Published in 2024
8 hours and 7 minutes
302 pages
epub
Maria Laurino was born and raised in northern New Jersey. She is a graduate of Georgetown University, where she received a B.A. in English and government, and of New York University, where she received an M.A. in English and American literature. She began her career as a journalist for the Village Voice and later became the chief speechwriter to former New York City Mayor David N. Dinkins. Laurino examined ethnic identity in her first book, Were You Always an Italian?, which was published in 2000 and became a national bestseller. Her second book, Old World Daughter, New World Mother (2009), a meditation on contemporary feminism, describes the pull and tug of growing up in an Old World family that prized dependence even as she later embraced a New World feminism that championed personal autonomy. Laurino’s journalism has appeared in numerous publications, including The New York Times, Salon.com, and The Nation, and her essays have been widely anthologized, including in The Norton Reader. She teaches creative nonfiction at New York University.
What is this book about?
“I was spellbound . . . one of the best books I’ve recently read” —Elizabeth Strout, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Olive Kittredge.
A powerful church. An acquiescent government. In The Price of Children, investigative journalist Maria Laurino details the shocking story of mothers and children deceived and exploited as directed by the highest levels of the Vatican.
Between 1950 and 1970, the Vatican and the American Catholic Church sent nearly four thousand Italian children to the United States for adoption into “good” Catholic homes. With the religious stigma of unwed motherhood turning families against daughters and a Church and State wanting “illegitimate” children sent abroad, mothers were lied to, given forms to sign that they didn’t understand, or even told their baby had died, all to further supply this international adoption pipeline.
Maria Laurino uncovers archival correspondence among priests who ran this program; provides testimonies from birth mothers and their adopted children; and with passion and insight, considers how the intersection of Catholicism, women, sex, and sin shaped private lives. The Price of Children is a moving and brilliant account about the tenacity of people searching for their origins and trying to answer long-buried questions. It is a chilling lesson for post-Dobbs America as the author describes the danger of a powerful church and acquiescent government dictating the shape of a woman’s life.
