I’ve taken a look, and while there is much to praise, there are also a few obvious gaps, particularly around gender identity and transgender issues. 

The section on gay and lesbian parents is short—just over three pages—but reassuring and positive. It is about half aimed at lesbian and gay parents, and about half aimed at straight ones. For gay and lesbian parents, it offers basic advice like needing to consult with a lawyer, but mostly refers people to further resources in the Guide at the end of the book. For straight parents, it addresses the fear that it will be “confusing” to their children to learn about same-sex parents. “I think the answer is simply no,” the book (now revised by Dr. Robert Needlman) tells us. “Children are remarkably able to accept plain facts when they are presented plainly.”

Bravo—and even more so for the following paragraph, which explains that children may be confused if they are taught homosexuality is wrong, but then meet parents who are nice and have great kids—and are gay or lesbian. It also notes that the existence of gay and lesbian families gives parents the opportunity to teach about different types of families, tolerance, and acceptance. The book also offers a short section to help parents support their teen if they suspect the teen might be gay or lesbian.

Where it fails, however, is in discussing gender identity, and not only because there is no mention of transgender parents or how parents might approach that topic with children. It dances around the issue of children who may be transgender.

It rightly says children should be allowed to play with toys aimed at any gender, and notes that does not determine gender identity. It also notes that some children may consistently express that they want to be the other gender, and that a psychiatrist or psychologist might diagnose “gender identity disorder (GID).” But it then simply notes that “Many children with GID do grow up to be homosexual; many do not.” True; but some people who have been diagnosed with GID also grow up to be transgender, and the book makes no note of that. (And the fact is, GID is itself a problematic term. The American Psychiatric Association may soon replace it with “Gender Dysphoria.”)

With organizations such as Gender Spectrum offering numerous resources for parents with gender variant and transgender children, there’s no excuse not to include at least a reference to them. It’s great to see the book explicitly include gay and lesbian parents, but let’s hope the 10th edition is even more inclusive.

I am a member of the Amazon Associates program, and get a small referral fee from all purchases made at Amazon.com via links on this site. You are under no obligation to purchase through them.

Children’s Books

Donovan’s Big Day, by Lesléa Newman, is a delightful story about a boy preparing for the wedding of his two moms. Newman wrote Heather Has Two Mommies, the first picture book for and about children with lesbian parents, over 20 years ago. Unlike in Heather, however, which shows the girl grappling to understand why her family is “different,” Newman left “issues” out of Donovan entirely. The young boy has only the problems any child might face while attending a wedding of any sort. He has to dress up, keep clean, and not fidget. Most of all, he has to make sure to hand his moms their rings at the proper moment.

There is just enough light tension to keep young readers engaged as Donovan goes through each step of his preparations. Illustrator Mike Dutton’s dynamic gouache drawings capture Donovan’s earnest spirit with gentle humor.

Monday is One Day, by Arthur A. Levine (Scholastic Press), is a gay-inclusive (but not exclusive) poem from a working parent to a child. Each page shows a different family and a different activity as they count down to and through the weekend. The families are white and black, with moms and dads, gay dads, single parents, and one older couple who could be the child’s grandparents. They live in cities, suburbs, and on a farm, and all delight in each other. Julian Hector’s bold, colorful illustrations complement the bouncy rhymes. The book reminds us how much of the parenting experience is universal.

Levine, a gay dad himself, is also a publisher of his own imprint at Scholastic, Arthur A. Levine Books, whose titles include the U.S. editions of the Harry Potter series.

Adult Novel

Sing you Home, by New York Times bestselling author Jodi Picoult, brings the lives and concerns of lesbian prospective moms to a mainstream audience in an engaging and sympathetic way. Picoult’s novel also tries to educate its readers about some of the real-life legal and social barriers same-sex couples face. A spunky fictional attorney from the real-life Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD) plays a prominent role. If the book sometimes feels jammed with too many Big Social Issues—marriage equality, alcoholism, abortion, suicidal teens—Picoult is a good enough writer to weave them into a coherent and compelling tale.

