The issue of adoptees making contact with their birth parents is often a contentious one. The traditional practice of denying adoptees knowledge of their genetic parents creates a very different social reality for the adoptees; secrecy distinguishes them as a separate category of people with suspect family membership and questionable social identity. Karen March examines how some adoptees make contact with their birth mother to manage their ambiguous social status.

In The Stranger Who Bore Me sixty adult adoptees discuss the difficulties they have encountered in a world where biological kinship governs. Each of their stories reveals the personal dilemma created by the societal demand for secrecy and the deep pain and intense joy associated with adoptees' making contact with their birth mother. Karen March has created a compelling and informative analysis of this need by some adoptees.

Little research has been done on the actual outcome of adoptee-birthparent reunion and most arguments in this controversial area are based on personal anecdotal reports. This book offers the first scientific view of the consequences of reunion. As such it is an invaluable guide for any member of an adoptive triad as well as for professionals and government officials in the field of adoption.

Any adoptee, adoptive parent, or birth parent may be faced with the reality of contact. The stories told in this book will help them cope with that event and provide others with the knowledge and insight needed to understand and support those who initiated it.

Karen March is a member of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Carleton University.

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