A Man and His Mother: One Man's Search for His Biological Mother and an Understanding of His Adoptive Mother

Rating:
Summary: A clear arguement for "why search?"
Review: It may not be an autobiographical masterpiece, but Tim Green's book is solid and thoughtful, and provides a valuable educational service. It presents the searching adoptee as a sane, rational person who is driven to do whatever he has to do to find the truth that is being hidden from him by a closed adoption system. I'd recommend it to adoptees who are thinking about searching. As a bonus, it is one of the few such books written from the male prospective. The Kirkus Review sounds as if it were written from the point of view of someone who believes that adoptees should shut up and be grateful. It mentions the fact that Tim Green's parents were "hurt" by his search, as if this should have stopped him from looking, as if adoptees should not look because it might "hurt" their adoptive parents. And the fact that he had to "trade on his fame" to get access to records that are all but inaccessible to the average New York state resident is an indictment of the current sealed records laws, not of Green. In addition, I believe the reviewer missed the point in saying that Green had to "learn" the real meaning of parenting by having his own children - I got the idea that Green deeply appreciated the love and support of his parents all along, although he probably should have made more effort to tell them so. The need to find your genetics, heredity, and heritage is absolutely unrelated to your parents or your upbringing (good or bad); it comes from inside you. This is the point that the majority of people who aren't adopted just don't understand. I thought Tim Green communicated this well, but the Kirkus reviewer, perhaps blinded by his/her own biases, seems to have missed that message.

Rating:
Summary: A very interesting book
Review: My husbands birth mother gave this book to him the other day. I picked up the book and read it all in one day. It goes over several of obsticles that Tim Green and several other adoptee's go through. The book expresses the feelings that Tim has, the consideration involving his a-parents as well as his birth mother.