Memoir

Times Two: Two Women in Love and the Happy Family They Made, Sarah Kate Ellis and Kristen Henderson’s memoir of simultaneous pregnancies, is a welcome addition to the small genre of LGBT parenting chronicles. Ellis is a marketing executive in New York City. Henderson is a founding member of the all-female rock band Antigone Rising. In alternating chapters, they tell their intertwining tale of coming out, falling in love, and starting a family.

Although some might consider the tale of double the hormones, mood swings, and post-partum exhaustion to be more of a cautionary tale, Ellis and Henderson manage to emphasize the positive. Along the way to parenthood, they discover their resiliency as a couple as they bond over the side effects of pregnancy—heartburn, hemorrhoids, and swollen ankles—and agree to disagree over issues such as whether to know the genders of their children and whether to try natural childbirth. They tell their story with a warmth and honesty that shows on every page.

Research Studies

Invisible Families: Gay Identities, Relationships, and Motherhood among Black Women, by UCLA sociologist Mignon Moore, is arguably the most groundbreaking work on LGBT parenting published in recent years. Her work is a valuable corrective to the predominant portrayal in media and research of LGBT parents (and LGBT people generally) as almost entirely white. It will complement the emerging demographic data that shows a high percentage of lesbian and gay parents are people of color.

Mignon takes a close look at the community of gay black women in New York City, drawing on personal observations, interviews, and surveys to perceptively trace the connections among sexual orientation, gender expression, race, and class. While she doesn’t focus exclusively on mothers, many of the women in her study are mothers, and must negotiate the assumptions and expectations of motherhood within black communities while also challenging those assumptions by virtue of being gay.

Mignon deftly explores the overlapping influences on these women’s identities in a work that is both valuable in itself and will serve as a model for future research into LGBT families of all types.

Adoption by Lesbians and Gay Men: A New Dimension in Family Diversity, edited by David Brodzinsky and Adam Pertman of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, brings together experts across several disciplines—social welfare, psychology, sociology, and law—to provide a picture of this “rapidly growing new family form.” It summarizes our knowledge of lesbian and gay adoptive families, contributes to it, and points out directions for future research, education, and policy changes. It is an academic book, not a light read, but should become an invaluable reference for adoption professionals, researchers, policy makers, advocates, and lawyers.

I am a member of the Amazon Associates program, and get a small referral fee from all purchases made at Amazon.com via links on this site. You are under no obligation to purchase through them.

What? You’re not? Well, you should be. Go check out A.K. Summers’ new comic/graphic tale, “Pregnant Butch” over at comic collective site Act-i-vate. It’s a funny, insightful, semi-autobiographical look at “a butch dyke enduring that most deeply feminizing of processes—pregnancy.” She’ll be serializing the 100-page comic at the rate of several pages per week, and hopes someday to find a print publisher. (Note: This is a comic of the grown-up variety.)

I had the pleasure of interviewing A.K. for my upcoming Mombian newspaper column, which should be appearing in papers this week. (Here it is in Bay Windows.) I’ll repost it here after the papers have it out. (If your local LGBT (or other) paper isn’t carrying my column, and you’d like them to, drop the editor a note and ask her or him to contact me. Much appreciated!)

In the meantime, go enjoy Pregnant Butch and marvel yet again at all of the many journeys we take to parenthood. (You can also find out more about A.K. at her personal site.)

Invisible Families: Gay Identities, Relationships, and Motherhood among Black Women, by UCLA sociologist Mignon Moore, is arguably the most groundbreaking work on LGBT parenting published in recent years. Moore gives us one of the few in-depth looks at lesbians of color, showing how race and class influence their self-perceptions, relationships, and family creation.

Her work corrects the predominant impression from media and research that LGBT people are almost all white. It complements the recent demographic work by UCLA’s Williams Institute and others that shows a high percentage of lesbian and gay people, including parents, are in fact people of color.

