Product Description

"An extraordinary book. Chilling, inspiring, and utterly convincing, it creates an ironclad case for the adoption solution." -Sylvia Ann Hewlett, coauthor of The War Against Parents "Bartholet sounds the alarm on the savage consequences the child welfare system has on so many children and challenges us to confront the reality that substance abuse . . . is the culprit in most cases of child abuse and neglect. Everyone who cares about our nation's most vulnerable children should read this book." -Joseph A. Califano, Jr., president, The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University "Blood and race remain the over-riding factors in determining the future of suffering children. This should be required reading for those who look on adoption as the last resort." -Mary McGrory, Washington Post columnist "Bartholet is a passionate crusader on behalf of children, and brings to her subject vigorous, clear-headed prose and the moral authority of her professional dedication." -Ann-Janine Morey, Chicago Tribune "Bartholet issues a strong challenge to the child welfare system to facilitate adoption of children who have been abused and neglected.All people concerned about the healthy development of children should read Nobody's Children. I highly recommend it." -Alvin F. Poussaint, M.D., clinical professor of psychiatry, Harvard Medical School "The way we treat abused and neglected children in this country remains a national scandal. Bartholet challenges the priority placed . . . on keeping battered or neglected children with their families or racial group, and makes a strong case for increased use of adoption." -Senator Howard M. Metzenbaum (ret.), author of the Multiethnic Placement Act "A disturbing look at how the lives of 'America's modern-day orphans' are sacrificed for the often unrealistic goal of keeping troubled families together. . . . The author makes her case intelligently, fearlessly, and exhaustively." -Kirkus Reviews Elizabeth Bartholet is a professor at Harvard Law School. Her first book, Family Bonds: Adoption, Infertility, and the New World of Child Reproduction, was called "brilliant . . . an intelligent and passionate exploration of the legal, racial, and psychological issues" by The New York Times Book Review. The mother of three boys, two of them adopted from Peru, she lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #657174 in Books
• Published on: 2000-11-17
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 324 pages

From Library Journal
The book's jacket calls this an "intense look at child welfare policies on abuse and neglect." Precisely. Bartholet's subject is too weighty for casual reading and cannot be easily digested, but it does not falter in its criticisms of American child welfare policy. Examining legislation from all parts of the United States, Bartholet questions why "family preservation ideology still reigns supreme when children rather than adult women are involved." The reader is left with a multitude of questions and concerns about the way U.S. adoption policy is currently working, questions that are catalysts for invoking the changes that Bartholet espouses. Clear and consistent, this is recommended for public and academic libraries.ASheila Devaney, North Carolina State Univ. Libs., Raleigh
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
A disturbing look at how the lives of Americas modern-day orphans are sacrificed for the often unrealistic goal of keeping troubled families together. Bartholet (Family Bonds: Adoption and the Politics of Parenting, 1993), an expert on family law and an adoptive mother herself, traces the historical, political, and cultural reasons why battered and neglected children are far more likely to spend years in foster limbo, or be sent back to abusive homes, than to be adopted by loving families. The author charges that despite recent legislation that bars race as a factor, everyone from private foundation administrators to judges, lawyers, and bureaucrats continues to be guided by the notion that children should be cared for by relatives, or adopted by families who look like them. Back in 1972, the National Association of Black Social Workers denounced transracial adoption as a form of racial genocide. Though race-matching policies have gone underground since then, Bartholet believes they resurface in criteria like kinship and cultural competence. Because other relatives may not be up to the task of parenting, and because there are not enough minority families to adopt all the children who need them, the author asserts that race-matching essentially condemns many youngsters to lasting physical, cognitive, and emotional damage. Whereas wife beaters are treated like criminals, child abusers, often plagued by poverty and substance abuse, tend to be seen as victims themselves. Bartholet expresses sympathy for their plight but demands that social workers stop using precious child-welfare resources to prop up deeply disturbed families. What matters, she insists, is that the children get into homes where they can thrive. She also suggests, somewhat unrealistically, that the state could take a proactive role in reducing child abuse by instituting universal visitation of all families before and after birth. The author makes her case intelligently, fearlessly, and exhaustively. Curiously, since her subject matter is so wrenching, Bartholets writing lacks emotional power. Nobodys Children ultimately appeals not to the heart, but to the head. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About the Author
Elizabeth Bartholet, author of Family Bonds (Beacon / 08070-2803-7), has been a professor at Harvard Law School since 1977. She writes, lectures, and consults widely on issues involving child welfare, adoption, and reproductive technology. The mother of three boys, two of them adopted from Peru, she lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Customer Reviews

Issues of child abuse, family preservation, adoption
Read this book written by a civil rights lawyer, feminist and Harvard Law professor who challenges traditional left and right poliltical perspectives on child abuse, family preservation and adoption. She is the mother of one child by birth and two by adoption who writes with power and emotion about the meaning of parenting and family.

She looks at the battered women's movement and asks why we have come to think that adult women should be liberated from abusive homes but still insist that children be kept at home pursuant to family preservation policies without regard to the level of abuse and neglect suffered.

Bartholet takes on the child welfare establishment and asks us to join her in pushing for radical rethinking of first premises. She wants our society to take adoption seriously for the first time ever, moving abused and neglected children into real homes so that they can survive and thrive. She wants to knock down the racial barriers that stand in the way of "Nobody's Children" finding the parents they need. And, finally, she points out that now is the time for reform if ever there is a time.

This Book Changed My Life
I am a mother of two birth children and one adopted child, adopted from foster care at age 13. I stumbled across this book in a bookstore one rainy day when I had hit the emotional low-point in my own adoption journey. I read it while I was struggling with the endless and maddening redtape and delays entailed in getting our foster child out of "the system" forever. "Nobody's Children" speaks to hundreds of thousands of Americans whose hearts and beliefs nudge them to contemplate domestic adoption, yet who encounter cultural and procedural barriers that discourage most from considering adoption from the foster care system. This is a carefully-researched and footnoted work by a distinguished former civil rights attorney--whose career included work at the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund and now Harvard Law School, where she teaches today. The author is herself both an adoptive and biological parent. Her book gave me new hope. I was inspired by it to work to help bring about the cultural shifts and procedural reforms described in this book, changes that will be required if our nation is truly serious about ending the tragedy (and travesty) of kids languishing in long-term foster care. Ignore reviews by some who utterly mischaracterize Bartholet's arguments. She, like Patrick Murphy before her, fully acknowledge that the vast majority of poor and minority families raise their children well and lovingly, and that far more social resources should be directed toward addiction treatment and supporting stressed-out birth mothers so they can keep their babies. Defenseless, innocent children are not, however, the chattel (private property) of their birth parents. All of us, as a civilized people, must speak out against policies and practices that severely limit a child's chance to be adopted after being subjected to acts of torture or repeated abuse and neglect. To fix "the system" and its horrors, more Americans need to open their homes to the children trapped in it. How to persuade people to consider adopting from foster care? Bartholet suggests a first step: imagine a system that promotes adoption as the best, instead of a second best, way to build a family. A book for dreamers and "doers" both.

Brilliant and Brave!
As a professional who has directed two non-profit agencies focused on foster children, I was thrilled to find this book. Bartholet tells the truth (and documents it) about the illogic of the system and the frightening implications for abused and abandoned children. Adoption isn't a fairy tale--but it is the best choice for so many growing up without families of their own in America.