From Adoptive Families magazine, the country's leading resource on adoption, this warm, authoritative book is full of practical, realistic advice from leading attorneys, doctors, social workers, and psychologists, as well as honest, intimate stories from real parents and children. You Can Adopt answers every question - even the ones you're afraid to ask:

• When should I shift from fertility treatment to adoption?
• How do I talk to my spouse about adoption?
• Can we find a healthy baby?
• Do I need an attorney? An adoption agency?
• Can the birth mother take the baby back?
• How much will this really cost? How long will it take?
• Aren't all adopted children unhappy?
• Can I love a child who "isn't mine"?
• How can I ease the rest of my family into this decision?

Complete with checklists and worksheets, You Can Adopt will help make your dreams of family come true.

Once upon a time, we were in your shoes - beginning to think about adoption, not sure what to do next, not even sure we wanted to adopt. Now, so many years later, we are helping our children fill out college applications, teaching them to drive, learning to like their boyfriends and girlfriends, and beginning, ever so subtly, to hint about grandchildren. Our children are not adopted; they were adopted, and now they're just our children. Happy, smart, loving, successful, gorgeous children.

People say that you forget about the pain of childbirth. Once the baby arrives, nothing else maters. Adoption is, remarkably, the same. The agonizing decisions, the piles of paperwork, the absurd, lime-wasting bureaucracies - they all fade away. Here is your child, and you are a family. How you came to be family doesn't matter at all.

We are not here to talk you into adopting a child. But we can make you a promise, from our own personal experiences and from our time at Adoptive Families magazine: You can create a family. Yon can fall in love with a child and be loved in return. You can adopt.

Susan Caughman
Isolde Motley

The Top Ten Myths about Adoption

1. There sire no babies, especially American babies.
Of the 100,000 or so adoptions that take place in the United States every year, about 25.000 are of American newborns.

2. Children adopted from abroad are all disabled or disturbed.
The vast majority of international adoptees are healthy, happy children.

3. Adoption takes years (unless you're a celebrity).
Most of our families brought their children home within two years of submitting their paperwork - for many, the process takes less than one year.

4. Adoption costs hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The average cost of an adoption, before grants and reimbursements, is about the same as the price of a midsized car. It is possible to complete an adoption for a few hundred dollars.

5. Only perfect couples can adopt.
Whether you are gay, straight, single, married, divorced, disabled, rich, poor, professional, unemployed, retired, aged twenty-one or sixty, a pillar of the community or a person with a slightly spotty past, you can adopt a child.

6. Adopted children are "stolen" from their birth families.
Laws in America have multiple safeguards to ensure that a birth mother cannot be coerced or bribed into placing her child for adoption. Some international adoptions have involved bribes, deceit, or downright theft, but there are plenty of adoption agencies that can guide families to absolutely ethical international adoptions.

7. All birth mothers are unstable teenagers.
Most birth mothers are women in their twenties making a well-thought-out choice to give their child a better life than they themselves can provide.

8. Birth parents can come back and take your child.
Once an adoption has been finalized in court, the child is us much yours as if you had given birth.

9. All adoptees are troubled.
Recent long-term studies of adoptees in America show that they are no different in self-esteem and attachment to family from children raised by their biological parents.

10. Adoption always ends in tears.
After thirty years of working with adoptive families, we can promise you that most adoptions end in joy, triumph, and love.

Copyright © 2009 by Susan Caughman.

Tags: Adoption

About the Author

Susan Caughman, the publisher and editor-in-chief of Adoptive Families magazine, is the expert the media turns to when they have an adoption-related story. She has appeared on Fox News and NPR, and in People, The Wall Street Journal, and The Boston Globe.

About the Author

Isolde Motley is the former corporate editor of Time Inc., where she was responsible for the editorial content of its women's magazines.