Moore draws on three years of personal observations, interviews, and surveys with over 100 gay black women in New York City to explore their “intersecting identities as Black, as women, and as gay people.” She first identifies the paths by which they have come to accept a lesbian sexuality, and explores how race, class, and the black lesbian social environment have affected when and how they do so.

She then looks at gender presentation and how this, too, is influenced by race and class. For example, while 1970s white lesbian-feminism caused many white middle-class lesbians to reject gendered (butch-femme) presentations, it did not have the same impact on black lesbians, who have now adopted their own interpretations of that legacy. The middle-class black lesbians in her study, for example, often avoid a more masculine presentation, because they feel it may interfere with their efforts towards “assimilation into larger society.” On the other hand, she has found that working-class black lesbians may adopt a nonfeminine presentation, “to express feelings of difference from larger society based on the multiple marginalized statuses they occupy.”

Moore next digs more deeply into how race, class, and sexuality interact to form a person’s identity. She perceptively delineates the difference between a person’s individual identity, or self-conception, and her collective identity, where she has “the strongest feelings of group belonging.” While most of the women in her study participated in primarily black social environments, the extent to which gender and sexuality formed part of their individual identities was also influenced by both class and gender presentation.

Moore then turns to motherhood, noting that most previous studies of lesbian mothers have focused on women who became parents after coming out. Because a large percentage of black lesbians had children before coming out, however, such studies have excluded them—as they have excluded lesbian stepparents who come into these women’s lives. And because having children as a lesbian often involves costly insemination procedures, previous studies have also skewed towards middle- and upper-class families.

She addresses this imbalance with case studies of black lesbians of various classes who have become mothers in a variety of ways. For each of these families, she looks at how race, class, and their different paths to motherhood affect their sense of identity, approaches to child raising, and relationships to larger communities.

Moore also explores how families of different classes and structures negotiate their roles with respect to household chores, money management, and child rearing. She finds that many black lesbian households do not necessarily follow the egalitarian principles associated with white feminism in dividing household tasks—but that management of household activities is often a source of power in lesbian relationships. This also sets these relationships apart from heterosexual ones, where higher income, rather than household management, has been seen as the primary source of power.

Finally, she looks at the relationships among black lesbians, their extended families, and their racial and religious communities. Maintaining connections with the larger black community is important for them, she says, even when it does not fully accept them for being openly gay. One way many of the women deal with this, she has found, is to convey a certain middle-class “respectability”—an ideal that originally developed as a response to negative post-Reconstruction stereotypes about black women.

Displaying this “respectability” may mean downplaying their identities as gay people while in social situations, especially in church, which remains an important focus of black culture. At the same time, Moore says, these women “remain clear in their refusal to give up or deny their gay sexuality,” and are findings ways to negotiate between these two influences.

As important as Moore’s findings, however, are her methods. Traditional ways of gathering subjects for LGBT research studies—such as notices in LGBT community centers, nightclubs, and newspapers—have had little success in reaching gay populations of color, who tend to have their own social venues.

Moore, however, recruited her subjects by going to numerous social events that had primarily black lesbian crowds—everything from cocktail hours to book clubs to religious meetings. When she did go to lesbian nightclubs, she handed out flyers directly to people and spoke with them about her project. For eighteen months, she also organized her own weekly social event for lesbians of color. This was “critical” to her fieldwork, she said, because it gave her “regular, sustained contact with the community.”

That kind of thought and effort in finding and recruiting subjects is needed if we are to continue exploring LGBT life across other racial groups, socioeconomic classes, geographic areas, and parts of the LGBT spectrum.

Moore deftly explores the overlapping influences on black lesbians’ identities and families in a work that is both valuable in itself and should serve as a model for future studies that reflect the full diversity of LGBT families.

