Rating: 
Summary: Extremely Helpful resource for this very important task.
Review: This book was the best I have seen when it comes to writing the Dear Birthmother letter. It gives you very practical advice on how to put this letter together. The author does a wonderful job describing how the birthmother feels based on the words that you are using. A must have for anyone faced with the task of writing a Dear Birthmother letter. I have recommended it to many.
Rating: 
Summary: A workable handbook for an appalling premise
Review: To give the author his due, he has written a helpful how-to for parents in a nearly intolerable situation: "selling themselves" and their self-described, "near-perfect" lives while vying for the attention of a steadily dwindling pool of relinquishing mothers. Only one percent of white women who give birth each year in the United States currently surrender their children to adoption. However sincere and avid the would-be adoptive parents may be--and I don't doubt for a minute that Nelson Handel and his wife fell into this category--those elusive "healthy white newborns" form a sellers' market.And selling, alas, is what the domestic adoption business boils down to--a business estimated to reap [money amount]per year with an annual projected growth rate of at least 10 percent. I am neither an adoptive parent nor one who has ever been faced with an unplanned pregnancy. However, there is an adoptee in my family whose agonizing, ongoing life struggles are directly related to her status as a newborn adoptee. My interest in her pain has motivated me to do a great deal of research and thought into the fraught world of adoptions, especially the "closed" variety, and what happens after the teddy-bear-and-pastels of the sales job is over. As the adoptive family forms its bonds, the pointed absence of the child's relinquishing parents hovers, specter-like, over every aspect of the adoptee's growth and development. Handel's jacket photo shows himself, his wife, and their adopted son all wearing dark glasses. Apart from cute-cute, that says something right there, doesn't it? This is not a bad book for what it proposes to do--write the pitch. However, the subject itself should give any non-biological parent pause--who "merits" a baby? The highest bidder? The most seductive pitch to a woman or girl in a difficult situation that will alter her life permanently, whether she chooses to abort, parent her child, or relinquish? Handel's conclusion is that domestic adoption is what it is, and here's how to make the best of what it is. And, unfortunately, airbrushed professional photos, 1-800 numbers, and gobs of cash help. If you can live with that, this book is for you.
Rating: 
Summary: I read this "after the fact"
Review: Unlike the "reader from Washington DC", I actually have a clue what I'm talking about. I am both a birth mother and an adoptee. By the time I read this book, I had already relinquished my daughter. She was born May 22, 1998, and I signed the paperwork May 23, 1998. I have written her letters before, and all I can say is that I wish I'd had this book to begin with! While I'm reluctant to use this space as a soapbox (again, unlike the person from WA DC), adult adoptees (like myself) need to grow up and deal with the fact that we have no control over who and where we go when we are adopted. Your adult life is YOUR life, and if you are blaming your lack of happiness and all your problems on the fact that you're adopted, you need to grow up, get over it, and move on.
Rating:
Summary: I read this "after the fact"
Review: Unlike the "reader from Washington DC", I actually have a clue what I'm talking about. I am both a birth mother and an adoptee. By the time I read this book, I had already relinquished my daughter. She was born May 22, 1998, and I signed the paperwork May 23, 1998. I have written her letters before, and all I can say is that I wish I'd had this book to begin with! While I'm reluctant to use this space as a soapbox (again, unlike the person from WA DC), adult adoptees (like myself) need to grow up and deal with the fact that we have no control over who and where we go when we are adopted. Your adult life is YOUR life, and if you are blaming your lack of happiness and all your problems on the fact that you're adopted, you need to grow up, get over it, and move on.
Rating: 
Summary: There is something very wrong with the title
Review: When I was looking at books on the topic of adoption, this one caught my eye. There is a big mistake, and it's in the title. The parents that prospective adoptive parents write this letter to are NOT birthparents. In fact, they may never be. They are people who are considering an adoption plan. They may choose to parent. Additionally, the father may be quite involved in this process. To ignore him completely by writing a dear birthMOTHER letter seems a little insenstive at best. However, my biggest complaint is with the assumption that the pregnant mom is already a birthmother. For anyone involved in adoption (birthparents, adoptive parents, counselors, attorneys, facilitators) to fail to recognize this important fact leads me to, quite honestly, question their understanding of this process. She is a mother, plain and simple, until the papers are signed.
| 
