Book Review: Sisson (2024). Relinquished: The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood. New York: St. Martin’s Press. ISBN: 978-1250286772

A larger proportion of women in the United States than in any other developed country—though less than 1 per cent—relinquish infants for adoption. In 2006, many of them told their stories for the first time in Ann Fessler’s book The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade. Gretchen Sisson’s 2024 book Relinquished: The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood is a worthy successor, writing about the recent past with abortion more available, more such women depicted in popular culture, and adoption practices currently often involving less secrecy and some contact between them, the adoptive parents and their adopted-away children. Sisson’s book analyzes interviews, conducted in 2010 and 2020, of over a hundred women who entrusted their children to adoption. The aim is to understand how their feelings about relinquishment changed over time, as well as what their needs were and became.

The book’s first five chapters present five angles on relinquishing mothers’ experiences related to adoption, including narratives women give of their lives at times when they were considering adoption or experiencing its aftermath. In the first chapter, “The Domestic Suppliers of Infants”, Sisson reveals the lack of understanding of adoption shown in the Dobbs decision, reviews the history of mother-child separation in slave, Native American, and poor white immigrant families in the United States, the twentieth century “social demand for babies” (p. 19) and how Georgia Tann of the Tennessee Children’s Home Society turned deception and secrecy in adoption into a big business. She discusses the higher number of adoptions after World War II, resulting from “the increase in nonmarital sexual relationships, the inaccessibility of contraception for unmarried couples, and the illegality of abortion” (p. 21), and for decades after also because of the Indian Adoption Project. Roe v. Wade reduced the number of infants available. Transnational adoptions increased until 2004 and then plummeted; transracial domestic adoptions continued to grow. In Sisson’s sample, 55% of relinquishing mothers are still white, but this percentage is smaller than the 90% white of twenty years ago. Lack of financial resources is crucial for the women she interviewed. Sisson notes the lack of social support for single American mothers (contrasting with the safety net in other developed countries), and estimates that nearly one in six American children, mostly nonwhite, live in poverty. US leaders of both parties seem to see this as less a problem than the fact that there are not enough children released for adoption to satisfy would-be parents. Maternity homes and adoption agencies have often had religious affiliations and framed adoption as a social good.

The second chapter, “Choosing Life”, focuses on how the common rhetorical framing of “choosing life” and “adoption instead of abortion” has little resonance for many relinquishing mothers. In the Turnaway study of 956 US women denied abortions, only 9 per cent gave their children up for adoption—but that’s much higher than the 0.5 per cent adoption rate among all American births. In their situation “parenting was seen as the greater hardship of the options that remained available”. Adoption becomes more frequent when choices are more constrained (p. 62), for example when pregnancy is discovered very late by a woman with little money. While these women came into contact with social workers, they received little help except opportunities to have their children adopted. Counseling at crisis pregnancy centers available is usually pro-adoption and religious.

The third chapter, “The Family My Heartbreak Made Possible”, begins emphasizing “the intense sense of loss and sadness immediately after the adoption” that “came up in nearly every interview” (p. 105). Sisson finds that “for most birth mothers, relinquishment is fraught with grief, ambiguous loss, mourning, shame, regret and isolation” (p. 108). But the chapter then discusses the post-1980s development of open adoptions, in which the relinquishing mother chooses the adoptive parents, then sometimes meets them, and since the late nineties might have continued contact with her adopted-away child. Within the first few years after adoption, such openness increases mothers’ adjustment and satisfaction with the process. But their optimism about a continuing relationship in their child’s life is often like a honeymoon after which happiness does not last. Financial divides, religious, cultural, and racial differences, and the vicissitudes of life make it hard to stay connected, and the sense of loss is painful. Adoption agency marketing now often offers openness, without acknowledging that such an agreement is not legally binding on the adoptive parents.

The fourth chapter, “Ten Years Later”, analyzes interviews that return to birthmothers ten years or more after they relinquished their children. Surveys find that most birthmothers who had some contact with their child wanted more. Agencies failed to deliver on promises of support. Sometimes they asked birth mothers to speak to others about their experiences, and those who did eventually stopped because of the pain they had to reveal. The birth mothers in the Turnaway Study had more regret than those who were denied abortions and raised their children. They also had more regret than a sample outside the Study who had abortions. None of the relinquishing mothers felt better about their decision ten years later—the only one who did not feel worse had been able to maintain an extremely close relationship with her daughter and the family who adopted her.

