From the Publisher

By Robert L. Miller

Few stories strike such emotional resonance among their authors as this week's cover on adoption. The profound complexities of the subject were especially well understood by at least one correspondent, researcher and writer: all three have experienced adoption firsthand. Los Angeles correspondent James Willwerth, who suggested the project, is the adoptive father of Piya, 5, and Mike, 4. Already parents of a son, David, who arrived the conventional way, Willwerth and his wife Ardis chose a daughter and a second son from two different Bangkok orphanages during his assignment in Thailand. Giving a home to "waiting" children "longing for love and attention," says Willwerth, "is to witness an extraordinary miracle. They blossom before your eyes." As he talked with other parents, children and adoption professionals, he says, "I had credentials rare to most assignments -- Piya and Mike. When I mentioned them, interviews came alive."

After his return to the U.S. in 1987, Willwerth talked frequently with reporter-researcher Lois Gilman, who is the author of The Adoption Resource Book, an information guide for those setting out to adopt a child. Gilman devoted weeks of work to the cover package, but in effect she began her personal research in 1979 when she and her husband Ernest adopted Seth, an infant from Chile, then Eve from South Korea in 1981. "We wanted this week's story to convey how much the dynamics of adoption are changing," Gilman says. "Our whole notion of who can be a parent and who can be adopted is dramatically different."

The story also sounded a special chord for associate editor Richard Lacayo, who wrote the story on the children who wait, too often in vain, for adoption. His brother Joseph, now 21, was one who did not. He arrived on a day Lacayo remembers as the happiest in his family's life. "All the while that I worked on this piece," says Lacayo, "I had my brother in mind as the image of why adoption is worth whatever trouble people go through." Despite uncovering some painful sides of adoption, our staffers came away heartened by how many children and potential parents are finding happiness by finding one another.