the SIBLING ILLUSION: Why Adopted Children Often Do Not See Each Other as Safe Siblings — And Sexual Risks That Follow

For decades, the child welfare and adoption fields have operated under a powerful, largely unexamined assumption: that placing children together and declaring them siblings will eventually create safety. This assumption has shaped policy, matching decisions, training curricula, and the daily lives of thousands of adoptive families. Dr. Franklin Edward Shoemaker and Tonya A. Sharrett-Shoemaker have done what few have been willing to do. With forensic precision, clinical courage, and decades of frontline experience, they have systematically dismantled the Sibling Illusion. They do not do so from theory alone, but from the accumulated evidence of what actually happens when children carrying complex trauma, attachment wounds, and sexual trauma histories are placed together without adequate assessment or protection. This book is uncomfortable. It should be. It forces us to confront the gap between our aspirations for "family" and the neurobiological, developmental, and relational realities of the children we serve. It challenges comfortable narratives about permanency and asks hard questions about when protection must take precedence over togetherness. The Sibling Illusion is not an attack on sibling placement. It is a call for honesty, rigor, and a higher standard of care. Every professional who makes placement decisions, every agency that trains adoptive parents, and every clinician who works with adoptive families should read this book carefully - and then act on what they have learned. The children deserve nothing less.

Pagina's: 231, Paperback, Independently published