Customer Reviews

Second Choice: Growing Up Adopted

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As an adoptee I worried that Robert Anderson's humour on adoption was far too black. (His adoptee reading suggestions, Bedtime Favourites; My Mother Loved Me So Much She Gave Me Up; Your Birthparents Crashed and Burned; and of course Be Good or We'll Take You back !)

However, the very many golden nuggets of truth I found and returned to again and again were tremendously useful to me.

In "Search and Consequences" he describes two models for the search for ones birth parents; the medical "deficiency" model where the adoptee lacks information or experience which can be found by reunification with the birth parent(s); and the psychological trauma model where one acknowledges and responds to the trauma of adoption which was passively endured as a child, by actively mastering that trauma during a search. Finding is not imperative. The therapeutic agent is internal and the goal is growth, not cure.

He describes the "abstract, diffuse conflicts" adoption can cause, resulting in low self esteem, a lack of self confidence, feeling incomplete, a lack of a sense of belonging. He demonstrates the process of (unconscious) transference and the mayhem it creates in his own relationships.

And a lot more.

Perhaps the humour seems so black because of not having examined closely ones own feelings about the sometimes very uncomfortable issues he raises. As an aid to doing so this book does a great service.

(For light relief and more gloriously black humour on adoption look for Bastard Nation on the web).

If the subject is relevant to you I recommend the book very highly.

Great book for all touched by adoption. Robert Andersen's book is compelling, thought provocative, and worth reading twice. Helpful not only to adoptees, but also for prospective adoptive parents seeking to understand the impact of adoption on their children. I found it an extremely insightful story. Easy to read... hard to put down. Excellent!

This book gets to the heart of what it feels like to be "sold" and not be given the benefit of a paper past like a legal adoption affords adoptees. Robert Andersen conveys to the reader that the frustration that occurs in a persons life when they are rendered non-existent by illegal adoptions should never happen. We are worth more than that.