Baby Market - by Anne Moody (Hardcover)

About the Book

The Baby Market exposes our ethically challenged adoption system in which both birth and adoptive parents endure tremendous financial pressure and babies are treated like commodities. Anne Moody examines the negative impact of allowing the marketplace to control adoption and o...

Book Synopsis

The Baby Market exposes our ethically challenged adoption system in which both birth and adoptive parents endure tremendous financial pressure and babies are treated like commodities. Anne Moody examines the negative impact of allowing the marketplace to control adoption and offers suggestions for reform.

Review Quotes

Anne Moody has a great depth of experience in the adoption field, and brings that to bear in the The Baby Market in a way that should be of great value to readers. Her book is critical and essential reading for anyone whose work touches on adoption, as well as for anyone considering adoption.

Anne Moody's The Baby Market is a passionate and revealing examination of the American adoption system. Moody, an adoption counselor and agency director for almost forty years, and an adoptive parent herself, offers us an insider's look into an appallingly broken network, as well as ways to fix it. Her book is essential reading for anyone hoping to create a just and corruption free process for all members of the adoption triangle; birth parents, adoptive parents, and adopted children.

Anne's book is a must read. With infertility on the rise around the world, we as a society are being forced to ask (and answer) some big ethical questions. Anne's book does an excellent job of presenting some of the moral dilemmas we face in addition to exposing so many of the deeply rooted misperceptions that exist around adoption.

As an adoption agency director and counselor for more than 40 years and an adoptive parent herself, Moody attempts to open eyes to the abuses within the system.... This book's case studies profile the often heart-wrenching stories of parents who find themselves desperate to adopt yet struggle to find reliable information. Agencies often have good intentions, Moody believes, although many are insufficiently skilled and some are even unscrupulous. Filled with personal accounts and packed with information, the book advocates finding an experienced adoption counselor, openly voicing complaints to help reform the system, and fighting for the establishment of national laws to close the gray market for adoption. Many parents will likely find this to be a helpful resource. Advocates for children will find plenty of ideas and guidance.

Informed by deep experience and written with great clarity and compassion, The Baby Market delivers a unique insider's perspective on what's wrong with the adoption industry today. An important new addition to understanding the vital need for adoption reform.

This well stated piece about the current state of adoption practice is recommended reading for families exploring their options.

With empathy, passion, and scrupulous logic, Anne Moody has drawn from her decades of facilitating adoptions to denounce a system that defies regulation and reform. Mountains of cash are turning American adoption into a heartbreaking, unethical, and inequitable mutation. She tells true stories of adoptions in which honest brokers did not stand a chance against scams, incompetents, and all-too-proficient profiteers who leave middle class parents no recourse but to spend their savings to compete in a top-heavy market on adoptions that may never come to pass.The Baby Market is an indictment not only of the adoption system but America's subordinating children's welfare to the marketplace. Moody not only provides a guide for prospective parents but solutions to the inequities that victimize everyone involved.

About the Author

Anne Moody has been the co-director of an agency specializing in infant adoption for the past 24 years. She is the author of The Children Money Can Buy: Stories from the Frontlines of Foster Care and Adoption, published in 2018 by Rowman and Littlefield. She is also an adoptive parent and both her professional and personal background inform her work as an adoption specialist who advises clients on all aspects of the adoption experience.