"With nuance and razor-sharp analysis, Sufian combines work in adoption studies and disability studies to offer a searching, critical, careful history lesson. Each chapter is rigorously researched and argued; each encapsulates its time period in unexpected ways. This book is a necessity and a major achievement."

Susan Schweik, University of California, Berkeley

"Meticulously researched and powerfully argued, Familial Fitness transforms eighty years of disjointed policies and practices into a compelling narrative demonstrating the centrality of disability to ideas about children’s worth and adoptability and to the construction of American families. Anyone interested in family policy, social work, disability, or adoption will want to read this book. A stunning achievement."

Molly Ladd-Taylor, York University

"What counts as a family? And what kind of person is sufficiently human to belong in one? This deeply researched, deeply felt book offers a fine-grained and usable history of changing constructions of ability/disability and of family in the twentieth-century United States. Despite growing inclusiveness in defining who may be 'adoptable,' as in the shift in language over time from 'hard to place' to 'special needs,' the stigmas attached to disability and to adoption continue to compound each other as they influence policy and practice in family-making, yet Sufian creates a timely and cautiously optimistic model for plotting a future with fewer structural barriers to individual and collective flourishing."

Margaret Homans, Yale University

"Sufian discusses the mid-century belief about love overcoming all risks entailed by disabled kids' adoption and describes a more inclusive, pragmatic approach developed in the last decades of the century. This informative analysis discusses social workers' initial biases against disabled children, the public attitude of double stigma with regard to adoption and disability, the mental disability caused by foster care drift, and the demographic changes that influenced racial inclusivity... Highly recommended."

Choice

“. . . . Comprehensive and meticulous.” 

H-Net Reviews