International Advances in Adoption Research for Practice

This is a unique compilation of cross-cultural and international attitudes towards adoption research and outcomes.
Whilst informal adoption of children has probably always existed across all human societies, this work is timely in that interest in the role of legal adoption as both a child welfare solution and as a means of alternative family formation for adults wanting to become parents has never been higher.
This book is an edited collection of 13 papers based on invited keynote presentations or paper symposia presentations given at the Second International Conference on Adoption Research (ICAR2) 2006.
It gives a unique Cross-cultural look at adoption from worldwide, multidisciplinary community of distinguished and emerging adoption researchers.
International appeal, with different countries laws, attitudes and outcomes fully explored

Gretchen Miller Wrobel is a Professor of Psychology at Bethel University, USA, and Investigator on the Minnesota-Texas Adoption Research Project focusing on the impact of openness in adoptive relationships. Her main interests are family communication about adoption and adoption-related curiosity.
Elsbeth Neil is a Senior Lecturer in Social Work in the School of Social Work and Psychology at the University of East Anglia, UK. She has experience as a childcare social worker in the UK. Her main research interests are in contact after adoption and post adoption support services, particularly in relation to children adopted from public care.

Contributors.
Foreword.
Preface.
Acknowledgements.
PART 1: ADOPTION IN CONTEXT.
Chapter 1: Nature, Nurture and Narratives (David Howe).
Chapter 2: How Tight Was the Seal? A Reappraisal of Adoption Records in the United States, England and New Zealand, 1851-1955 (E. Wayne Carp).
Chapter 3: From Bucharest to Beijing: Changes in Countries Sending Children for International Adoption 1990 to 2006 (Peter Selman).
Chapter 4: The Ecology of Adoption (Jesús Palacios).
PART 2: RESEARCH PERSPECTIVES.
Chapter 5: Children from Care CAN Be Adopted (Ruth G. McRoy, Courtney J. Lynch, Amy Chanmugam, Elissa Madden and Susan Ayers-Lopez).
Chapter 6: Understanding Links Between Birth Parents and the Child They Have Placed for Adoption: Clues for Assisting Adopting Families and for Reducing Genetic Risk (David Reiss, Leslie D. Leve and Amy L. Whitesel).
Chapter 7: Effects of Profound Early Institutional Deprivation: An Overview of Findings from a UK Longitudinal Study of Romanian Adoptees (Michael Rutter, Celia Beckett, Jenny Castle, Emma Colvert, Jana Kreppner, Mitul Mehta, Suzanne Stevens and Edmund Sonuga-Barke).
Chapter 8: International Adoption Comes of Age: Development of International Adoptees from a Longitudinal and Meta-Analytical Perspective (Femmie Juffer and Marinus H. van Ijzendoorn).
Chapter 9: Attachment Representations and Adoption Outcome: On the Use of Narrative Assessments to Track the Adaptation of Previously Maltreated Children in Their New Families (Miriam Steele, Jill Hodges, Jeanne Kaniuk, Howard Steele, Kay Asquith and Saul Hillman).
Chapter 10: Adopted Adolescents: Who and What Are They Curious About (Gretchen Miller Wrobel and Kristin Dillon)?
Chapter 11: Emerging Voices - Reflections on Adoption from the Birth Mother’s Perspective (Ruth Kelly).
Chapter 12: The Corresponding Experiences of Adoptive Parents and Birth Relatives in Open Adoptions (Elsbeth Neil).
Chapter 13: Emotional Distance Regulation over the Life Course in Adoptive Kinship Networks (Harold D. Grotevant).
Chapter 14: Connecting Research to Practice (Gretchen Miller Wrobel and Elsbeth Neil).
Index.