Today’s podcast by Roger Gros includes an interview with Boulder City resident and business owner Jean Widner, who is also the owner and faithful scribe of Boulder City Social! You can listen or watch the interview on the Boulder City Podcast site HERE.
In my “off time” I wrote a book based in no small part on my own life experience as someone who was adopted shortly after birth in 1965. With what was mostly a good experience growing up in a loving family I started to awaken to more complicated realities about adoption just recently, and then decided to dig in an write an extensive review on the adoption processes in the US.
This passion project has been over three years in the making. You can learn more and order a book on my website at AdoptionParadox.com. Pre-orders of the book can be made now and will ship in mid-May. The release of the book will also go live on Amazon on May 20th.
Roger asks some really probing questions and it’s a great conversation, and hopefully you’ll learn a lot by listening. One of the things we discuss is the unfortunate reality that adoption in America is now a profit-driven industry, which is one of the many concerns I learned about in writing the book. One resource to help find ethical adoption agencies is AdoptMatch.com. If you or anyone you know in your family is considering adopting a child from either foster care or any other method I invite them to check out that organization.
One of the other issues uncovered in researching the book are many of the concerns about the ethics in international adoptions. Those processes were created in South Korea at the end of the war in the middle 1950s and became a world-wide effort to help unfortunate children in need and bring them to safe and loving homes in the US and elsewhere. The government of South Korea just recently admitted to wrong-doing in how they handled such processes in the past. Beyond that however, is the fact that not all international adoptees were made citizens here in the US. Many of these early adoptive parents didn’t understand that they needed to complete naturalization paperwork in order for their children to be made legitimate US citizens. It is estimated that some 18,000 to as many as 50,000 international adult adoptees remain in legal citizenship limbo. Congress is fully aware of the situation but has failed to act. You can sign a petition here to help the cause.
I hope you’ll listen and give what is shared here a fair evaluation. I care deeply about the book, the people I interviewed for it, and my fellow adoptees both here in the states and abroad. Don’t worry, it’s not all darkness and strife, there is a lot of goodness and hope contained within it too. However, there is much to be improved. Adoption is a paradox. I hope you’ll take a chance and purchase the book.
Thank you always for being part of our lives here on Boulder City Social.
