This book is called For the Love of a Child: The Journey of Adoption (not to be confused with another book called For Love of a Child: Stories of Adoption).
This book is published by Deseret Press especially for Latter-Day Saints, but it is very useful for all expectant parents considering placing a child for adoption and their families, as well as informative for relatives, school personnel, counselors and church leaders. The book is unique in its exploration of the spiritual journey many people go through in dealing with an unplanned pregnancy, infertility, and/or adoption.
The first part of the book is written primarily by Monica Blume, a social worker with LDS Family Services who has worked in the adoption field–primarily with birth parents and their families–for over a decade. She shares vignettes of the people she has worked with and uses them to shed light on several issues that pertain to making a choice for adoption, marriage or single parenting.
The birth parents in these stories are all in their teens and twenties and unmarried. However, contrary to popular belief, there are a substantial minority of birthmothers placing children for adoption in the U.S. who are older, married, or both.
Blume’s book will be helpful to parents whose daughter and/or son faces an unplanned pregnancy. Although unabashedly pro-adoption, Blume warns that if the birthmother is pressured, more problems can ensue—sometimes distance from her family, sometimes another unplanned pregnancy.
This book also uniquely considers the impact on younger siblings, grandparents, and friends when a birthmother places a child for adoption.
Blume cites teachings from church elders and LDS scriptures that relate to unplanned pregnancy, marriage and adoption, and that talk about having a family eligible to be sealed in the covenant. This will be useful for LDS members, and the rest of the book will be useful for anyone. There are examples of how church leaders meet with families dealing with these issues which will be useful to religious leaders of all kinds, as are the examples of how religious leaders, professional counselors and adoption social workers can work together to assist families.
The second part of the book, edited by Gideon Burton, professor of English at Brigham Young University, contains stories written by a very diverse array of people concerned with adoption: birthparents, adoptive parents, and adoptees; a birth grandmother, an adoptive sister, a young mother who chose single parenting, a high school principal, and a bishop.
This part also includes excerpts from the diary of a pregnant teen, letters between birth and adoptive parents, a story of the same adoption told from the birth mother’s and adoptive mother’s viewpoints, and letters one birth family sent with the child placed for adoption. These powerful letters were written by both birthparents and also by young aunts and uncles (the youngest writer is 11) and by grandparents as they spent time with the baby in the birthmother’s hospital room the night before the baby went home with the adoptive parents.
For a book of letters written by Korean birthmothers shortly after placing their babies, see my book review: I Wish for You a Beautiful Life.
Please also see these related blogs:
Stages of Birthparents’ Thinking About Adoption