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hedgefundhogmanager's review
3.0
A good, balanced look from an experienced adoption professional, considering perspectives from both birth mothers and adoptive parents. It is sometimes moralizing, as the author sees the adoptive parents' perspective clearer (what is worse, spending 60k on abortion or having to be continually pregnant for survival? the author implies the first).
To be fair, the author blames the system, not individuals. However, the system itself is not just the adoption industry, but the radical rearrangement within the system of social reproduction, the root which the author misses, or perhaps it is outside the scope of this book. Adoption and similar industries/policies regarding reproduction (marriage agencies, childcare, fertility treatments, IVF, surrogacy, birth control, abortion, elder care) are merely reflections of this radical rearrangement, whereby reproduction is facing a new crisis due to the liberation of *some* women, but not others. Globalisation then allows newly empowered women to exploit other, poorer women. It is not an accident that many adopted babies are from Russia, or the East. Similarly, it is not an accident that "mail-order brides" to the West are from Russia, or the East. It is not an accident that live-in housekeepers and nannies are poorer women who have had to abandon their own families on a different continent to take care of Western children, whose mothers work. It is not an accident that there is no fertility industry in e.g. Eastern Asia, because women are still obliged to get pregnant and start a family.
To be fair, the author blames the system, not individuals. However, the system itself is not just the adoption industry, but the radical rearrangement within the system of social reproduction, the root which the author misses, or perhaps it is outside the scope of this book. Adoption and similar industries/policies regarding reproduction (marriage agencies, childcare, fertility treatments, IVF, surrogacy, birth control, abortion, elder care) are merely reflections of this radical rearrangement, whereby reproduction is facing a new crisis due to the liberation of *some* women, but not others. Globalisation then allows newly empowered women to exploit other, poorer women. It is not an accident that many adopted babies are from Russia, or the East. Similarly, it is not an accident that "mail-order brides" to the West are from Russia, or the East. It is not an accident that live-in housekeepers and nannies are poorer women who have had to abandon their own families on a different continent to take care of Western children, whose mothers work. It is not an accident that there is no fertility industry in e.g. Eastern Asia, because women are still obliged to get pregnant and start a family.
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