The Cut - The Untold Stories of Birth Mothers

According to sociologist Gretchen Sisson, the adoption industry in the United States is based on one inconvenient truth: “For every family that is formed by adoption, you have a family that’s separated by adoption,” she says. But the narratives that dominate our understanding of the process advance the idea that it is inherently good for everyone involved while reducing the role of birth mothers — if their perspective is represented at all — to the decision to give up their child so it can have “a better life.” Stories of separation, of the circumstances that lead mothers to relinquish their children in the first place and of the grief they experience as a result, are often erased from the public record.

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