So you've made the decision to adopt. What's next? For starters, how do you know whether domestic or international adoption is right for you? (And what are the real differences between the two?) Adoption insider Elizabeth Swire Falker answers these questions and many more. As an attorney who practices in the area of adoption and has worked with hundreds of families, and as an adoptive parent herself, she offers expert advice on each stage of the process....

"What to do when you've been called to adopt and practical advice to make it work. Mary Ostyn married her sweetheart at nineteen, and the pair had four kids by their eighth anniversary. When their youngest was three, God opened their eyes to the needs of orphans all over the world--and answered Mary's longing for another baby. Over the next nine years the couple adopted two boys from Korea and four girls from Ethiopia. Ostyn, a beloved adoption writer...

""No Dog Should Die Alone" was the attention-grabbing - and heart-stirring - headline of journalist Laura T. Coffey's TODAY show website story about photographer Lori Fusaro's work with senior shelter pets. While generally calm, easy, and already house-trained, these animals often represent the highest-risk population at shelters. With gorgeous, joyful photographs and sweet, funny, true tales of "old dogs learning new tricks," Coffey and Fusaro show...

In this story about unlikely friendships and finding your place in the world, three very different girls, adopted as babies from the same Chinese orphanage, spend a week at a summer camp, where the adoption agency coordinator wants them to journal their "bonding" experience.

International adoption is in a state of virtual collapse, rates having fallen by more than half since 2004 and continuing to fall. Yet around the world millions of orphaned and vulnerable children need permanent homes, and thousands of American and European families are eager to take them in. Many government officials, international bureaucrats, and social commentators claim these adoptions are not "in the best interests" of the child. They claim...

Prior to 1990, fewer than five percent of domestic infant adoptions were open. In 2012, ninety percent or more of adoption agencies are recommending open adoption. Yet these agencies do not often or adequately prepare either adopting parents or birth parents for the road ahead of them! The adult parties in open adoptions are left floundering. There are many resources on why to do open adoption, but what about how? Open adoption isn't just something...

Illustrations and rhyming text follow a young girl experiencing the joy of adopting a dog.

"A powerful decade-long study of adoption in the age of Roe, revealing the grief of the American mothers for whom the choice to parent was never real. Adoption has always been viewed as a beloved institution for building families, as well as a mutually agreeable common ground in the abortion debate, but little attention has been paid to the lives of mothers who relinquish infants for private adoption. Relinquished reveals adoption to be a path of...

Dispelling the myth that you are alone, Open-Eyed Adoption takes a look at the importance of self-kindness and shows the way to get the support you need. Revealing interviews--from doctors, therapists, adoptive parents, adult adoptees, and birth moms--shed light on the origins of trauma, how different DNA really does have an affect, and the affect of hidden emotions like "Will you leave, too? Is there something I could finally push you away? If my...

"A searching, eloquent memoir about the joys and hardships of open adoption God and Jetfire is a mother's account of her decision to surrender her son in an open adoption and of their relationship over the twelve years that follow. Facing an unplanned pregnancy at twenty-two, Amy Seek and her ex-boyfriend begin an exhaustive search for a family to raise their child. They sift through hundreds of "Dear Birth Mother" letters, craft an extensive questionnaire,...