Adoption Support at Forever Parents

Study On Young Adoptees

UNCG RESEARCHERS FIND ADOPTED CHILDREN TO BE AS WELL-ADJUSTED AS THEIR PEERS
By Deborah Durkee
Dr. DiAnne Borders
Dr. Kay Pasley

GREENSBORO — Parenting is a tough job. One with many questions and no training manual, employing instead a sink-or-swim method of learning.
Add adoption to the mix, and the questions of parenting become more complicated, causing adoptive parents to seek advice from counselors more quickly and for less serious reasons than biological parents.

That advice-seeking might have contributed to a long-standing assumption that adopted children are at greater risk for psychological, educational and behavioral problems, but recent research conducted by Dr. L. DiAnne Borders and Dr. Kay Pasley, both of The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, shows adoptive families are “fairly typical children and parents.”

Borders’ research has been written up in Psychology Today and the academic journal Family Relations, but when an article appeared in USA Weekend in January, she was deluged with phone calls and letters from researchers, adoptees and adoptive parents from across the United States and Europe. Some adoptees asked for advice on searching for birth parents. Some wanted to tell their stories, and teachers wanted information for their students.

“Some of the adoption professionals I heard from would say ‘we’ve known this all along, but everybody focuses on the negative, so I’m glad this is out there,’” Borders said. Fueled by her own curiosity as a single adoptive mother, Borders used data from the National Survey of Families and Households rather than data gathered from clinical populations of children brought to therapy by their parents, as was used in earlier adoption research. Borders said the use of clinical data gave a narrow view of adoptees, one which became generalized to the entire population even though it might apply to only 15 percent or less of adoptees.

The data Borders used is from a national source, a rarity since adoption records are sealed and stored in warehouses. “It also was not a study about adoption, so teachers and parents were not asked: ‘How is your adopted child doing,’” she said. Instead, parents were asked how their kids were doing. Borders then compared adopted children and their parents with a matched sample of biological children and their parents.

The adoptive parents reported their children to be just as sociable, responsible and well-behaved as did the parents of non-adopted children. The results conclude that when researchers use a representative sample of adopted families, those families are found to be functioning as well as their biological counterparts.

Borders wasn’t surprised by her findings. Before beginning her own research, she was struck by the limits of the available information on adoption. Much of the negative popular literature she read had been written by adoptees.

“That often seemed to be a result of adoptees coming to terms with their own experiences,” Borders said. “I questioned whether that was applicable to all, particularly when you read a book about the ‘trauma’ of adoption and you find out this person didn’t know she was adopted until she was 13. Is she traumatized because she was adopted or because her parents didn’t handle it very well? If you don’t tell a child until 13, the child wonders what else you haven’t told them.”

Borders adds that her research does not say all is perfect in adoptive families. Environmental and genetic factors can play a role. Adopted children tend to have more learning disabilities and compulsive behaviors. “If these factors are genetic, and we seem to think some of it is, that makes sense,” Borders said. “Part of my argument is that adoption gets labeled for whatever problems adoptive children have. For some kids, the problem is they weren’t adopted soon enough.”

Borders is continuing her research with a survey of middle-aged adoptees, asking them to give a copy of the survey to a non-adopted friend much like themselves. Preliminary findings show many similarities and some differences.
She’s been surprised by the response. Surveys have been returned with long stories attached. One woman wrote in detail about the day she and her adoptive mother met her birth mother during her two-family reunion. They spent hours sharing stories while sitting under a tree at a picnic table.

“It was really touching,” Borders said. “And then some people we heard from are still really hurting.” She hopes to find an explanation for those who do well versus those who don’t. Much has to do with how early in life the adoption took place, and Borders has a hunch the quality of parenting afterwards also plays a big part. “The ingredients of an adopted child’s needs are much like the ingredients that all kids need, with the understanding that adoption is one of the things you have to talk about and deal with.”

Borders is the chair of the Department of Counseling and Educational Development at UNCG. Her specialization is in counseling supervision. Pasley is an associate professor of human development and family studies at UNCG. She has conducted extensive research on divorce, remarriage and step-parenting.

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