The Child Catchers

April 29, 2013
A natural extension of investigative journalist Joyce's 2009 Quiverfull, which probed a fundamentalist Christian movement with goals of re-establishing biblical patriarchy by encouraging women to bear large numbers of children, this volume examines America's Evangelical Christian adoption and orphan-care movement that has come to dominate domestic and international adoptions. Joyce will grab readers' attention with shattering accounts of birthmothers and adoptees from around the world. She skillfully navigates the global adoption system's layers of greed, corruption, and cultural blindness, identifying the faulty logic at the root of well-meaning yet harmful actions. From South Korea's well-oiled adoption machine that reinforces a cruel double-standard against single mothers and their children, to Rwanda's efforts to keep native children within its borders by bypassing agencies and de-institutionalizing orphanages, Joyce presents the enormous scope of big-business adoption. While international adoption is often called a "win-win" situation for everyone concerned, she provides ample evidence of a zero-sum game with single pregnant women and their children used as source and product for a lucrative industry. Joyce's report, backed by interviews with people on all sides of this complex issue, highlights the need to redefine what it means to "come home," a phrase embraced by the Christian adoption community and questioned by those on the losing side of the equation. Agent: Kathy Anderson, Anderson Literary Management

Starred review from March 1, 2013
Journalist and Religion Dispatches associate editor Joyce (Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement, 2009) broadens the understanding of adoption's conundrums, not only within the United States, but also internationally, with deep investigations of children from Liberia, Ethiopia, Korea, Rwanda, Haiti and China. Perhaps the least publicized development within the adoption realm during the past few decades is the aggressive involvement of evangelical churches. Parishioners, even those with multiple biological children, are adopting orphans from overseas, as well as many children who have been wrenched from biological mothers (and sometimes fathers) as part of for-profit schemes. Some of the church members see adoption as a faith-based mission--as an alternative to abortion but also part of a biblical mandate to care for the oppressed and impoverished while simultaneously saving souls. Joyce explains that although such adoptions might seem like a win-win solution, in fact, birth mothers and families, especially in third-world countries, are torn apart by the international transactions. Joyce studied academic treatises and traveled widely across the U.S. and to locales in other nations rarely visited by tourists. The number of compelling anecdotes and case studies is impressive. Whenever ethically defensible, Joyce uses real names and normally indicates fictitious names when she saw no moral alternative. Although the overall picture is grim despite tsunamis of good intentions, the grimness is occasionally relieved by righteous individuals and institutions trying to do better. One of the relatively upbeat case studies focuses on the megachurch of celebrity pastor Rick Warren. He admits his evangelical members involved in international adoptions have not always proceeded perfectly, but Joyce suggests that he is sincere about learning from mistakes in a drastically shifting landscape. Groundbreaking investigative and explanatory reporting.

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Starred review from June 1, 2013

This intricate investigation of adoption ethics and religion is an incisive, evenhanded corrective to the view of child adoption as benign and salvific. Journalist Joyce (associate editor, Religion Dispatches; Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement) examines the rise of adoption as a practice and cause among American evangelical communities eager to save souls (by raising them in Christian households), prevent abortions, and care for the poor (thereby reclaiming a biblical mandate frequently dissociated from conservative Christianity). But the more than 150 million so-termed orphans and vulnerable children worldwide frequently have living family members, even grieving mothers, capable of raising them, circumstances seemingly lost in the mix of aggressive agencies, inadequate regulation, vulnerable families lacking understanding of the concept of adoption as permanent, and adoptive families with emotional and financial resources invested. Joyce details cases involving children from Haiti, Ethiopia, Liberia, Rwanda, South Korea, and the United States, shares the voices of a huge array of interviewees, and allows the facts to reveal how removing children from poverty has come to be seen as a virtue. Grim but not downbeat, Joyce's reporting also indicates signs of hope for reform. VERDICT This exemplary study deserves a wide audience among all readers involved with adoption, from policymakers to prospective adoptive families.--Janet Ingraham Dwyer, State Lib. of Ohio, Columbus

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