# Relinquished: The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood - Hardcover

by **Gretchen Sisson** (Author)

**"Dares to imagine a different world where Americans treat adoption like the justice issue it is." ―_Washington Post_**

"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_ features the in-depth testimonies of American mothers who placed their children for domestic adoption. The voices of these women are powerful and heartrending; they deserve to be heard.

### Author Biography

**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.

**Number of Pages:** 320

**Dimensions:** 1.4 x 7.4 x 5.1 IN

**Publication Date:** February 27, 2024

## Details

- **Price:** 30.0 USD
- **Vendor:** Books by splitShops
- **Type:** Books
- **Tags:** Books by splitShops, Shopify Collective

## Variants

| Variant | Price | Available |
|---------|-------|-----------|
| Default Title | 30.00 USD | In stock |

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- Relinquished: The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood - Hardcover

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