Suddenly, one woman's most personal account becomes a universal story. These many voices and perspectives create a moving and groundbreaking collection full of many truths, much eloquence and courage. More than thirty million people living in the United States are directly affected by adoption, whether as adoptees, birth mothers or as adoptive family members. This number continues to grow as, each year, approximately sixty thousand infants and children are legally adopted. About thirteen percent of these are international adoptions, involving children born in other countries who are then adopted by United States citizens.
Most international adoptions are closed or anonymous.
The number of informally adopted children, children being raised by adults other than the child's birth parent or legally adoptive parent, is unknown. As of 1993, more than four hundred thousand children, living in group or foster homes within the Unites States, remained legally available for adoption. Once they delivered, the girls or women were usually coerced into giving their infants to an agency or physician who would in turn offer the child to white adoptive parents. Anonymity of the birth mother and the receiving parents was often required by state laws. In this collection, many of the birth mothers describe their emotional responses to the oppressive circumstances around being single and pregnant, and others relate the psychological anguish of not knowing the destiny of their birth children.