This is a fruitful collection of essays focusing on adoption in order to explore “deeply held but often tacit assumptions about what in human life is natural and what is social” (p. 1). The editors rightly recognize that adoption is a social practice through which family and identity are explicitly shaped and regulated by social institutions. They explore this notion in contrast to the ideological view of family and identity as “natural,” “genetic,” and “biological.” They argue that “[w]e need to ask of families: how have the institutions shaped our understandings of family, and how might critical reflection on these understandings help us reshape the institutions to be more just?” (p. 8). The anthology is organized around three general areas of concern: “‘Natural’ and ‘Unnatural’ Families,” “Familial Relationships and Personal Identities,” and “Constructions of Race and Constructions of Family.” While some contributions are stronger than others, overall the anthology achieves the authors' goal of creating a “context for rethinking family and adoption, and the norms and rules that govern them, in a more humane and just fashion” (p. 15).

One goal of the editors was “to bring together an interdisciplinary group of scholars to explore and critique how adoption is situated within mainstream conceptual frameworks” (p. 1). Interdisciplinarity, here, is defined as bringing together multiple disciplinary perspectives to explore a common subject. One limitation of the book is the lack of breadth in the range of disciplines represented. The authors primarily draw on philosophy, political science, and the law, alongside feminist theory, to consider the complexities of adoption and family. The particularities of philosophical discourse have especially influenced the collection; several essays speak most directly to philosophers. The collection would have been enriched by the inclusion of essays by anthropologists, sociologists, and interdisciplinary scholars. Another tactic that could have strengthened the anthology would have been broadening the range of disciplines drawn on within the essays themselves.

Sally Haslanger's essay “You Mixed? Racial Identity Without Racial Biology” is a good example of a strong chapter that could have been made stronger by the considerable insights of African American studies, anthropology, sociology, and American studies. Haslanger's discussion of the meaning of “mixed” in the context of her transracially adoptive family contributes a great deal to our understandings of the complex interactions of race, family, adoption, and identity construction. She draws primarily on the insights of philosophy and psychology to theorize beyond the static categories of racial identity popularly understood as available to blacks and whites in the contemporary United States. Her discussion of the ways in which bodies are connected and the way traditionally defined categories of racial identity are blurred through the daily practices of parenting across the transgressive boundaries of race is insightful. She does a fine job of thinking critically through her own experiences as the white mother of black children, and of using those experiences to reflexively move our understandings of racial identity beyond static categories. Her reliance on philosophy and psychology, however, leaves her on the edge of a theoretical boundary that could be traversed by the consideration of anthropological perspectives on culture and cultural meaning systems. She struggles to find a way of conceptualizing the changes in racial identity she has experienced through the practices of mothering her children. She is no longer white in the sense that she once was, but at the same time, as she makes clear, she is not physically marked as a person of African descent, nor does she “have” a black identity. She concludes, somewhat reluctantly, that her identity “should count as mixed” (p. 285). These insights are important and speak beyond the specificity of adoption. Anthropologists and interdisciplinary scholars have written about the individual versions of identity that we each both internalize and construct throughout our lives using the language of cultural meaning systems. In this view, Haslanger could recognize that while she does not “have” a black identity, she does draw on African American cultural meaning systems to make sense of who she is and to navigate through her life.

A number of authors contribute insights about adoption through self-reflexive accounts of their life experiences as members of adoption “triads.” The editors frame the anthology with a discussion of feminist standpoint theory and situated knowledge (p. 9): “Many of the authors in our collection, including ourselves, believe that knowers are situated; more specifically, that those in the adoption triad typically have available to them a different perspective on family, love, race, and knowledge than those who are not.”

They settle on this understanding of situated knowledge as a “weaker commitment” (p. 8) than feminist standpoint epistemology. What is lost in this move is attention to power relations and the ways particular perspectives are shaped by them. I agree with their view that members of the adoption triad typically learn to see things in particular ways. What I would like to see is a more fine-tuned analysis of the ways in which the power relations involved in the social practice of adoption shape the perspectives of adoptive parents, birth parents, and adoptees. While the anthology includes work by a number of adoptees, it is distinctly heavy on adoptive parents. There are no birth parents represented among the contributors, at least none that acknowledge that identity. This itself is reflective of the power relations that shape adoption. This imbalance is not unique to this collection; it is, in fact, a common occurrence in research on adoption. A number of contributors use their embeddedness in adoption in productive, insightful ways. When the writer's identity and location in the politics of adoption are not used in a self-reflective way and the stakes in the argument remain unexamined, it often appears that the author's argument is self-serving. Both Anita L. Allen and Elizabeth Bartholet are adoptive parents whose own location goes unexamined in these essays, which seem obviously shaped by both their position as adoptive parents and a desire to justify and celebrate their positionality.

Several of the authors address the politics of relinquishment (Drucilla Cornell and Jacqueline Stevens) and removal (Dorothy Roberts) in progressive, insightful ways. Cornell's and Stevens' essays were fascinating explorations of family and adoption in relation to the law and social institutions. While they did not fully agree with each other, the tensions between them were fruitful. Both essays analyze legal perspectives on family in useful, thought-provoking, and challenging ways. I do, however, disagree with both of their “solutions,” to reformulate family law in such a way that would require all parents to “contract” to be the parents of their children. I do not see more government regulation of families as a viable answer. In fact, Roberts's essay brilliantly analyzes the problems with such an approach through an exploration of the role of race in the child welfare system's removal of children from birth parents. Her research demonstrates that in this country, “universal” policies—such as those endorsed by Cornell and Stevens—rarely remain universal in their application. The politics of race and poverty inevitably shape the implementation of policies designed to address the needs of all citizens. More attention to the inequalities that shape the experience of adoption would have strengthened the anthology. Yet, overall, Adoption Matters furthers academic understandings of adoption, family, and race.