Customer Reviews

An Empty Lap: One Couple's Journey to Parenthood

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

Jill Smolowe's book, "An Empty Lap,' was one of the most powerful books I have read in a decade. I would highly recommend it to anyone who has an interest in learning about the adoption process and the challenges of fertility. It details the author's personal quest to have a child. 'An Empty Lap' is extremely well written and easy to read. The story is both heartwarming and heartbreaking. It recounts the travails of the available medical interventions explored to counter the couples' fertility problems. I personally found this section most informative. When the author and her husband finally began to research the adoption process, some of the roadblocks and setbacks they faced were devastating. I have since met numerous people who faced similar experiences in the adoption process. It is painful to know that there are so many wonderful children needing adoption and that the actual process of adoption can be so arduous. Their personal experiences while adopting a Chinese child were informative, encouraging and a great starting point for anyone interested in exploring the possibilities of adopting abroad. Jill is an award-winning journalist and rarely agrees to do television interviews. When they ran her story in People Magazine, she agreed to do a number of television interviews because the topic was so personal and powerful for her. This book is a treasure and would be a welcomed addition to your own personal library. After reading it, you will want to recommend it to anyone considering adoption. Reader's Digest felt so highly about the book that they featured it worldwide in a range of languages in condensed versions. I think it is worth reading the original book cover to cover. You would not want to miss any detail of this bittersweet story. It will certainly touch you forever. I feel very comfortable giving 'An Empty Lap' a five-star rating.

I agree with the reviewer who found this couple "loathsome and selfish." I am also struggling with infertility, and hoped to find some words of wisdom in this book. What I got was a picture of a marriage that the husband clearly didn't want to be in and that seemed incredibly dysfunctional. I admire Ms. Smolowe's honesty, but she clearly planned to bring a child into a marriage with an "absentee live-in father." Why? I was also never fully convinced that she really wanted a baby, as opposed to feeling obligated to "have it all." I was happy to see that it all seemed to work out in the end (the "baby-saves-marriage" theme) but I wonder if there isn't more to the story. It was most helpful and inspiring when she stuck to their attempts to make the adoption decisions, but the marriage was so troubling that I questioned the author's sense of responsibility.

Anyone dealing with infertility or considering adoption will be well served by reading this book. The author does not sugar coat. She is honest and open, which is as refreshing as it is painful -- and leaves you feeling much less alone. Nor is she afraid to speak about the way these issues threaten to tear up the very bases of a marriage. This is not an easy book to read -- but you come out the other end much wiser about the true nature of the issues.

This book should be of great comfort to anyone who is going through infertility or is thinking about adoption. The author's honesty and openness is as refreshing as it is painful. While I myself have not been through this particular ordeal, parts of her struggles with her husband rang a familiar note, as I expect they might with any couple that has an honest and equal-footed relationship. Her descriptions of her experience also helped me better understand what some of my friends went (or are going) through. I recommend it both to anyone who is dealing with infertility and/or adoption, and to anyone who has a loved one currently caught up in those emotion-fraught issues.

Adoption stories so often are simplistic: We were miserable because we wanted a baby. We adopted a baby. Now we're happy as clams. Tra la.

Smolowe's gift to this burgeoning genre is her honesty about the long and difficult road to adoption. It's not just a question of home visits and paperwork; it involves the pain, in every sense, of infertility and infertility treatment; strains on a relationship; struggles for every would-be mother. The author's portrayal is not always chipper or cheery, but it is always searingly truthful. That's a rare accomplishment and makes "An Empty Lap" worthwhile reading.

As a story, this book was interesting. But, as a true-life story of adoption, it was horrible. This is a tale of two people who obviously can't stand one another adopting an innocent unsuspecting child into their selfish and inconsistent relationship, NOT an accurate depiction of adoption. As an adoptive parent myself, I can assure you that this is not realistic. First of all, most agencies would have turned them down flat because of Joe's frequent divorces, Jill's mental health issues, and their combined ages. Secondly, no social worker would have approved them a home study if they weren't 100% positive about the adoption and their relationship. This book makes it appear as though just anyone can and should adopt a child. It also makes it appear as though children are an entitlement, not a privelege. By the end of the book, I was so disgusted with Joe's bad attitude, abusive behavior, and selfish demeanor that I was ready to write him a letter telling him so. PLEASE, if you are considering adopting internationally, DO NOT read this book when making your decision. It isn't like this in the real world! My guess is that most of the people giving this book 5 stars aren't adoptive parents!

