Carp's book has some interesting info, but he shoots himself in the foot by decrying the lack of hard scientific evidence and research on the part of any group whose arguments HE doesn't like. After all, the book makes clear that almost NO ONE on ANY side of the sealed records debate has hard scientific evidence and research about anything concerning adoption, trauma, etc. Also, his constant use of the words "emotional," "drama," and "therapeutic entertainment" when he discusses adoptees in search (most of whom are female) and birthmothers is suspicious to the point of smelling like misogyny. This book tried to be even-handed, but the lack of gendered analysis renders many of his insights useless to any ongoing project of justice and ethics in adoption.

I've read Carp's book very carefully and I can say without hesitation that it is one of a handful of the most important books on adoption published in the last 25 years. As the co-author of two editions of The Encyclopedia of Adoption (Facts on File) and the Executive Editor of three editions of Adoption Factbook, I have had the opportunity to become familiar with the full range of writing on adoption. Carp's book is outstanding.
I say this despite some of the book's flaws -- some minor errors that might have been avoided if the author had interviewed one of the individuals he credits with being a major player during the last two decades, yours truly. I'm not sure that any such interview would have changed Carp's mind: he strikes me, in what he has written in this book and what he has said in public fora, as a typical academic -- stubbornly wedded to the facts he has unearthed. And facts he's unearthed are so critical to the history of adoption in this country that his book should be required reading in every school of social work, in every family law course and for every judge that ever hears an adoption case. His recitation of the history of the role played by the women in the U.S. Children's Bureau is worth the price of the book all by itself. His central contribution, however, is to say in much more detail what Alfred Kadushin said years earlier in his textbook, CHILD WELFARE. Like Kadushin, Carp finds no evidence to support the junk science that underlies most of what passes for "professional practice" in today's social work and related fields. If only Carp had written his work 20 years earlier, adoption of newborn infants in the U.S. today might well be still flourishing instead of hanging on by a thread. As the last two editions of Adoption Factbook pointed out, the number of pregnancies which end in adoption is about one out of every hundred. For some, such as the collection of cranks and quacks that make up the "Adoption Reform Movement," such a statistic is evidence of victory. But it is no victory for children or parents who are unwilling or unable to raise children. Perhaps Carp will turn his attention next to the most pernicious and deadly aspect of the "Adoption Reform Movement," the crew of self-anointed "counselors" who invent new psychiatric labels and then proceed to try to heal them. I speak here of those like the "rebirthing" therapists who smothered a girl to death. Such a book may take a psychiatrist with Carp's gift for research. In sum, Carp's book is a very good read. The only tragedy is that it has been so widely ignored, the victim of a planned campaign by those whose empty agenda is so clearly revealed by Carp's detective work.

As Parliament has finally determined to find families for children who have been languishing in care, I was keen to see if there were any favourable accounts about adoption in the U.S. that might be of interest. A search of the Amazon.com site led me to the Carp book, which I confess I read at my university library. It is an altogether fascinating tale, one that is uniquely American, of course. As a student of some of the fostering homes set up here, back as far as those of Rev. Muller in Bristol, I could not put the book down. I must say that the question of privacy was handled in an altogether fresh way for me. In particular, I found the academic examination of the claims that children adopted as infants suffer all sorts of trauma very helpful. It seems that the U.K. took quite a wrong turn when we set about changing our system based on wholly inadequate research. Many thanks to Mr Carp for his fine book.