The fifth chapter, “Mothers, Martyrs, Myths”, discusses the frequent misrepresentations of the birth mother in US popular culture. In a few cases, she happily walks away—or even more improbably, as in the movie Juno, bikes. Other stereotypes appear: the “‘scary’…impoverished, addicted, and often incarcerated Black and Latina mothers from The Blind Side, Orange is the New Black, and This Is Us” (p. 199), or the “baby stealer” (p. 200) who wants to regain custody are contrasted with adoptive parents presented as “white saviors”. It is infrequent for the relinquishing mother’s grief to be taken seriously. Sisson argues that in these narratives “Birth mothers are perfect mothers—the embodiment of love and self-sacrifice—until they express any desire to raise or know their child” (p. 203). Some exceptions are found in the TV series This is Us and in Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel, The Handmaid’s Tale. The chapter follows this survey of popular culture with examples of adoption agencies and conservative organizations such as the Family Research Council, LDS Family Services, the National Council for Adoption, and BraveLove promoting a positive image of relinquishment. BraveLove shares positive words from birthmothers, but Sisson quotes others who see such views as unrealistic, used as marketing.

The concluding chapter, “To Parent the Children We Have”, deals with the framework of reproductive justice and how it has been extended, especially by people of color and adoptees, beyond its initial focus on abortion rights. Loretta Ross defines it as including “(1) the right to have a child; (2) the right not to have a child; and (3) the right to parent the children we have” as well as “the necessary enabling conditions to realize these rights” (“Understanding Reproductive Justice: Transforming the Pro-Choice Movement”, Off Our Backs 36, no. 4 (2006): 14–19). Sisson looks at various social movements in their relation to relinquishing mothers, going beyond the limitations of white-led feminism. Adoptees, and especially transnational and transracial adoptees, have made such connections. She gives the history of the Ohio Birthmother Group and the MPower Alliance as more reliable sources of support than the conditional help provided by adoption agencies. Birthmothers have organized around open access to original birth records and citizenship for transnational adoptees.

Birthmothers typically have less legal help than adoptive parents, and those Sisson interviewed suggested reforms such as greater clarity about their legal rights, especially in an open adoption; longer time during which they could change their mind after relinquishment; access to crisis care; longer support from agencies; and a smaller role for money. Sisson points to one agency, Pact, which sustains itself by educational and mental health programming, family camps, and the like, so does not rely on placing babies for its survival.

Family preservation—creating conditions that allow people to parent their children, exemplified by an organization called Saving Our Sisters—is the advocacy to which Sisson’s subjects are most attracted. Considering this work leads her to one of her central statements: “adoption is about transferring infants from mothers that have become convinced—by virtue of their poverty, their youth, or their single status, or all three—that they are poorly prepared to parent” (p. 255). She gives details: the United States ranks among the lowest of countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development “in spending on family benefits, child care, and early childhood education, and yet is above average on gross childcare fees as a percentage of average earnings” and unlike other OECD countries, guarantees no parental leave (p. 256). Countries who rank high on such benefits have very low relinquishment rates. After advocating for the circulation of more accurate information about abortion, Sisson concludes with a discussion of the movement for the abolition of adoption. This movement as she describes it is positive rather than negative—it requires a more robust safety net and “embraces supported crisis care, kinship arrangements, and temporary guardianships that leave open opportunities for reconciliation and reconnection with families and communities of origin” (p. 263).

This is a well written and thoroughly researched book that illuminates its arguments with many quotations from its subjects’ accounts of their lives. Every chapter except the last ends with two personal stories of 5–8 pages. These include many details such as how social workers ad agencies treated them, the frequent influence of religion, especially Catholic, and related “pro-life” movement commitment in their families and schools, and what it feels like to look at a big book with pictures of many couples hoping to adopt. There are variations in race, degrees of family support, age, and relationships with the birth father—in one case a rapist. We read one story in which ten years later the birthmother feels like she is part of a large extended family with the adopting parents, another which shows the lack of legal requirements for openness, and where there has been no contact for over a year and no plans for it to resume, and many other stories between those poles.

Many people trying to reform adoption practices thought that open adoption would deal with adoptees’ and birthmothers’ wish to remain connected. Sisson’s research shows that current practice is often not sufficient. Legal requirements for regular contact might help in some cases, but not all. She writes of one birthmother and her son, “The pain of repeatedly saying goodbye to him was acute” (p. 165).

Some scholars might contemplate following up Sisson’s research by interviewing surrogate mothers ten years after they relinquished their children. From the viewpoint of adoptive parents, adopting a child and arranging a surrogacy may seem similar, but the situations are different—pregnancy in surrogacy is intended and pregnancy followed by adoption is not. While both can be considered as exploiting the reproductive potential of poor women, there are significant examples of altruistic surrogacy, without economic imbalance. See for example Grace Kao’s, My Body, Their Baby (Stanford University Press, 2023). Perhaps suggesting a range of experience similar to that mentioned two paragraphs previously, Kao found her own surrogacy leading to a sense of extended family.

Adoption is much more widely praised and practised in the US than surrogacy. However, Sisson emphasizes much more than previous scholars its connection with the inadequacy of the American social safety net. While it has formed many happy families, she concludes, “adoption is a practice rooted in inequity” (p. 264).

Adoptive parents and, increasingly, adoptees, have had large audiences for their experiences. This book allows us to hear the voices of those on whose relinquishment adoptive families depend. It is essential to understanding adoption in the US today.