I am a member of the Amazon Associates program, and get a small referral fee from all purchases made at Amazon.com via links on this site. You are under no obligation to purchase through them.

(November is National Adoption Month. Here’s my review of a new book on adoption by lesbians and gay men. Originally published in my Mombian newspaper column.)

There have been a number of studies over the past 25 years on lesbian and gay parents and their children, but few have looked specifically at lesbian and gay adoptive families—even though over 65,500 children are being raised by gay or lesbian adoptive parents in the U.S.

And while over two million LGB people are interested in adopting, over 115,000 children are still waiting for adoptive homes, according to UCLA’s Williams Institute.

Adoption by Lesbians and Gay Men: A New Dimension in Family Diversity, edited by David Brodzinsky and Adam Pertman of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, has brought together experts across several disciplines—social welfare, psychology, sociology, and law—to address these issues and provide a picture of this “rapidly growing new family form.” First, Cynthia Russett places adoption by lesbians and gay men in the context of the evolving history of adoption in the United States over the past 250 years.

Pertman and Jeanne Howard examine “the unprecedented, ongoing transformation in American family life” that includes an increasing number of gay and lesbian adoptive parents. They explain why the transformation “is a positive one for children who need permanent homes,” and give us a picture of current attitudes, policies, and laws.

Annette Appell looks more closely at adoption laws and how they have been applied in cases of lesbian and gay parents.

Several of the papers then look at best practices among adoption professionals and agencies.

Gerald Mallon draws on previous research to offer suggestions about the homestudy process. He shows how adoption professionals can treat lesbian and gay prospective parents with equality, while not avoiding relevant issues related to sexual orientation, such as how they plan to address homophobia with their children.

David Brooks, Hansung Kim, and Leslie Wind share the results of their study on the pre- and post-adoption services gay and lesbian families may desire, such as counseling and support groups. Many of their needs for such services are similar to those of straight adoptive families and “are being adequately addressed and met.” At the same time, there are some “significant differences” that may imply unmet needs. For example, more gay and lesbian parents expressed a need for legal advice.

Scott Ryan and Suzanne Brown look at how lesbian and gay people react to the stresses of being adoptive parents, and the social supports, resources, and strengths they develop in response.

Abbie Goldberg and Mark Gianino show how therapists and others can assist and support lesbian and gay adoptive parents.

Brodzinsky offers results from his national study of adoption agencies’ policies and practices. The good news: adoptions by lesbians and gay men “are occurring regularly and in noteworthy numbers across the country, through both public and private agencies.” The bad news: Nearly 15 percent of adoption agency directors surveyed were unsure about the legality of adoption by gay men and lesbians in their jurisdiction, or thought it was illegal, even when it wasn’t.

Two of the papers look generally at children with lesbian or gay parents, adoptive and not. Charlotte Patterson and Jennifer Wainright present findings from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, showing that family type had little to do with adolescents’ social or personal development. Instead, it was the quality of adolescents’ relationships with their parents that mattered.

Nanette Gartrell, Heidi Peyser, and Henny Bos share results from the long-running National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study. While it includes only families created through donor insemination, it adds to the growing evidence that “children raised by lesbian mothers are thriving.”

Brodzinsky, Robert-Jay Green, and Katie Katuzny wrap things up with a look at what we know about adoption by lesbians and gay men and what we still need to know and do. Legal roadblocks still exist in many states, they remind us. Legislators, judges, and adoption professionals need to be educated about the social science research that shows adoptive children of lesbian and gay parents are as well adjusted as any others.

But while social science data “will be helpful, and ought to be determinative,” they say, “advocates of this type of adoption will need to find additional ways of countering the values-based arguments of those who oppose it.”

Still, additional research will be valuable—not only in reaffirming that gay and lesbian parents are suitable, but also in further detailing the unique needs of their families and how adoption professionals can best support them.

And there is almost no research yet on transgender or bisexual parents and their families. Given that more transgender people are coming out, say the authors, “It is very important that the professional community develop a better understanding of them and receive appropriate training to work with those who seek to adopt.”

