Family Bonds

About this book

In Family Bonds, Harvard Law professor Elizabeth Bartholet raises profound questions about the meaning of family and the way society shapes options for the infertile. Illumined by the author's compelling personal story, the book challenges the societal policies that help shape adoption, infertility treatment, surrogacy, and other new parenting arrangements. Family Bonds will encourage and enlighten all who struggle with infertility and the decision whether to pursue treatment, adoption, or other parenting options. It will compel the attention of doctors, lawyers, child welfare workers, and policymakers. In her poignant and controversial book, Bartholet examines policies that leave children without homes and would-be parents without children. She questions the wisdom of driving women to spend years in infertility treatment while pushing them away from adoption. She talks about transracial and transnational families, single and older-parent families. She forces us to think about our goals for the family of the future. Uniquely qualified to write this book, Bartholet is a recognized expert on civil rights and family law who has raised one child born to her, endured her own struggle with infertility, and recently adopted as a single parent two children born in Peru.