Oh wow this book was super eye opening. The world of adoptions, the reproduction justice. The fact single parents have to go through so much. I always here adoption can be tricky and expensive but holy cow. This is such a deep dive. This book is truly showing that adoption might not always be the answer. The dark sides make you think, and it could be a great companion to conversations you will be having.

This is a deep dive into the emotional and political complexities of adoption in the United States. Sisson compounds a decade of research and interviews to bring the often-unheard stories of birth mothers who relinquished their children for adoption. While adoption is often depicted as a positive, selfless option, the birth mothers in this book tell their personal stories of grief, regret, manipulation, and anguish. This book exists at the intersection of reproductive rights and economic inequality.

Sincere thanks to NetGalley and St Martins Press for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

My number one issue with this book is the title. I loved this book, and I learned so much, but the title “relinquished” indicates to me that the book would talk more about the children who are themselves relinquished. Regardless, this book is great.

I was reading this book at the time that the Alabama Supreme Court determined that embryos are children, even when outside the womb. And oh boy did that make this book even more pertinent. This book is essentially about how 99% of birth mothers (see author’s note on adoption related language) do not give their children up for adoption because of any “choice” but because of a lack of choice. This is a conversation that should be significantly more widespread, because the political right would *love* for more and more people to be forced into giving their children up to private adoption agencies and adopted (for loads of money) by christian families.

This book is not a light read for those who experience empathy. It really sat with me.

A much-needed view of the harm the adoption industry causes to families. I appreciated the author's commitment to a decades-long ethnographic look at the aftermath of adoption, not just during pregnancy and birth.

This is a thoughtful and timely examination of the experiences of the parents who give up children for adoption, and a necessary interrogation of the mainstream narrative surrounding the experience. Obvious spoiler- it's not what we've been told. And in this post-Roe landscape, we will need to have a reckoning with the trauma and exploitation rampant in the current American private adoption sphere.

I love how the author centers the personal stories of the birth parents she interviewed over many years, as it is the necessary first step to rectify how their perspectives have often been diminished, warped, or wholly overlooked.

And while this book ends up being mostly critical of this adoption system, I do think there is a good balance of stories of harm, and stories that demonstrate what it looks like when the arrangement works well. There is great possibility for this family option to be a true middle ground between Pro-Choice and Pro-Life perspectives, but both sides have a lot of lies to unlearn, and a lot of work to do to actually have their actions support their rhetoric.

My only glaring critique is that this book claims to be "comprehensive ", but does not at all address a Disability perspective- either in exploring how Disability shapes a pregnant person's options, or how a person's options and opinions may change upon learning their baby will be born with a disability. I would have been satisfied if the author had included this conversation in the list of parameters of related topics she would Not explore, as that would at least acknowledge that Disability was its own complex and important issue.

Overall, I highly recommend this book. The audiobook narration is well done. And I think the content adds great value to the ongoing conversation of reproductive rights in the U.S.

This was an amazing book that everyone should read! The deep dive into the privilege of who deserves to be a mother and who doesn’t is such an important conversation.

This book is really well-written and accessible, a deeper look at adoption than I've seen anywhere else, and reading it was super educational for me. I'm not a person who has spent much time thinking about adoption, personally - I do not have anyone in my immediate family who is adopted or who has adopted, and I have never considered adoption for my own family, either - but this book still had a ton to offer me. And it opened my eyes to a lot about adoption that I hadn't ever considered before. If you are looking for a deeper understanding of the complexities of adoption, this is a great pick, although it's from the perspective of those who have relinquished their biological children to adoption, not from the adoptees themselves.

Wow - an extremely well researched book on adoption. Something that everyone should read as this is a current reality in our country. Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read.

It's sometimes difficult for me to review non-fiction books, memoirs, and autobiographies. They are different and harder at times to have an opinion on versus fiction where it seems as though everyone has an opinion, thought, or belief.

As someone who was adopted within the United States, this was an interesting view. A part of me wanted to have an better understanding on the process because my personal journey has been I was born, and then the parents who adopted me were my parents. That's it. Nothing more. People still ask me as an adult if I have a want to know my biological parents. Never really been a serious thought or a goal for me, just wanted to know my medical history so I might have an increased understanding of my future.

Relinquished focuses on the adoption process in just the US. It includes stories from multiple people who had decided to place their offspring into the adoption process. The book itself speaks upon the laws, politics, and large religious influences that play into adoption. And yes, this naïve reader and human was oblivious to the influence of religion can play. It does touch upon how decisions are made based on socioeconomic factors, family and partner influence, and even the changing law in regards to abortion. Relinquished shows the good, the bad, and the in between. I'm thankful and grateful for my own personal experience and the life that I have today. Thankful for my biological mother that had made the decision she did. This book allowed me to be empathetic to what she may have experienced through the process.

Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for the advanced read of this book. Thank you Gretchen Sisson for speaking about adoption. I recommend this book to those who do not have a good understanding or would like to know more about adoption in the US. 4 out of 5.

Before picking up Relinquished by Gretchen Sisson I hadn't given much thought to the concept of adoption. I am pro-choice; which means I want women to decide for themselves what happens with their bodies. My aunt and uncle adopted after years of infertility in the early 90s and it was a closed adoption, and not really something talked about though my cousin was told when she was older that she was adopted. That pretty much sums up my experience with the concept of adoption.

Gretchen Sisson had the difficult task of taking twenty years of research, turning it into a book form, while still retaining the importance of her scientific work. What she's published is a masterpiece that balances the human story without drowning the reader in the academics; but with enough academics to give the information teeth.

The stories shared throughout the book are gut wrenching. The grief birth mothers experience; even when they're not forced to chose adoption, was difficult to read. There were quite a few times where I needed to take a moment to stop reading and come back after my nerves calmed. The visceral response from my body almost felt like a fight or flight moment. I am a mother and my husband and I had our children within the social norms of marriage so at no time was abortion or adoption a consideration.

I appreciated the way Gretchen segmented the book into six sections that all covered different topics surrounding adoptions. I especially liked the section about pop culture and it's influence on how we see adoption and the villainization of birth moms. As someone who never dug into this topic, I definitely accept that I had my own preconceived notions before reading Relinquished.

There was a powerful quote towards the end of the book, "Ultimately, adoption is an inherently conservative institution, one that represents a refusal to both support and care for America families at the most basic level, and one that precludes the conditions that make reproductive freedom possible." Politics and Evangelism play massive roles in the baby trade and Relinquished sets up a compelling case that our current model for private adoptions in the United States needs to be abolished.

There is so much more I could say, but I'll close with this, read this book. It is heartbreaking, it is relevant, and the information and stories needs to be heard.

Thank you St. Martin's Press for the gifted ARC.

This book gave me a new perspective and a lot to think on.

I work in child welfare (primarily foster care) and initially only worked with foster parents and focused on their perspective, then as I began to work with youth in care I learned a new perspective and this has added to my understanding.

There is so much more we can do as a society/country to support families. Such small amounts (one mom indicated $1,000) would have been enough to allow them to parent instead of choosing adoption. The overarching themes of shame for having mental health struggles, being unmarried, or not having financial stability seemed to nearly always play into the decision to relinquish.

It was fascinating to see how the mom’s perspectives changed from their initial decision and that first year after to several years later.

A shift from thinking a child only has so much room in their heart for family to include extensive family units may have changed how the adoptive parents interacted and often excluded the birth parent. While not explored deeply, I wonder about their decision making and if it was out of preservation of what they saw as their family, fear, or control.

I had my first baby at 18 in 2003. I was pursued relentlessly by adoption agencies, prospective parents, and even LDS elders. I spent the next few years afraid someone was going to take her away from me, which led to some other bad decisions (marriage).
When I was pregnant way back then we still had Roe V Wade. We now live in a post Roe world and I can only imagine it was intended to boost adoptions. The adoption industry is worth billions, and with only 1% of babies being relinquished they have to do something. We don't send girls way anymore. We do however still traumatize pregnant women.
I love the history in this book. We should never forget how enslaved mothers were brutally separated from their babies.
Anyway, I was crying throughout the book. I could have been one of these mothers if I wasn't such a menace and anti people pleaser. I think alot about the people who wanted to adopt my baby. I ended up with a master's degree, a house in a good neighborhood, published books, and some degree of prestige. I was so poor when I had her but we got through it and ended up doing better than a lot of the families that were trying to adopt. They were very surface level successful but weren't all that wonderful in the end.
I have already recommended this book to all my friends.

A must-read for those who want to seriously interrogate our current adoption systems and the ways that America makes motherhood and parenting increasingly untenable.

Sisson is very clear in highlighting what this book is about--her focus is on the experience of birth mothers (I'm using her most commonly used term in this review)--even though there are plenty of important voices to listen to when interrogating our systems. As Sisson highlights, this group is neglected in both support/policy networks on adoption, as well as popular narratives around adoption (where they are often portrayed negatively if at all). Sisson gives this group room to speak, the book contains many long quotes from her interviews, and between chapters, there are uninterrupted retellings of some birthmother's stories (often at multiple points in time).