Adoption agencies as a whole, they say, need to better educate their staffs and set a welcoming tone for LGBT families. They should also hire LGBT and LGBT-affirmative staff and reach out to recruit prospective LGBT parents.

This volume summarizes our knowledge of lesbian and gay adoptive families, contributes to it, and points out directions for future research, education, and policy changes. It is an academic book, not a light read, but should become an invaluable reference for adoption professionals, researchers, policy makers, advocates, and lawyers. Lesbian and gay adoptive parents and prospective parents may also want to read it (though they may wish to skip some of the nitty-gritty statistical analyses).

As Brodzinsky et al. say in their concluding chapter, the beneficiaries will be the many children who need permanent homes.

I am a member of the Amazon Associates program, and get a small referral fee from all purchases made at Amazon.com via links on this site. You are under no obligation to purchase through them.

Books about LGBT parenting are few and far between, but here are ten that I recommend for all LGBT parents and prospective parents. I chose works that each showcase a variety of voices, rather than single-person memoirs, so each one would resonate as widely as possible. I also chose books that focus on the emotional side of parenting rather than medical and legal how-to works, since the latter tend to be specific to particular segments of the LGBT community.

I hope these selections, taken together, will help us better understand our collective, yet diverse, experience of being LGBT parents.

Feel free to add further suggestions in the comments.

First, five essay collections:

Who’s Your Daddy?: And Other Writings on Queer Parenting, ed. by Rachel Epstein, embraces the full sweep of the LGBT spectrum with insight and compassion. The writers discuss topics such as single parenting, infertility, co-parenting with a sperm donor, butch identity, going to a fertility clinic as a transgender man, whether to disclose bisexuality during a foster parenting interview, what it means to “parent queerly,” and much more.

Love Makes a Family, ed. by Peggy Gillespie, with photos by Gigi Kaeser, compiles images, essays, and statements of LGBT parents and their children, across various family structures, races, and ethnicities. The book wears its dozen years well, although the resource guide is outdated.

And Baby Makes More, ed. Susan Goldberg and Chloe Brushwood Rose, includes essays by parents who have used a known sperm or egg donor, those who have themselves donated or been surrogates, and the children created by these acts. They explore the challenges and benefits of including donors (and oftentimes, their partners and relatives) as part of the family, the importance (or not) of biological connections, and the need for new language to indicate the web of family relationships.

Confessions of the Other Mother: Non-Biological Lesbian Moms Tell All, ed. Harlyn Aizley, chronicles the challenges of not having biological ties to all or some of the children one is raising with the biological mother. Although focused on lesbian parents, it should appeal to non-biological parents across the spectrum. The authors discuss their emotions as their partners conceived (sometimes after the authors had attempted to do the same), how they have worked to define their parenting roles, both for themselves and for the world at large, and how they have confronted an often hostile legal system.

Gay Dads: A Celebration of Fatherhood, by David Strah with Susanna Margolis, and photos by Kris Timken, includes profiles of more than 20 families headed by gay dads. Although again focused on only one segment of the LGBT community, I include it here to balance the lesbian-heavy emphasis (whether intentional or statistical) of many of the other books.

Next, three books from the perspectives of youth and adults with LGBT parents—aimed primarily at that group, but invaluable for us parents as well:

Families Like Mine: Children of Gay Parents Tell It Like It Is, by Abigail Garner, pulls together stories and anecdotes from dozens of adults with LGBT parents (the full spectrum, despite the title), covering topics such as dealing with a parent’s coming out, coming out about one’s family to friends, and being a “second-generation” LGBT person with LGBT parents.

Let’s Get This Straight: The Ultimate Handbook for Youth with LGBTQ Parents, by Tina Fakhrid-Deen, covers some of the same ground as Families Like Mine, but for a younger audience—tweens and teens. It draws on interviews with dozens of youth and adults to offer advice, but also includes quizzes and journaling activities to help youth assess their own feelings and school climates, and to begin telling their own stories. If you have kids in the target age range, read this yourself, then give it to them.

