Synopses & Reviews
"Impressively reported... Sisson] uses her deep well of knowledge to make the case that adoption is no solution for Americans' reduced access to abortion." —San Francisco Chronicle
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 constrained choice for those for whom abortion is inaccessible, or for whom parenthood is untenable. The stories of relinquishing mothers are stories about our country's refusal to care for families at the most basic level, and to instead embrace an individual, private solution to a large-scale, social problem.
With the recent decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization revoking abortion protections, we are in a political moment in which adoption is, increasingly, being revealed as an institution devoted to separating families and policing parenthood under the guise of feel-good family-building. Rooted in a long-term study, Relinquished is an analysis of hundreds of in-depth interviews with American mothers who placed their children for domestic adoption. The voices of these women are powerful and heartrending; they deserve to be heard.
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"A devastating and urgent condemnation of America's adoption industry."
Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
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“These fascinating and often heartrending accounts are both varied and echoing, resoundingly so….A crucial piece in understanding reproductive justice and the unequal ways we create and care for families in this country.” Booklist
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"Provocative, urgent."
Kirkus Reviews
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"Contributes to our national understanding of what reproductive justice really means."
Gloria Steinem
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"As jurists and politicians push adoption as an alternative to abortion, Gretchen Sisson's compelling, compassionate book is timely and essential reading. By putting birth parents at the center, Relinquished complicates the rosy popular narratives of adoption, liberal and conservative alike. But it is also a profoundly human and moving account of real people's lives, told with sensitivity and grace."
Irin Carmon, co-author of Notorious RBG
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"A compelling read, an important, thought-provoking book."
Arlie Hochschild, sociologist and author of Strangers In Their Own Land
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"Meticulously and empathetically researched. The stories of these women are gripping, intimate, and powerful."
Anna Malaika Tubbs, sociologist and author of The Three Mothers
About the Author
Gretchen Sisson, Ph.D., is a qualitative sociologist studying abortion and adoption at Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH) in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences at University of California, San Francisco. Her research was cited in the Supreme Court's dissent in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization and has been covered in The Washington Post, The Nation, All Things Considered and Consider This, New York Magazine, VOX, and other outlets.