Like Why Was I Adopted, Being Adopted is a children’s book from the 1970s (and has black-and-white photos that look it). However, kids are always fascinated by looking at photos of real people, and this is a photo essay book, with large photos on every spread.
The photos are mostly of adopted children doing ordinary things—making cookies with mom, playing music with family, playing soccer with friends, checking under their beds for monsters. A few photos and their accompanying words matter-of-factly show more unusual moments that are part of these kids’ lives: a long airplane flight with a group of other children, meeting their parents at an airport, trying on clothing from their birth country, and asking their parents serious questions.
Seven-year-old Rebecca, eight-year-old Karin and ten-year-old Andrei share their thoughts and feelings in the text of the book, as well as in their photos. Rebecca is a multiracial child (African-American, Euro-American and Native American). Her adoptive family includes an African-American father, a Euro-American mother, and two siblings, one of whom has special needs. Rebecca was brought to her new parents from halfway across the United States when she was two months old.
Andrei was four when he came from India and remembers meeting his adoptive parents. He says he yelled at first, “Take me back to my friends in India!”, but no one understood his Hindi language. But later that day, when he saw his photograph in his new home and his parents used signs to convey that this was his home too, “I was so happy I ran wild through the rooms!” Andrei was his parents’ first child and now has a younger brother who is also from India.
Karin became her parents’ fourth child and first daughter. She was a baby when she came from Korea.
The book was authored by Maxine Rosenberg, an adoptive parent and social worker who has contributed to many books on adoption, including Weaving God’s Love Across Cultures: Transracial Adoption and Faith. Rosenberg speaks of an older baby’s fright at new people and sounds, and initial resistance to being held. She reassures readers that, “It often takes six months for parents and children to get to know one another whether the children are adopted or not. With older adopted children, it may take longer.”
Rosenberg deftly and simply addresses children’s fears and fantasies about their birthparents, about having done something to cause the adoption, or about being “given up” again by her adoptive parents. She also mentions the discomfort the children sometimes feel at looking different from their family members or at being singled out for questions. The children’s parents and older siblings are able to reassure them.
Note that this book is different from Being Adopted: the Lifelong Search for Self, which sometimes comes up in search results for this title. This book can be obtained by clicking here.