to break through the 'taken for granted' barrier of 'normal' parenthood, in order to gain insight into the meaning of parenthood through the 'deviant' case."" -Kerry Daly, Contemporary Sociology

Author Information

Christa Hoffmann-Riem (1937-1990) was professor of sociology at the University of Hamburg in Germany. Anselm Strauss (1916-1996) was an American medical sociologist and professor at the University of Chicago, USA. He was elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1980.

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