your adoption post is getting around. it's really interesting. do you have any more sources I could read?
Sure! (I did see your follow up message anon, lol, but I had this ready so here's even more info!)
I would recommend this one to start:
Relinquished: The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood, by Gretchen Sisson (general background on coercion and adoption).
Shorter articles/organizations to watch:
I Have Studied Child Protective Services for Decades. It Needs to Be Abolished. (Book excerpt from Dorothy Roberts [Torn Apart] via Mother Jones)
The Policy Circle: The Failures and Future of the U.S. Foster Care System (Policy deep dive on the current state of foster care in the U.S., I typically find The Policy Circle as a decent source)
Family Policy Project is an organization collecting NYC parent experiences of the foster care system and surveillance state, their entire blog history is worth checking out
Start here for books on foster care explicitly:
Shattered Bonds: The Color Of Child Welfare, by Dorothy Roberts (one of the seminal books arguing for child welfare reform, originally published in 2002, but still very relevant).
Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families--and How Abolition Can Build a Safer World, by Dorothy Roberts (same author as the previous book, this time explicitly arguing for abolition, with updated arguments, statistics, and case studies twenty years later).
To the End of June: The Intimate Life of American Foster Care, by Cris Beam (this one is more mixed/neutral on foster care than the others, but I believe it highlights the exceptions that prove the rule - the author became a foster parent via having a student/mentee that needed a caregiver, and she profiles the foster system more generally while learning how to be a caregiver for her own foster child)
Domestic violence, abuse, and the implications for the foster care system:
Children of Coercive Control, by Evan Stark (this is the book I referenced originally, where Evan Start expresses regret at how his metric for domestic violence has become weaponized against women who are victims of controlling male partners)
We Were Once A Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America, by Roxanna Asgarian (the Hart children's case, focuses on the Texas court system and interstate adoptions and the marginalization of birth families)
No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us, by Rachel Snyder (devastating breakdown on the stats of domestic violence and the ways abusive men use the criminal justice system to further victimize their partners and children, and really useful info on family annihilations)
International adoption issues:
The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking, and the New Gospel of Adoption, by Kathryn Joyce (international adoption, really great, digs into the Christian Evangelical influence on U.S. adoption)
Criminalization and incarceration:
Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools, by Monique W. Morris (there's significant overlap with foster youth and the criminal justice system, and this book covers some of the dynamics where victimized girls are re-victimized by the educational and legal systems)
Halfway Home: Race, Punishment, and the Afterlife of Mass Incarceration, by Reuben Jonathan Miller (many, many parents lose custody as a result of incarceration and/or parole violations - this book is great at showcasing how the system sets people up to fail)
If others have more recommendations, please feel free to add on!





