After seeing an excerpt of this book in a recent Reader's Digest, I read it and discovered a very different story than I'd expected. An Empty Lap is engrossing, but not uplifting, despite its positive ending (which is obvious from the cover photograph). I appreciate the author's candor, but the overly-detailed account of her tempestuous marriage and depression quickly becomes annoying in a book about infertility and adoption. Because I have been struggling with infertility for ten years and have recently started the process of international adoption, I began this book with an open mind, expecting to feel a great deal of empathy for the author and her husband. Instead, the more I read, the less I liked both of them and the more sympathy I felt for their adopted daughter.

The author's premise is that she "upended a stable relationship to try to make room for a child." This premise is not supported by the rest of the book, which reads primarily like a diary of this couple's volatile and unstable relationship. The author recounts multiple arguments between her and her husband, his bad temper and inconsistent reactions, yet asserts over and over that he will be a good father. One gets the idea that she is still trying to convince herself as well as the reader. For the author, a child appears to be a thing to have or a goal to be reached, and she admits some concern about her motives for motherhood. She even lies in the home study about her depression, which was bad enough that she was contemplating suicide before being medicated. Yet she continues to pursue adoption, settling on China because it is the only viable option left to a couple in their 40's and 50's. The author admits she'd "barely given China a thought" beyond being the place to pick up her baby, and worse, her husband's prejudice against Asians is mentioned several times throughout the book. Upon studying their daughter's photograph for the first time, he makes critical comments about the child's baldness, ears and even questions whether she has "mongolodism." (The last comment is, significantly, absent from the excerpt in Reader's Digest.) Where is the concern for this child's ethnic heritage and the complex issues related to international adoption? Where is the sense of love and responsibility that leads people to adopt a child? This book is not really helpful to those dealing with infertility and adoption. Its true focus is on a dysfunctional relationship between two selfish people who somehow adopt a child- despite constant friction in their marriage, their ages, their lack of appreciation for adoption and their ambivalence toward parenthood. The happy ending when they bring their daughter home and become doting parents seems disingenuous. Nevertheless, I deeply hope that the child (who is now five years old) is having a good life and that the author and her husband have matured enough to be the parents she deserves.

This is a book that must be read from beginning to end. It starts off kind of hard to take-- two adults seemingly set on pursuing their own goals, almost selfishly, certainly idealistically and wholeheartedly "90s." Why would anyone care? But as the book progresses,it becomes clear that it's really about the openness to love. And when the husband--at first a very reluctant father-- holds his adoptive daughter Becky in his arms and sings to her, the gap closes, the links forge. If you're a parent, imagine your child has been lost-- at a beach, an amusement park, a shopping mall-- wouldn't you put aside your own needs and desires and come together with your partner/spouse to find the child? Wouldn't the child become not only the focus but at that moment--and perhaps many others--the single most important thing in your life? I think maybe that's what happened with this couple, and this book is about their journey to that willingness, that openness-- that love. I dunno, but in my humble opinion (and as a mother), I saw this book to be about...sharing. If they could do it, so could we. I'd like to see a followup. I bet Joe and Jill have never ever looked back. And I bet, too, that Becky is a pretty happy kid.

Jill Smolowe has written, not just a journey, but an odyssey as she courageously discloses the internal struggles she and her husband faced in their attempts at parenthood. Obviously her husband preferred to stay in an uncommitted lifestyle, but finally agreed to marriage, a home in the suburbs and a child. This is not always an easy tale to read, as the main characters, including the author, lay bare their true emotions and feelings. However, it would help any couple struggling through this journey face the realities of depression, failures, doubts, racism and ultimately joy. No issue is sugar-coated.

I found the book compelling reading. I can't recommend it more highly.

This book has all of the ingredients for ultimate engagement, as it 's a story about process. Written by an acclaimed journalist, Jill Smolowe writes about her turbulent road of infertility experiences which ultimately leads her and her husband to an overseas adoption. Reared to believe that pregnancy would come easily, Smolowe is blind sighted in her late thirties as she discovers that nature is taking a different course. Determined, and then desperate, to have a baby, Smolowe takes us through her personal, emotional and brutally honest account of trying to get pregnant to coping with depression while in the throes of marital tribulations during the process. Written in page-turning fashion, this book is so intimate that the reader can't help but feel the author is talking to her closest friend. Riveting and compelling, this is a must read for couples who are considering parenthood, and who may not be on the same page with one another of how to get there. I couldn't put it down....