Recent changes in abortion policy have elevated adoption as an alternative to abortion, but Sisson also counteracts this argument to show that, for many of the birth mothers that she spoke with, the choice wasn't between abortion and adoption, it was between adoption and parenting. With somewhat small amounts of money and additional resources (as little as $500-$2500), these women would not have relinquished their children.

A fraction of this combined public and private outpouring of money could render much of the adoption system moot.


To really improve the system, we need to have adoption organizations that are willing to put themselves out of business by creating robust support networks for women who are considering adoption, highlighting the many choices that they have around pregnancy, and helping them to plan to parent alongside the potential to relinquish. Unfortunately, the current adoption system is driven primarily by private agencies who have no interest in anything but removing children from their birth families.

I've seen many pro-adoption activists highlight how adoption still requires a birthmother to carry a child to term, which is not easy physically or mentally. However, this book highlights an important argument that isn't as common--relinquishment is also not easy physically or mentally. The birth mothers profiled dealt with grief, depression, anxiety, regret, and intense sadness over the ways that their adoption was handled both before and after birth.

I read Roxanna Asgarian's We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America last year and this book served as an excellent companion. While that book looked at the child removal and foster system, both tell the story of how a functioning social safety net could improve parenting, not only for those who are struggling but for all families.

* Thank you to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for access to an eARC in exchange for my honest review. *

I don’t typically read non-fiction but the topic fascinated me so I picked it up. I’m glad I did, but it took me a long time to get through. Information rich and not always “to the point”, I did learn a lot about topics that interest me politically: reproductive health, abortion, adoption, women’s rights, access to resources and commonly accepted “family structures”.. The author makes her well constructed case that adoption is no solution for Americans’ reduced access to abortion. A fascinating well researched and constructed read!

This book was extremely well researched and well written. However, it hit a little too close to home for me, and I would prefer not to write a public review.

Absolutely breathtaking. A must-read for anyone interested in bodily autonomy and reproductive justice. This is a deeply researched book about mothers who have relinquished infants for adoption, uplifting voices that have been erased from the discourse around adoption and abortion for far too long. As Dr. Sisson explains through these women's stories, people of all political leanings have uncritically embraced adoption as this perfect solution for many social issues surrounding parenting - but that's not the reality for so many birth/first parents. Many have been coerced by private adoption agencies or felt they were left with no other choice but to relinquish when they preferred parenting or abortion but didn't have access to the resources they needed. And that says nothing of the larger structural issues of the adoption industrial complex and what makes a "good" family, another topic that Sisson covers in-depth. This book is heartbreaking in so many ways, but SO needed. It helps fill an enormous gap in social sciences research on reproductive autonomy. Will definitely be a common citation in my own work!

Thank you to St. Martin's Press for the ARC.

Who needs access to abortion if adoption exists?

Relinquished
The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood
by Gretchen Sisson


QUICK SUMMARY
Relinquished reveals adoption to be more of a path forced tot take when abortion is inaccessible or for whom parenthood is untenable. You'll read stories from relinquishing mothers about the Americans (not so) shocking refusal to care for families at the most basic level. The stories really give an insight on the impact adoption has on everyone involved.

FINAL THOUGHTS
When you think about adoption, what's the first thing that comes to mind.?

This book was shocking and heart breaking, I could only handle so much at a time because there is a lot of information to take in and at the end of each chapter you hear stories from mothers and sometimes you can't help but sit there with your thoughts. This book just shows how much of a way America has to go to provide the basic care to families, and how their hands are forced when it comes to adoption in quite a few cases. Highly recommend this book.

Adoption isn’t a subject I ever gave much thought to, but overall, I saw it in a relatively positive light. Relinquished taught me so much and completely made me rethink the way I feel on the subject. While incredibly well-researched, the writing never feels too academic or inaccessible, and the way birth mothers’ stories are interwoven throughout gives the book a really nice flow. Reading about the trauma experienced by mothers who have relinquished devastated me, particularly when many years had gone by with little to no progress on healing. The chapter I found most intriguing discussed how adoption is shown in pop culture, and how much it shapes the opinions of viewers. I can certainly admit to never giving birth mothers much thought in the past, but seeing the way they are presented with this new lens truly appalled me. I found it so interesting to see how the birth mothers interviewed came from vastly different backgrounds and situations, but all came to the same basic conclusion when reflecting on their adoptions: Abortion access is essential, and adoption is not a solution to unplanned pregnancy.

Through countless interviews with sociologists, adoptees, birth mothers, and other experts, Dr. Sisson has written a thoroughly compelling book that will make you rethink what you’ve been conditioned to believe and demand we work to change it.

A massive thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an e-ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review!! I really enjoyed this book; definitely something I will tell my friends about!

I have very conflicting thoughts about adoption, and this book gives a lot of insight into that process.