Be My Baby: Parents and Children Talk about Adoption

Through individual stories, Gail Kinn presents an accurate and inspiring look at the profound impact of adoption on families, birth parents and adopted children and adults. Several of the families who are profiled adopted internationally but the groundbreading content in this book is in the honest exploration of relationships in domestic adoptions, and the family dynamics of open adoptions. Young and adult adoptees tell their own stories and birth parents representing several generations are included. The superb photographs by Ken Shung make for the first coffee-table quality book about adoption that I've seen but the stories are too compelling to put down.

I must start with a disclaimer, since I am in this book as a birthmother, and every page is charged for me. I feel Gail's warmth and intense concern for all aspects of adoption have elicited a high degree of openness from her participants. Her vision is realistic and loving. Ken's photos are often incredible, beginning with the baby on the cover who looks at us like a fully formed little being.It is the children's stories I like the best. Their words are fresh and unexpected, and bring us into their experience wonderfully. I am grateful that birthmothers have their rightful place in this book.

Okay, I give up. I am the author of this book! But how often does an author get a chance to tell you what their hopes are for their book (in addition to selling a few copies), and what their book truly offesr? When my niece was adopted, the only fear I didn't have was that I would love her, totally. And I do. But raising a family, any family, demands what's best in us and often brings out what is worst. It requires us to understand what we sometimes don't, tries our patience, and rewards us with an unparalleled kind of love. I wondered, like many people in the throws of the decision to adopt, "Would an adoptive family be even more demanding? How difficult will it to be to answer my child's questions about being adopted? Would even the smallest problems be seen as 'adoption problems?' Would my child feel a sense of loss? And would she know deep in her heart that we are her family? How different is it being an adoptive family? How much or how little attention to you have to pay to that fact of your's and your child's life? I know I share these questions with many of you out there. I read all the profession literature and when I found that that didn't quite answer my questions i decided instead to talk to the people who lived as adoptive families. What they told me changed my thoughts and feelings in an essential way. Adoption is much more matter of fact if you don't let feelings get ahead of you. As someone said, "the problem is not in your heart, it's in your head." Adoption is a part, but not the whole of the recipe of who you are. I hope these extremely honest and resonant (and funny) first-person heartfelt observations: which are in the words of parents, young children, grown adoptees, and brith mothers--tell you what you need--and long--to know. They did that for me. I want this book to show you how and why adoption works. And if you are already an adoptive family, it's wonderful to read about what grown adoptees say. I should take out a billboard and announce, your teenager will say, and get ready for it: "You're not my real mother." But they will never mean it. They just know it will push the right buttons. It's good for all of us to know this, so we don't get thrown when it happens. There's a lot more. Ken Shung's photography is masterful. I'd love to hear from you too!

Be My Baby is a beautiful, approachable book in every way. Together, text and photograph tell the story of adoption with great eloquence -- with enormous respect, affection, and gratitude for the process. Children's voices are so poignant here as they speak about coming to their parents and about how they think of their birthparents. In fact there are inspiring moments of honesty about some of the complexities of adoption from both parents and children. However, thankfully, this book rejects completely the negative tone adoption articles take (that results when writers emphasize dramatic, newsworthy cases). Instead, Ms. Kinn creates a sense of the particular miracle that adoption is. This book, which is gorgeous, would be an amazing gift for any family with adopted children or any couple contemplating adoption -- it makes you want to adopt. This is my first on-line review...I felt I must write...it is that important a book.

BE MY BABY: PARENTS AND CHILDREN TALK ABOUT ADOPTION is a book which has been artfully derived from interviews with adoptees and their families. It's author, Gail Kinn, is the midwife of these candid and insightful conversations. From the parents we hear about the experience of taking the gift and responsibility of someone elses baby. From the children come touching and varied stories about what being adopted has meant to their lives. The adults we meet in this book sound uniformly grateful for the opportunity to raise their adoptive children and they, like birthparents, share unique tales of the origins of these relationships. An additional and heartfelt viewpoint is gained when we are introduced to birthparents of some of the children as they speak about the love and concern they felt for the babies they gave up. Ken Shung's intimately conceived and finely crafted photographs of these families enhance the text and give the experience of the book a filmic quality. Reading BE MY BABY.....is a vote for familial love. You might need a tissue.