Researcher on Politics of Adoption Focuses on Birth Mothers

From WTTW News:

Gretchen Sisson paints a nuanced picture of the American adoption system in her new book, “Relinquished: The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood,” where she shares the stories of the industry’s lesser-known characters: birth mothers.

Through a decade of research and dozens of personal anecdotes, the book challenges conventional ideas around adoption in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision.

Sisson started doing research for the book in 2010 while working for an organization that focuses on pregnant and parenting teens. It was then that she began thinking more about the cultural ideas and norms around parenthood, and how that differed from the lived experiences of the individuals she was working with.

“I wanted to understand how adoption was actually functioning in the lives of the people most impacted by it,” said Sisson.

Sisson is a sociologist who studies abortion and adoption at Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH) in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco. She says there’s a common perception that pregnant women are often choosing between abortion and adoption. That’s not something she’s found in her research.

“Adoption is primarily a constrained choice,” said Sisson. “When you take away other options, when you make abortion inaccessible and when you make parenting impossible, that’s when people turn to adoption. That was no one’s first choice.”

Read more here.