The Kids of Trans Resource Guide, by Monica Canfield-Lenfest, is likewise aimed at tweens and teens, but focuses on those with transgender parents, an area where Fakhrid-Deen is light. Canfield-Lenfest provides succinct advice (again, based on extensive interviews) on matters such as what to expect when a parent transitions, what to call them, how to come out about having a transgender parent, and more. An additional piece has “Transition Tips for Parents” to make the process easier for everyone in the family. Available for free download at colage.org.

And two more to round out the list:

Lesbian and Gay Parents and Their Children: Research on the Family Life Cycle, by Abbie Goldberg, is a more academic work, but worth the effort for those interested in what legitimate social scientists have found out about our families. Goldberg, an assistant professor of psychology at Clark University, has synthesized decades of research by herself and others, concluding that children of lesbian and gay parents “are developing normally.” Some studies have even found that lesbian and gay parents are more involved with or responsive to their children, and the children may be more accepting of differences in others. Goldberg incorporates the little research that exists on transgender and bisexual parents and their children, but notes that further studies need to be done.

Adoption Nation: How the Adoption Revolution is Transforming Our Families—and America, by Adam Pertman, is LGBT-inclusive but not LGBT-specific. It chronicles the struggle of adoptive parents and their children over the last decades for greater acceptance, openness, and a broader definition of family. This is a must-read for adoptive parents, potential parents, and adults who were adopted as children—but I recommend it for all LGBT parents because of the parallels between our challenges and those of even non-LGBT adoptive parents. May it inspire us to build bridges.

I am a member of the Amazon Associates program, and get a small referral fee from all purchases made at Amazon.com via links on this site. You are under no obligation to purchase through them.

If words like “semiotics,” “textuality,” “revisionist,” “trope,” and “performative” make you run screaming from memories of college literature classes, this probably isn’t the book for you. If, however, you are willing to brave a bit of jargon or are an actual literature geek (and I know some of you are), you will find much food for thought here.

The volume includes three sections: “Queering the Canon,” which reexamines with a queer eye classic or historical works; “After Stonewall,” which looks at post-1969 books more explicitly about lesbian and gay issues; and “Queer Readers and Writers,” which asks whether the term “queer” is a useful definition and what it means to “read queer” or “write queer.”

Essays investigate works with clear LGBTQ content, such as Alex Sanchez’ Rainbow Boys, Nancy Garden’s Annie on My Mind, and Lesléa Newman’s Heather Has Two Mommies, but also look at less explicitly queer books ranging from the Nancy Drew, Harry Potter, and Oz series to Harriet the Spy, Little Women, and others.

The focus is primarily on young adult literature. Books for younger children get short shrift, except for one essay on Heather and Too Far Away to Touch, a later work by Newman. That is a shame, because there is certainly a small but growing number of works for the elementary school set—and while their length and simple storylines may not lend themselves to deep literary analysis, I believe that they can still teach us much about changing perceptions of LGBTQ people, both within and outside the LGBTQ community.

The editors say, “We hope with this volume to encourage a more dynamic relationship between queer theory and children’s literature studies.” Time will tell if they have succeeded, but they have made an excellent start.

I am a member of the Amazon Associates program, and get a small referral fee from all purchases made at Amazon.com via links on this site. You are under no obligation to purchase through them.

Here’s today’s giveaway post, the last of three. First, some adoption-related news:

Yesterday, the Arkansas Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling that said the state’s ban on adoption by unmarried, cohabiting couples—a ban enacted by voter referendum in 2008—was unconstitutional. I have more on this in my piece over at Keen News Service.

