Volume 45, Number 10 · June 11, 1998
In the Bosom of the Family
By Ann Hulbert
The Limits of Hope: An Adoptive Mother's Story
by Ann Kimble Loux
University Press of Virginia, 266 pp., $24.95
The unfairness of family life has been a favorite theme through the ages, with all ages. The Bible is full of stories about the wildly contrasting fortunes of siblings, and so are fairy tales. Parental care in the many riven, envious clans of legend is not always consistent, to say the least. Yet it is nature (or God) that ultimately accounts, in more and less capricious ways, for the different destinies that unfold. The scientific-minded twentieth century has produced much less fatalistic stories—and many far from definitive case studies—about how families shape children's futures.
Review, 4493 words
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