Adoption Beyond Borders: How International Adoption Benefits Children

by Rebecca Compton

Overview

Now Available in Paperback, Adoption Beyond Borders endorses international adoption as a viable path to child welfare by exploring key topics including:
· Effects of institutionalization on children's developing brains, cognitive abilities, and socioemotional functioning
· Challenges of navigating issues of identity when adopting across national, cultural, and racial lines
· Strong emotional bonds that form even without genetic relatedness
· How adoptive families can address the special needs of children who experienced early neglect and deprivation, thereby providing a supportive environment in which to flourish
· Features the author's first-hand accounts of her own adoption journey as she visited a Kazakhstani orphanage daily for nearly a year, and illustrates the complexities and implications of the research evidence

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780190247799
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	03/01/2016
Pages:	250
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Rebecca J. Compton is professor of psychology at Haverford College, where she has taught since 1999. She received her BA from Vassar College and her PhD in biological psychology from University of Chicago. Her previous research focused on executive function, attention, and emotion regulation in the human brain, and she has co-authored Cognitive Neuroscience, 4th Edition (2018).

Table of Contents

PART 1: The Adopted Child: Patterns of Loss and Gain
Ch. 1: Introduction
Ch. 2: Physical and Cognitive Development
Ch. 3: Social and Emotional Development
Ch. 4: Culture, Race, and Identity

PART 2: Adoptive Families: Biological, Social, and Clinical Approaches
Ch. 5: Adoption and the Biology of Parenting
Ch. 6: Adoptive Families in Society
Ch. 7: Special Needs and Interventions
Ch. 8: Conclusions and Policy Considerations

Editorial Reviews

"This is one of the very best, most important books written on the plight of unparented children worldwide and the role international adoption can and should play for such children...This book is balanced, entirely fair in airing all important positions. But it is hard-hitting, insisting on what the evidence tells us about the important facts and how those facts should drive policy." —Adoption Quarterly

"Inspired by her own challenging experience as a parent adopting a child from Kazakhstan, academic psychologist Rebecca Compton has authored a clear, well-documented argument that a child's long term health, development and socioemotional well being are largely determined by the presence of devoted, contingent caregivers and a stable family during early life. Addressing criticisms with evidence rather than supposition, she reaches the indisputable conclusion that international adoption remains the best hope for many unparented children worldwide." —Dana E. Johnson, MD, PhD, Professor of Pediatrics, University of Minnesota

"This is a deeply intelligent book that should be a must read for adoptive parents, policy makers, academics, child welfare professionals, and all who care about children. It is beautifully written, insightful and wonderfully wise. Compton destroys many of the stereotypes that dominate discourse on international adoption, and provides an understanding of the reality based on an in-depth assessment of the social science." —Elizabeth Bartholet, JD, Morris Wasserstein Professor of Law and Faculty Director of the Child Advocacy Program, Harvard Law School

"Adoption Beyond Borders is written in clear English without jargon. It mixes the author's personal story with a wealth of data and there are many pages of notes and references at the end. It paints a very positive view of international adoption and dispels many myths about why it is a problem or is an inherently secondary form of parenting. It will be useful both to read[ers] thinking about adopting themselves, those who are interested in adoption policies at state and international levels." —Metapsychology Onine Reviews

From the Publisher