Product Description

Told through the voices of adoptive parents, their children-young and grown up-and birth mothers, and accompanied by fifty stunning photographs, Be My Baby is a luminous window into the adoptive family. As people who have postponed childbearing, or who have been unable to have children, look for role models and real-life stories, the book shows them how well adoptive families work. Indeed, Be My Baby captures, with grace, insight, and emotion, the deeply felt bonds and life-affirming experiences that are at the heart of raising an adoptive family-or any family for that matter.

THE REAL VOICE OF THE ADOPTION EXPERIENCE --Presents first-person accounts from adoptive parents of all ages, adopted children from age 9 to 19, grown adoptees, and biological mothers --Portrays the great array of adoption arrangements and experiences: open and closed, domestic and foreign, multiracial, single and gay parents, adoptive and/or biological siblings --Includes interviews with and portraits of such notable adoptive parents as Jamie Lee Curtis and Christopher Guest, Brooke Adams and Tony Shalhoub, and more --Celebrates and validates how well this life choice works --Offers welcome support and inspiration for anyone considering adoption or whose life has already been touched by adoption --Addresses the hopes, fears, and joys of millions of baby boomers and all those who are today parenting through adoption

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1039641 in Books
• Published on: 2000-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 160 pages

From School Library Journal

Adult/High School-This photo-essay features the selected reflections of adoptive parents, adopted children ages 9 to 19, adults adopted as infants, and two birth mothers. The majority of the pieces focus on feelings and memories of parents or adult children. A variety of situations are presented: private and agency adoptions, domestic and international adoptions, only-child and multiple-children families, and families with combinations of adopted and biological children. The subjects are candid when discussing the conflicting and complex emotions surrounding such issues as nature versus nurture theories, ethnic identity, sibling relationships, feelings of loss, insecurities and fears, and coping with reactions of others to blended family. Despite the wide range of experiences and emotions presented, the overall message is positive and affirming. The cases included make for interesting and thought-provoking reading and could be used as discussion starters. Quality black-and-white photographs of the subjects illustrate this oversized title.-Heide Piehler, Shorewood Public Library, WI

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Kinn interviewed birth parents, adoptive parents, and adopted children to examine how adoption impacts individuals and families. Through these first-person accounts and photographs by Shung, this book brings faces and voices to the emotions and trends behind the process of adoption, from open adoption to multiracial adoption. Adopting parents talk about the frustrations and joys of the process; birth parents speak of loss and expectations for their children; and the children talk about their shifting sense of identity and affiliation. The total package is an absorbing look at the joys and challenges of adoption and family formation. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
"This is such a loving, honest, and deeply helpful book." -- Jamie Lee Curtis, author of the best-selling Tell Me Again About the Night I Was Born

Customer Reviews

About "Be MyBaby"
I must start with a disclaimer, since I am in this book as a birthmother, and every page is charged for me. I feel Gail's warmth and intense concern for all aspects of adoption have elicited a high degree of openness from her participants. Her vision is realistic and loving. Ken's photos are often incredible, beginning with the baby on the cover who looks at us like a fully formed little being.

It is the children's stories I like the best. Their words are fresh and unexpected, and bring us into their experience wonderfully.

I am grateful that birthmothers have their rightful place in this book.

A Book About Family Love
Okay, I give up. I am the author of this book! But how often does an author get a chance to tell you what their hopes are for their book (in addition to selling a few copies), and what their book truly offesr? When my niece was adopted, the only fear I didn't have was that I would love her, totally. And I do. But raising a family, any family, demands what's best in us and often brings out what is worst. It requires us to understand what we sometimes don't, tries our patience, and rewards us with an unparalleled kind of love. I wondered, like many people in the throws of the decision to adopt, "Would an adoptive family be even more demanding? How difficult will it to be to answer my child's questions about being adopted? Would even the smallest problems be seen as 'adoption problems?' Would my child feel a sense of loss? And would she know deep in her heart that we are her family? How different is it being an adoptive family? How much or how little attention to you have to pay to that fact of your's and your child's life? I know I share these questions with many of you out there. I read all the profession literature and when I found that that didn't quite answer my questions i decided instead to talk to the people who lived as adoptive families. What they told me changed my thoughts and feelings in an essential way. Adoption is much more matter of fact if you don't let feelings get ahead of you. As someone said, "the problem is not in your heart, it's in your head." Adoption is a part, but not the whole of the recipe of who you are. I hope these extremely honest and resonant (and funny) first-person heartfelt observations: which are in the words of parents, young children, grown adoptees, and brith mothers--tell you what you need--and long--to know. They did that for me. I want this book to show you how and why adoption works. And if you are already an adoptive family, it's wonderful to read about what grown adoptees say. I should take out a billboard and announce, your teenager will say, and get ready for it: "You're not my real mother." But they will never mean it. They just know it will push the right buttons. It's good for all of us to know this, so we don't get thrown when it happens. There's a lot more. Ken Shung's photography is masterful. I'd love to hear from you too!

A beautiful new look at adoption
Through individual stories, Gail Kinn presents an accurate and inspiring look at the profound impact of adoption on families, birth parents and adopted children and adults. Several of the families who are profiled adopted internationally but the groundbreading content in this book is in the honest exploration of relationships in domestic adoptions, and the family dynamics of open adoptions. Young and adult adoptees tell their own stories and birth parents representing several generations are included. The superb photographs by Ken Shung make for the first coffee-table quality book about adoption that I've seen but the stories are too compelling to put down.