ABSTRACT
Adoption is practiced globally yielding a multidimensional area of study that cannot be characterized by a single movement or discipline. This handbook provides a central source of contemporary scholarship from a variety of disciplines with an international perspective and uses a multifaceted and interdisciplinary approach to ground adoption practices and activities in scientific research. Perspectives of birth/first parents, adoptive parents, and adopted persons are brought forth through a range of disciplinary and theoretical lenses.
Beginning with background and context of adoption, including sociocultural and political contexts, the handbook then addresses the diversity of adoptive families in terms of family forms, attitudes about adoption, and characteristics of adopted children. Next, research examining the lived experience of adoption for birth parents, adoptive parents, and adopted individuals is presented. A variety of outcomes for internationally and domestically adopted children and adoptive families is then discussed and the handbook concludes by addressing the development, training, and implementation of adoption competent clinical practice.
With cutting-edge research from top international scholars in a diversity of fields, The Routledge Handbook of Adoption should be considered essential reading for students, researchers, and practitioners across the fields of social work, sociology, psychology, medicine, family science, education, and demography.
Interviews with chapter authors can be accessed as podcasts (https://anchor.fm/emily-helder) or as videos (https://bit.ly/2FIoi0a).
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|104 pages
Adoption in context
chapter 7|15 pages
The Early Growth and Development Study
part II|111 pages
Diversity in adoption
chapter 13|12 pages
Post-Institutionalized Adopted Children
chapter 14|14 pages
Adoptees With Disabilities Or Medically Involved Children
part III|117 pages
Lived experience
chapter 17|15 pages
Transracial Adoptees
chapter 22|13 pages
Adoptive Microaggressions
part IV|97 pages
Outcomes
part V|75 pages
Adoption competency