The Children Money Can Buy covers decades of dramatic societal change in foster care and adoption, including the pendulum swings regarding open adoption and attitudes toward birth parents, the gradual acceptance of gay and lesbian adoption, the proliferation of unregulated adoption facilitators in the U.S., ethical concerns related to international adoption, and the role money inevitably plays in the foster care and adoption systems. Special attention...

"Civilized societies attempt to take care of the most vulnerable among them. This includes children who have been abused, neglected, or abandoned--who, as a result, may end up in foster care. Readers will come to a more comprehensive understanding of the types of foster care, the benefits and potential pitfalls of such care, and how to navigate within a system designed to safeguard the individuals it serves. Helpful elements that augment the text...

"Sunshine, you're my baby and I'm your only mother. You must mind the one taking care of you, but she's not your mama." Ashley Rhodes-Courter spent nine years of her life in fourteen different foster homes, living by those words. As her mother spirals out of control, Ashley is left clinging to an unpredictable, dissolving relationship, all the while getting pulled deeper and deeper into the foster care system. Painful memories of being taken away...

"The shocking, deeply reported story of a murder-suicide that claimed the lives of six children--and a searing indictment of the American foster care system"-- On March 26, 2018, rescue workers discovered a crumpled SUV and the bodies of two women and several children at the bottom of a cliff beside the Pacific Coast Highway. Investigators soon concluded that the crash was a murder-suicide, but there was more to the story: Jennifer and Sarah Hart,...

Twelve families share stories of the triumph and heartache that accompanies adopting children from the US foster care system. --Publisher

Winner of an Academy Award in the Documentary Short category, Big Mama depicts a devoted grandmother's struggle to raise her orphaned grandson under the watchful eye of a complex and difficult social welfare system. Big Mama follows 18 months in the lives of Viola Dees, an African American grandmother, and Walter, her grandson, as she tries to raise him alone in South Central Los Angeles. Dees has taken care of Walter since the age of four, when his...

"In the early 1970s, a new wave of public service announcements urged parents to 'help end an American tradition' of child abuse. The message, relayed repeatedly over television and radio, urged abusive parents to seek help. Support groups for parents, including Parents Anonymous, proliferated across the country to deal with the seemingly burgeoning crisis. At the same time, an ever-increasing number of abused children were reported to child welfare...