Genealogy

"Baby safe haven" laws, which allow a parent to relinquish a newborn baby legally and anonymously at a specified institutional location--such as a hospital or fire station--were established in every state between 1999 and 2009. Promoted during a time of heated public debate over policies on abortion, sex education, teen pregnancy, adoption, welfare, immigrant reproduction, and child abuse, safe haven laws were passed by the majority of states with little contest. These laws were thought to offer a solution to the consequences of unwanted pregnancies: mothers would no longer be burdened with children they could not care for, and newborn babies would no longer be abandoned in dumpsters. Yet while these laws are well meaning, they ignore the real problem: some women lack key social and economic supports that mothers need to raise children. Safe haven laws do little to help disadvantaged women. Instead advocates of safe haven laws target teenagers, women of color, and poor women with safe haven information and see relinquishing custody of their newborns as an act of maternal love. Disadvantaged women are preemptively judged as "bad" mothers whose babies would be better off without them. Laury Oaks argues that the labeling of certain kinds of women as potential "bad" mothers who should consider anonymously giving up their newborns for adoption into a "loving" home should best be understood as an issue of reproductive justice. Safe haven discourses promote narrow images of who deserves to be a mother and reflect restrictive views on how we should treat women experiencing unwanted pregnancy.

The Handbook of Adoption is the first text to specifically address adoption concerns and also serves as a sourcebook to train mental health and behavioural health professionals. This book addresses topics in adoption that reflect the many dimensions of theory, research, development, race, adjustment and clinical practice which can, and do, affect adoption triad members. Contributors to this volume are experts, many of whom are directly involved in adoption-related research and practice and who can provide insight from personal and professional experience. Key features include: - the combination of theory with concrete examples that reflect real-life situations in the treatment issues and the training and education sections of each chapter; - three learning goals for each chapter as well as three to four major questions to summarize the goals of the chapter; - reflection questions in each section of the text that allow readers to apply the knowledge they have learnt from each section.