Choosing to grow your family through adoption is a deeply personal and emotional journey—one that comes with unique joys, challenges, and questions. As you prepare for this next chapter, reading can be a powerful way to educate yourself, build empathy, and better understand the experiences of everyone involved in adoption, especially birth parents and adoptees.
The books we’ve selected offer a range of perspectives—from clinical insights and practical guidance to first-hand stories from adoptive families and adoptees themselves. Whether you’re just starting to explore adoption or you’re already in the home study phase, these titles can help you approach adoption with greater awareness, sensitivity, and confidence.
Here are our top recommended reads for prospective adoptive parents.
The Open-Hearted Way to Open Adoption: Helping Your Child Grow Up Whole by Lori Holden and Crystal Hass
The authors review the secrets to success, the pitfalls and challenges, the joys and triumphs. By putting the adopted child at the center, families can come to enjoy the benefits of open adoption and mitigate the challenges that may arise.
“You Should Be Grateful:” Stories of Race, Identity and Transracial Adoption by Angela Tucker
Angela Tucker—a Black woman adopted by white parents—shares powerful personal narratives and insights that challenge the traditional narratives surrounding transracial adoption. Through her lived experience and the voices of other adoptees, this thought-provoking book is an essential read for adoptive parents seeking to better understand their child’s experience, embrace hard truths, and parent with deeper empathy and awareness in a racially-conscious world.
What White Parents Should Know about Transracial Adoption: An Adoptee’s Perspective on Its History, Nuances, and Practices by Melissa Guida-Richards
Adoptee and author Melissa Guida-Richards offers a candid, eye-opening guide for white adoptive parents raising children of color. Drawing from her own experiences and those of other transracial adoptees, Guida-Richards addresses the racial, cultural, and emotional challenges that come with transracial adoption, urging parents to move beyond colorblindness and the false perception that “all you need is love.”. This essential read equips adoptive parents with the tools and perspective needed to honor their child’s identity, confront privilege, and parent with humility, courage, and love.
In Their Own Voices: Transracial Adoptees Tell Their Stories by Rita J. Simon and Rhonda M. Roorda
In this collection of interviews conducted with black and biracial young adults who were adopted by white parents, the authors present the personal stories of two dozen individuals who hail from a wide range of religious, economic, political, and professional backgrounds. How does the experience affect their racial and social identities, their choice of friends and marital partners, and their lifestyles? In addition to interviews, the book includes overviews of both the history and current legal status of transracial adoption.
The Girls Who Went Away by Ann Fessler
Fessler gives voice to more than a hundred women who surrendered children for adoption in the post-WWII Baby Scoop Era. Through powerful, heartbreaking interviews, Fessler uncovers the societal shame, institutional pressure, and profound grief that shaped these women’s lives—and the lives of their children. A must-read for adoptive parents to understand the deep loss that often underpins adoption.
