The Children Money Can Buy covers decades of dramatic societal change in foster care and adoption, including the pendulum swings regarding open adoption and attitudes toward birth parents, the gradual acceptance of gay and lesbian adoption, the proliferation of unregulated adoption facilitators in the U.S., ethical concerns related to international adoption, and the role money inevitably plays in the foster care and adoption systems. Special attention is given to the practice of "baby brokering" and the accompanying exorbitant finder's fees and financial incentives encouraging birth mothers to relinquish (or pretend that they are planning to relinquish) their babies that permeate much of U.S. infant adoption today.The Children Money Can Buy illuminates the worlds of foster care and adoption through the personal stories Moody witnessed and experienced in her many years working in the foster care and adoption systems. These compelling stories about real people and situations...

Written without a trace of sentimentality or apology, this is an unforgettable personal story--the truth as a remarkable young woman named Anne Moody lived it. To read her book is to know what it is to have grown up black in Mississippi in the forties an fifties--and to have survived with pride and courage intact.In this now classic autobiography, she details the sights, smells, and suffering of growing up in a racist society and candidily reveals the soul of a black girl who had the courage to challenge it. The result is a touchstone work: an accurate, authoritative portrait of black family life in the rural South and a moving account of a woman's indomitable heart.From the Paperback edition.