by Gretchen Miller Wrobel (Editor), Emily Helder (Editor), Elisha Marr (Editor)
Adoption is practiced globally yielding a multidimensional area of study that cannot be characterized by a single movement or discipline. This handbook provides a central source of contemporary scholarship from a variety of disciplines with an international perspective and uses a multifaceted and interdisciplinary approach to ground adoption practices and activities in scientific research. Perspectives of birth/first parents, adoptive parents, and adopted persons are brought forth through a range of disciplinary and theoretical lenses.
Beginning with background and context of adoption, including sociocultural and political contexts, the handbook then addresses the diversity of adoptive families in terms of family forms, attitudes about adoption, and characteristics of adopted children. Next, research examining the lived experience of adoption for birth parents, adoptive parents, and adopted individuals is presented. A variety of outcomes for internationally and domestically adopted children and adoptive families is then discussed and the handbook concludes by addressing the development, training, and implementation of adoption competent clinical practice.
With cutting-edge research from top international scholars in a diversity of fields, The Routledge Handbook of Adoption should be considered essential reading for students, researchers, and practitioners across the fields of social work, sociology, psychology, medicine, family science, education, and demography.
Interviews with chapter authors can be accessed as podcasts (https: //anchor.fm/emily-helder) or as videos (https: //bit.ly/2FIoi0a).
Author Biography
Gretchen Miller Wrobel, Ph.D., is the University Professor of Psychology at Bethel University, USA and co-investigator on the Minnesota-Texas Adoption Research Project. Dr. Wrobel's research interests include information seeking related to curiosity about one's adoption and adoptive family communication. She is past editor of Adoption Quarterly.
Emily Helder, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Calvin University, USA. Dr. Helder is a clinical neuropsychologist whose research and training have focused on the impact of early experience on later development, language, and the experience of abuse, neglect, and early deprivation.
Elisha Marr, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of Gender Studies at Calvin University, USA. Dr. Marr's research on transracial adoption includes identifying trends in adoption rates, experiences of transracial adoptees and their adoptive parents, and racial preferences of adoptive parents. More recently, Marr has expanded to exploring motivations to adopt.