Beyond Good Intentions
A Mother Reflects on Raising Internationally Adopted Children

Beyond Good Intentions
A Mother Reflects on Raising Internationally Adopted Children
by Cheri Register
$18.95, ISBN 1-59743-000-5
183 pages, hardcover

Now Available!

Beyond Good Intentions is a book of essays about the joys and risks of raising children adopted internationally.  Cheri Register examines ten pitfalls that well-meaning parents like herself can easily slip into:

--  Wiping Away Our Children's Past
--  Hovering Over Our "Troubled" Children
--  Holding the Lid on Sorrow and Anger         
--  Parenting on the Defensive
--  Believing Race Doesn't Matter
--  Keeping Our Children Exotic
--  Raising Our Children in Isolation
--  Judging Our Country Superior
--  Believing Adoption Saves Souls
--  Appropriating Our Children's Heritage   

Each essay opens with an exaggerated version—a caricature—of something an adoptive parent might say.  The caricature is used to prompt a fresh, intense look at practices so familiar they are seldom questioned, even though they may not serve the children’s and the family’s best interests.  Register urges readers to bring their own experiences to bear in a candid conversation about internationally adoptive family life.   

Click here to read some excerpts.

Parents who adopt children internationally have to grab for a firm handhold on a swinging pendulum of child raising advice.  Should they act as if they are colorblind or bolster their child's racial identity?  Should they help their child assimilate to the adopted culture or leap full force, as a family, into the child's birth culture?  The best adoption agencies scramble to provide their clients the truth-of-the-moment. Child psychologists and other professionals weigh in as experts on what that truth ought to be.  Eager parents seek each other's support on the Internet.  Adult adoptees have much to say, but some of their testimony troubles new parents.  Seldom heard are older, seasoned parents, who tend to withdraw from the discussion as their children grow and develop their own interests.

Cheri Register, the mother of two adult daughters adopted as infants from Korea, and the author of the highly regarded book "Are Those Kids Yours?," offers that crucial voice of experience in Beyond Good Intentions: A Mother Reflects on Raising Internationally Adopted Children.  Her boldly written essays question the conventional wisdom, calling attention to ten  choices well-meaning parents make that turn out not to serve adopted children's needs as well as one might expect.  Register calls for a frank and intimate conversation about the distinct challenges of raising children adopted across national, cultural, and, often, racial boundaries.  By avoiding pat answers that fall short of families' real needs, she affirms the hard work and loving devotion that parenthood demands. 

Beyond Good Intentions is a coffee table book of a different sort:  a diary-sized volume to keep handy and read as you sip your coffee.  You will likely catch yourself nodding and frowning just as you would at a candid friend who urges you to reconsider ideas you have taken for granted, to listen without defensiveness to what your children and other adoptees want to tell you, and to think more deeply about what international adoption requires of the "lucky" parents who benefit from it. 

A portion of the sales of Beyond Good Intentions is donated to Ae Ran Won, a refuge in Seoul for unwed mothers who have few options.

For more information visit her website at http://www.CheriRegister.Com or email her at Beyond@CheriRegister.Com.