On to the contest:

We’ll make this an easy one. Leave a comment on this post with your favorite springtime activity, and I’ll enter you in a drawing to receive a free copy of Adoption Nation, courtesy of the publisher. Comments must be left before 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time Friday, April 8, 2011. (That’s 2:59 a.m. Eastern Time, April 9.)

Further rules and restrictions after the jump.

Additional rules and restrictions: U.S. and Canada residents only, please. One entry per person. Don’t worry if your comment is moderated; once I approve it, it will appear based on the time you submitted it. Spam comments, including off-topic or commercial comments, will not count. If you win any one of the three drawings for this book, you cannot play again. (You can leave a comment to participate in the discussion, but I won’t enter you in the drawing.) If you are or have been a paying advertiser (or an employee of a paying advertiser) on Mombian, you can’t play.

You must also leave a valid e-mail address with your comment. Don’t leave a postal address, though. If you win, I’ll contact you by e-mail about shipping. I will then share the winner’s name and postal address with the publicist, for the sole purpose of allowing them to mail you your prize directly.

I am a member of the Amazon Associates program, and get a small referral fee from all purchases made at Amazon.com via links on this site. You are under no obligation to purchase through them.

Here’s today’s giveaway post, the second of three. First, some adoption-related news:

The state of Virginia is considering whether to follow up on a proposal from former Gov. Tim Kaine (D) and allow unmarried (and by definition, same-sex) couples to adopt in the state. Conservatives are lobbying new Gov. Robert McDonnell not to do so. Below is a video of Ellen Kahn, director of HRC’s Family Project, debating Virginia Republican Delegate Bob Marshall on DC’s FOX 5 News about the issue.

Should Gay Couples Have The Right To Adopt Children in Virginia?: MyFoxDC.com

On to the contest:

Leave a comment on this post with the name of your favorite parenting book (or your least favorite . . . or why you don’t read parenting books), and I’ll enter you in a drawing to receive a free copy of Adoption Nation, courtesy of the publisher. Comments must be left before 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time Thursday, April 7, 2011. (That’s 2:59 a.m. Eastern Time, April 8.) I’ll be doing one more giveaway, on Friday this week, so do stop back!

Additional rules and restrictions: U.S. and Canada residents only, please. One entry per person. Don’t worry if your comment is moderated; once I approve it, it will appear based on the time you submitted it. Spam comments, including off-topic or commercial comments, will not count. If you win any one of the three drawings for this book, you cannot play again. (You can leave a comment to participate in the discussion, but I won’t enter you in the drawing.) If you are or have been a paying advertiser (or an employee of a paying advertiser) on Mombian, you can’t play.

You must also leave a valid e-mail address with your comment. Don’t leave a postal address, though. If you win, I’ll contact you by e-mail about shipping. I will then share the winner’s name and postal address with the publicist, for the sole purpose of allowing them to mail you your prize directly.

I am a member of the Amazon Associates program, and get a small referral fee from all purchases made at Amazon.com via links on this site. You are under no obligation to purchase through them.

We live in a time when the definition of “family” is not changing, but broadening. It is and always has been about love and commitment—and for those of us who have children, about helping them to learn and grow on the way to adulthood. The structure of families, however, and the way we create them, has been in flux over the last few decades—and not just because of LGBT families. There has been an overlapping revolution to the one created by LGBT parents—that of adoptive parents and their children, who have also been fighting for greater acceptance, openness, and a wider definition of what it means to be a family.

Ten years ago, Adam Pertman, executive director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute and an adoptive father himself, chronicled this revolution in his book Adoption Nation—and in doing so, helped create its manifesto. Now, he has just released a revised edition, updated to reflect recent events and legal changes. It is a must-read book for adoptive parents or potential parents, adults who were adopted as children, policymakers, and anyone interested in the changing shape of families today.

