by Andres Fragoso Jr. | Aug 19, 2025 | What readers are saying
I received an advance reader’s copy of Jean Kelly Widner’s, The Adoption Paradox. Jean’s book is an amazing collection of stories from across entire adoption constellation. For me as an adoptee it was powerful to read stories of birth parents and raising parents to have a better feel for their perspectives. Ultimately what i appreciated most in Jeans book was that she not only identified and spoke to many of the problems within adoption but she offered ways to do things better. Our adoption system is terribly broken and in desperate need of an overhaul. Anyone touched by adoption or involved in adoption should read this book.
-Bradley J Ewell
by Andres Fragoso Jr. | Aug 19, 2025 | Adoptee Stories
This is the first adoption book I’ve read that covers the whole constellation: adoptees, birth parents, and adoptive parents. The author intersperses interviews throughout the book to help readers understand the various perspectives. This book helped me understand adoptees and adoptive parents at a deeper level. I am a birth parent. Widner’s description of how a birth mother is described as “unfit” as an unwed teen and then proclaimed a “wonderful mother” as a married woman was my experience to a tee. This book also delves into the history of adoption and helps clarify the myths surrounding it, including the archaic practices still in place. It should be read by anyone affected by adoption, considering adoption, or anyone who knows an adoptee.
-Kris Downey
by Andres Fragoso Jr. | Aug 8, 2025 | What readers are saying
The paradox/es surrounding adoption is multilayered— something Jean brings awareness & attention to as society becomes more familiar with how adoption affects all members of the adoption constellation. This includes birth mothers in particular, the adoptee & the adoptive family.
Her book is a combination of memoirs from all birth parents, the adoptee & adoptive family members & makes a strong point of the pros & cons of open adoption.
Her book is a must read for anyone whose life has been touched by adoption.
-Abby
by Andres Fragoso Jr. | Jul 21, 2025 | What readers are saying
I’ve read probably 20 books on the subject of adoption (maybe more) over the years and Jean Widner’s Adoption Paradox will now take it’s place as one of the most important books in my collection. Raw, real, funny at times, heartbreaking at others, Jean has accomplished the incredible feat of making a really complex system understandable. I’m an adult adoptee in reunion for 26 years with my birthfamily (including 11 brothers and sisters!) and I’m also an adoptive mom in reunion with my daughter’s birthdad for five years. I live, eat and breathe adoption. The joy and the trauma. The gifts and the losses. And I learned SO MUCH by reading Jean’s book. She did a great job of sharing her personal story, including dozens of stories of people she interviewed and also perspectives and professional insights from many authorities in the adoption field. My book is dog eared and underlined and I’ll be re-reading it as I’m writing my own book about building healthy relationships in adoption reunions. I’ll also be sharing it with several members in my family because there’s so much we don’t know – so much that’s hidden in the community – and Jean sheds light on it with candor and truth-telling. This feels to me like a modern day version of Adam Pertman’s Adoption Nation and one that we desperately needed. Thank you, Jean, for this powerful volume. Sure to become a classic in adoption literature. – Elizabeth Barbour, author of “Sacred Celebrations: Designing Rituals to Navigate Life’s Milestone Transitions”
-Elizabeth Barbour
by Andres Fragoso Jr. | Jul 13, 2025 | What readers are saying
I’ve read adoption memoirs before, but I’ve never felt this seen. Jean Widner didn’t just tell her story. She opened the door to every hidden corner of what adoption really is. She brings in so many voices from adoptees, birth mothers, adoptive parents, and social workers, and shows that adoption isn’t one simple story with a happy ending. It is layered. It is messy. It is full of love and loss, shame and longing, silence and survival.
This isn’t a book written just for adoptees. It is a book written with us. She doesn’t avoid the uncomfortable parts. She names them. She talks about the guilt and the grief, the split between who you were supposed to be and who you had to become. She talks about the ache you carry without even knowing where it began. She says the things so many of us were forced to bury. That being adopted can mean both gratitude and abandonment. That love is not a cure for loss.
What hit me the hardest is that she doesn’t just stay in her own story. This book includes birth mothers, adoptive parents, professionals, and adoptees. It shows how the entire system is built on silence and good intentions that often do not meet the real needs of the people involved. Jean doesn’t try to soften the truth. She lets it stand as it is.
She writes about identity and what it means to not know where you come from. She shows how that kind of not knowing shapes you. She talks about how adoption is often wrapped in feel-good stories while the pain is pushed aside. She doesn’t try to make it prettier than it is. She tells the truth, and she trusts the reader can handle it.
Every time I thought I had read something that only applied to me, she opened it up wider. She showed that these feelings live in so many of us. That we are not alone in the confusion or the ache. She gave words to things I have carried my entire life but never said out loud.
Jean, you didn’t hold back. You didn’t try to make it comfortable. You wrote it the way it needed to be written. And I am grateful for that.
If you are looking for a book that doesn’t just tell the story of adoption but tells the truth behind it, this is the one. It will not give you easy answers, but it will make you feel less alone in the questions. And sometimes that is everything.
-Jessica Rosenfeld
