Any Other Family

CW: post-partum depression (PPD), discussion of past infertility, IVF procedures and miscarriages

Interesting but frequently frustrating character-driven story of three women who have adopted four siblings (one family is parenting twins). The families, including two couples and one single mom, gather together frequently to keep the children close to each other. As they embark on a two-week summer vacation together, the women learn that the biological mother is pregnant again and that she is asking one of them to adopt her fifth child.

One of the mothers is an overachieving control freak who is eminently punchable, while the other two are more sympathetic (the husbands barely register). The characters exemplify white privilege; issues of class, race and sexuality are rarely mentioned. Although the adoptions are “open,” the birth mother is virtually absent from the story, existing only as a baby-making machine. Wisely, the author lessens the claustrophobic feel of nine people stuck together for two weeks by including several interstitial stories of nameless prospective adoptive parents who demonstrate that there are many paths to the decision to adopt.

Brown is an adoptive parent herself, so she writes from experience about issues of attachment, grief and privacy. The book would have been stronger if the characters, especially the momzilla, were less clichéd and if the bio mom had been more than a plot point.