Adoption used to be veiled in secrecy, Pertman relates. Children were swept away from women who had been hidden in homes for unwed mothers until they gave birth. The children were placed with new families, who often did not reveal that they had been adopted. But attitudes and laws have been changing to allow each part of the adoption triad—adopted children, adoptive parents, and birth parents—to become more honest and open about their relationships to each other. People are now realizing that adoption is not a single event that happens early in a person’s life and is best forgotten in the interest of having a “normal” family. Contact among triad members can help strengthen identities and relationships, not harm them.

Pertman dispels many of the myths surrounding adoption: that birth mothers who want contact with their children always want to take them back, that children looking for their birth parents want them to replace their adoptive parents, and that birth fathers always either abandon their children and the mother or want to interfere with an adoption. He offers both anecdotes and data, and discusses the legal challenges and changes that have facilitated greater openness among all parties.

He describes the history of adoption, both domestic and international, in modern America, the particular issues for multi-racial families and children with special needs, and the impact of the Internet in facilitating both adoptions and connections among triad members. He also looks at the flow of money in the adoption system, legal and illegal, and the attempts to regulate adoption through legislative means.

The book is inclusive of lesbian and gay parents, and definitely recommended if you are adoptive parents or considering adoption. Even those of us who are not adoptive parents, though, will find many parallels between us and the families in the book. We and our children often want to cast a wider net over those we consider family, whether they be sperm donors, surrogates, or birth parents, but we have also struggled to define those roles and navigate the legal and social boundaries. We, too, face everyday issues of acceptance and inclusion.

We also have our own legislative and legal challenges, some of which are related to adoption. Pertman notes that lesbian and gay parents banned from adoption in one jurisdiction can fairly easily go to another to adopt, “So the people hurt by these prejudicial restrictions aren’t the adults at whom they’re aimed, but the children in the affected states who will continue to deteriorate in supposedly temporary situations because not enough of the ‘right’ sorts of parents are available.”

But we are not alone in reshaping what it means to be a family. Pertman writes, “Realities like single parenting, divorce, and poverty have hammered away at the ideal [of straight, married couples as best for raising children] with more force than same-sex couples could ever hope to muster.”

He continues:

At a minimum, adoption provides a starting point for addressing historic, mind-boggling changes that will further reshape our understanding of what constitutes a “normal” family. . . . But adoption’s chronicles are more than just cautionary tales; they also offer positive messages, instructive guidance, and hope. They affirm that family is about far more than bloodlines, while explaining that ignoring biology helps no one. They show that children are eminently capable of enlarging the circle of those they love without losing affection for the people already there. In probably their most optimistic lesson, they also demonstrate that it’s possible to topple even deeply entrenched regimes.

Adoption Nation is a balanced, readable, and sympathetic blend of reporting, history, personal anecdote, and social commentary. Adoptive families and potential families will find it invaluable. Non-adoptive families, too, especially those of us who formed our family in non-traditional ways, will find much food for thought—and may discover new ways to build bridges and find allies.

Leave a comment on this post with some observation, question, resource, or personal anecdote about adoption, and I’ll enter you in a drawing to receive a free copy of the book, courtesy of the publisher. Comments must be left before 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time Wednesday, April 6, 2011. (That’s 2:59 a.m. Eastern Time, April 7.) I’ll be doing two more giveaways, on Thursday and Friday this week, so do stop back!

Rules and restrictions: U.S. and Canada residents only, please. One entry per person. Don’t worry if your comment is moderated; once I approve it, it will appear based on the time you submitted it. Spam comments, including off-topic or commercial comments, will not count. If you win any one of the three drawings for this book, you cannot play again. If you are or have been a paying advertiser (or an employee of a paying advertiser) on Mombian, you can’t play.

You must also leave a valid e-mail address with your comment. Don’t leave a postal address, though. If you win, I’ll contact you by e-mail about shipping. I will then share the winner’s name and postal address with the publicist, for the sole purpose of allowing them to mail you your prize directly.

I am a member of the Amazon Associates program, and get a small referral fee from all purchases made at Amazon.com via links on this site. You are under no obligation to purchase through them.