検索キーワード： 養子縁組・里親

Have you ever thought you’d adopt a child(ren), but after finding out it costs thousands of dollars, kicked that idea to the curb? Most people believe that all children in foster care return to their biological families. Many do not know that 50 percent of children in foster care need an adoptive family and that adopting children through foster care costs zero to $2,500. One hundred twenty thousand US children who are ready to be adopted are hoping you’ll listen to this book.

The echo of the spinning tire beneath her car seemed to ring louder than the music she attempted to drown her thoughts in. Watching the world pass by in a haze, America sped down the freeway and out of the city while flashbacks of her long-forgotten childhood consumed her. Her parents failed her; the foster care system failed her; social workers, probation officers, teachers, and everyone who was supposed to protect her tossed her aside.

The adoption agency made a mistake. A mother welcomed in a child who brought fear and destruction into the home. She wrestles with God, doctors, and social workers over what to do next. Quick-thinking, leaps of faith, and some dark humor challenges listeners to ask themselves: Do I have what it takes to raise a child with a harrowing past...or an uncertain future? Un-Adoptable? reveals deeply personal questions that arise when pursuing this parenting path.

Searching for Mom is a “disarmingly honest” mother-daughter story. Sara Easterly spent a lifetime looking for the perfect mother. As an adoptee, she had difficulties attaching to her mother, struggled with her faith, lived the effects of intergenerational wounding, and felt an inherent sense of being unwanted that drove her to perfectionism, suicidal ideations, and fantasy mothers.

What happens when your family tells you one thing, but a DNA test tells you another? Georgina Lawton grew up in a loving family but she didn’t look like anyone else. She has dark eyes, curly hair and brown skin. Both her parents were white. Georgina took a DNA test. The results changed her life forever. With millions around the world using 'do-it-yourself' DNA testing kits, Georgina follows the stories of those learning to live with the results.

Foster carer Maggie Hartley is used to all manner of children arriving on her doorstep, but nothing can prepare her for sisters Billy and Bo when they arrive at her home. It is clear from the moment she sets eyes on them that four-year-old Bo and seven-year-old Billy have clearly been subjected to unimaginable neglect, and it takes all of Maggie's skills as a foster carer to try to connect with the volatile little girls, who seem far younger than their years.

Ray Studevent grew up between two worlds. Born to a white, heroin-addicted mother and Black, violently alcoholic father, the odds were stacked against him from day one. When his parents abandoned him at the age of five, after living in a world no child should experience, he was saved from the foster-care system by his father's uncle Calvin, who offered him stability and a loving home. When Calvin tragically died two years later, it was up to his widow, Lemell, to raise Ray. But this was no easy task.

Children who have been adopted and/or shuttled through the foster-care system experience trauma at a much higher rate than other kids, which can make it difficult for them to trust, relax, regulate their emotions, and connect with their new families. As a parent, learning how to heal attachment trauma, attune to your child's needs, identify triggers, and create felt safety is essential to providing the loving, supportive, and stable home they need to thrive. Written for parents of adopted and foster kids of all ages, this book offers resources for handling common concerns.

Dustin Lance Black, the Oscar-winning screenwriter and activist, explores attitudes towards surrogacy. He shares his own journey to have a child, with husband Tom Daley, through surrogacy. Dustin beautifully and thoroughly explores how the question of surrogacy links to wider societal questions: how much control do women legally have over their body? Do we have a right to know our genetic history? How can LGBTQ+ couples shield their children from homophobia?

How to find an outlet for a love that demands expression? Single, in her mid-40s and having experienced a sudden early menopause, the realisation comes to Peggy quietly and clearly: she decides to adopt a child. But the preparation is arduous and the scrutiny is intense. There are questions about past lives, about her own childhood, heritage, capabilities, expectations and identity.

Rowan Kelly knows she’s lucky. After all, if she hadn’t been adopted, she could have spent her days in a rice paddy, or a windowless warehouse assembling iPhones - they make iPhones in Korea, right? Either way, slowly dying of boredom on Long Island is surely better than the alternative. But as she matures, she realizes that she’ll never know if she has her mother’s eyes, or if she’d be in America at all had her adoptive parents been able to conceive. Rowan sets out to prove that she can be someone’s first choice.

Abby's Story is the second book in the Thrown Away Children series by author and foster mum Louise Allen. She doesn't want this baby. She can't look after this baby. She will never be able to love this baby. Little Abby's life begins badly, then just gets worse. Now foster mum Louise and her family must help her deal with the truth of her past to give her the chance of a future.

Named after the lager that christened her at birth, Stella's life is characterised instability and neglect. Her teenage mother abandons her in the first few weeks of her life, and left in the 'care' of her father, she ends up lying deserted in a house with no food, no water, no clothes and no warmth. She eventually lands in the care of foster carer Louise, who is determined to change her life for the better.

Melissa Ohden is 14 when she learns she is the survivor of a botched abortion. In this intimate memoir, she details for the first time her search for her biological parents, and her own journey from anger and shame to faith and empowerment.

Maggie’s story begins in suburban New Jersey, in a comfortable middle-class family that supports her decision to travel the world during a gap year before starting college. During her travels, the trajectory of her life alters when she has a surprise encounter with a Nepali girl breaking rocks in a quarry. Maggie decides to invest her life savings of 5,000 dollars to buy a piece of land and open a children’s home in Nepal.

The moving story of what one woman learned from fostering a newborn - about injustice, about making mistakes, about how to better love and protect people beyond our immediate kin.

The adoption business was founded on secrecy and lies. American Baby lays out how a lucrative and exploitative industry removed children from their birth mothers and placed them with hopeful families, fabricating stories about infants' origins and destinations, then closing the door firmly between the parties forever. Adoption agencies and other organizations that purported to help pregnant women struck unethical deals with doctors and researchers for pseudoscientific "assessments," and shamed millions of women into surrendering their children.

When foster carer Cathy Glass is asked to foster Darcy-May, a two-day-old baby, she is very concerned. The baby is coming to her straight from the hospital and will have no contact with her teenage mother, Haylea. Even more worrying, she will be brought to Cathy with a police escort, as it’s vital her extended family don't know where she is.

Sophie’s journey to motherhood began aged 30 with a cancer diagnosis that stole her fertility. Today, Sophie is older (40), wiser (and agonisingly excellent at hindsight) and somewhat battered. Through interminable cycles of hope and failure, her infertility story spanned three countries, five surrogates and a debt she’d rather not dwell on. Part memoir, part manifesto, The Mother Project is the epic story of Sophie’s quest for happiness.

The Watsons are no strangers to sibling placements, but when Casey takes the call from her supervising social worker one frosty January morning, she can instantly tell from the tone of her colleague’s voice that there’s a complicated case ahead. And she’s right. A four-day-old baby boy called Tommy - born in prison - plus his four-year-old half-brother, the lively Seth. A month later, the very moment she gets out of prison, the boys’ mother - a 19-year-old called Jenna - also follows.