How Birth Mothers are Paying the Hidden Costs of Adoption (with Gretchen Sisson)

Adoption is often framed as a loving and selfless decision made by women who want to give their babies a better life—but many relinquishing mothers say it doesn’t actually feel like a real choice at all.

Private domestic adoption in the U.S. operates under conditions of high demand, limited supply, and deep economic inequality. Researchers say women rarely choose adoption over abortion or parenting, and many relinquishing parents report long-term trauma. 

Sociologist Gretchen Sisson draws on a decade of interviews in her book Relinquished: The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood to examine who adoption really serves—and who it leaves behind. 

She invites us to rethink adoption from the ground up, and asks what real support for families would actually look like.

Full transcript is available here at relationscapes.org. 

Show Notes

• Pricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value of Children, by Viviana A. Zelizer
• The Turnaway Study: Ten Years, a Thousand Women, and the Consequences of Having—or Being Denied—an Abortion, by Diana Greene Foster
• Abolition Geography: Essays Towards Liberation, Ruth Wilson Gilmore 

Fellow Traveler Episodes

• Relationscapes, "The Truth About Transracial Adoption, (with Angela Tucker)"
• Relationscapes, "What Disabled Parents Can Teach Everyone About Parenting (with Jessica Slice)"
• Relationscapes, "The Rebellious Act of Disabled Parenting (with Eliza Hull)"
• Relationscapes, "The Growing Perils of Pregnancy in America (with Irin Carmon)"

About the Guest

Gretchen Sisson studies abortion and adoption in the United States as a sociologist at Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH) in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Science at the University of California, San Francisco. She is the author of Relinquished: The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood, based on hundreds of in-depth interviews with women who have relinquished infants for domestic adoption over the past 60 years.