Dr Gretchen Sisson is a sociologist whose qualitative research interests focus on abortion and adoption in the United States.

Her book Relinquished: The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood draws from interviews she has conducted with women who have relinquished their babies to adoption.

From the publisher’s site:

“Adoption has always been viewed as a beloved institution for building families, as well as a mutually agreeable common ground in the abortion debate, but little attention has been paid to the lives of mothers who relinquish infants for private adoption. Relinquished reveals adoption to be a path of constrained choice for those for whom abortion is inaccessible, or for whom parenthood is untenable. The stories of relinquishing mothers are stories about our country's refusal to care for families at the most basic level, and to instead embrace