The Baby Market

The Case for Adoption Reform

Anne Moody

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
• Year: 2023
• eBook ISBN:
  9781538174722
• Edition: 1

A passionate and revealing examination of the unethical processes taking place within the U.S adoption system today.

Written by the director of an adoption agency and the author of The Children Money Can Buy, The Baby Market illustrates the dramatic changes that have taken place in infant adoption over the past two decades, resulting in what feels like a wild west of adoption in which money is the might that makes right and the law is very hard to find. The book follows the true stories of women who choose adoption for their babies, some of them making this choice multiple times. There are also stories from adoptive parents who relate their experiences with scams, disappointments, emotional and financial exploitation, and the dubious "assistance" of baby brokers. The process of adopting a baby involves struggle, uncertainty, and even heartache but, for many people, somehow manages to end happily when birth and adoptive parents create connections that respectfully and even joyfully meet their need for one another. The Baby Market provides welcome encouragement and much needed information about how to avoid the numerous pitfalls inherent in adoption and offers suggestions for the reform of a corrupted adoption system.

Table of contents

• Author’s Note on Terms
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction Can This Be Real?
• Chapter 1 The Vagaries of the Marketplace
• Chapter 2 Owen and Kira: Adoptive Family’s Story
• Chapter 3 Why Is Adoption So Hard?
• Chapter 4 Lindy: A Birth Mother’s Story
• Chapter 5 Where Does All the Money Go?
• Chapter 6 Yes, It’s Legal
• Chapter 7 Middlemen
• Chapter 8 Julia: A Single Adoptive Mother’s Story
• Chapter 9 Birth Mothers in the Media
• Chapter 10 Did Birth Mothers Change?
• Chapter 11 What Will We Tell the Children?
• Chapter 12 What about the Siblings?
• Chapter 13 Matt and Hannah: A Foster-to-Adopt Story
• Chapter 14 What about All the Kids in Foster Care?
• Chapter 15 Working with the Child Welfare System
• Chapter 16 Not to Scare You, But . . .
• Chapter 17 Adoption Specialists
• Chapter 18 Adoption Reform
• Chapter 19 Closing the Gray Market
• Epilogue
• About the Author