However, I feel very positive that this was the right time and the right thing to do. We are at a good age to figure out how we want to live the rest of our lives and what new things we would like to do. One of those new things is already in the works for Shapiro. In March, her first book will be published by Guilford Publications of New York City. She has been writing the text over the past two and a half years with her daughter Janet Shapiro, a faculty member in the Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research at Bryn Mawr College, and Isabel Paret, a clinical associate in the Department of Psychiatry in the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey.
Children involved in complex adoptions often have very early traumatic histories.
We look at what that means in terms of forming bonds and attachments between children and parents. Assisted reproductive technology is another way of forming a family through such means as in vitro fertilization. It often involves what we call collaborative parentage, where there is a mix of biological and psychological parenthood. People have written a lot about traditional adoption and about the biological aspects of assisted reproductive technology. But we are looking at family identity and family process where there are very unusual combinations of biology and psychology.