Parent Trip

Families are created through conception, adoption, fostering and family-blending. As a <I>Philadelphia Inquirer</I> columnist for nearly a decade, Anndee Hochman interviewed hundreds of parents—older and younger, single and coupled, straight and queer—about the paths they forged and the obstacles they faced on the road to form a family. <I>Parent Trip</I> is Hochman’s collection of these poignant, wry, and complicated stories.<BR/><BR/> Hochman recounts the fraught emotions of couples struggling with infertility, the joy of a single gay man becoming a father in his forties, and the anxiety of people waiting for the adoption worker to call with good news. <I>Parent Trip</I> tells of sperm donors and gestational surrogates, midwives and miscarriages; it chronicles how children prompt parents to recalibrate their lives.<BR/><BR/> In personal essays that weave throughout the profiles, Hochman connects her interviewees’ lives to the love, heartbreak, and uncertainty in her own path to parenthood. Through myriad mundane and extraordinary moments, <I>Parent Trip</I> not only chronicles the magic and labor of childrearing, it also celebrates the infinite ways real families come to be.