The Children Money Can Buy

January 1, 2018
As a young 20-something with a master’s degree in social work, Moody took a job as a child-welfare caseworker that introduced her to the world of adoptions and foster care, beginning a lifelong commitment that is chronicled in this compassionate work. Moody touches on the adoption sector’s ugly side, such as “baby buying” and profit-driven adoption facilitators. She takes care to counterbalance these negatives, however, by also detailing the positive changes that have occurred in the field over the course of her career. These include the increasing acceptance of “open adoptions,” in which birth parents are allowed to play some role in their children’s lives, and of same-sex couples as adopters. Throughout, Moody shares the personal experiences of many children and parents (whose identities are protected), some happy, some sad. The author also recalls her commitment at 13 to eventually become an adoptive parent, a dream she made real 23 years later. Moore’s experiences certainly inform her practical approach, which touches on subjects including how to talk about adoption with children and how adoptive families can present themselves to the outside world. For any family that has faced the difficult issues of adoption or fostering from any perspective, Moore’s book will be a valuable tool.

February 15, 2018
Over more than 40 years working in foster care and adoption, Moody became a collector of stories of children on the margin, of parents trying to regain custody, and of other adults desperate to have a child of their own. Her story is interspersed throughout. It was not only her professional life that prompted her to research and write this frank and powerful book; she is an adoptive parent herself. She covers generations of change in the foster care systems, for better or for worse, and looks at domestic and international adoption, pausing to examine the evolving ethics of both. Often recounting misery and bureaucracy, Moody admits to a self-protective cynicism reinforced by unanswerable questions. Her difficult choices were between terminating parental rights and preserving a child's bond with a parent, even an abusive one, and between closed and open adoptions, with birth parents included or removed forever. Thoroughly researched and astonishingly emotional, this book is a necessary deeper look into an often heartbreaking topic.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)