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The development and adjustment of 7-year-old children adopted in infancy
Insights
Internationally adopted children show increased behavior problems, particularly boys. Adopted children also exhibit strong academic performance and social skills at school, with some excelling in intelligence.
Area of Science:
- Child Psychology
- Adoption Studies
- Developmental Psychology
Background:
- International and transracial adoption present unique challenges for children.
- Behavioral and socioemotional adjustment in adopted children requires further investigation.
Purpose of the Study:
- To examine behavior problems in 7-year-old internationally, transracially adopted children.
- To compare adjustment in home and school settings.
- To explore factors influencing adjustment and academic achievement.
Main Methods:
- Study involved 159 internationally, transracially adopted children aged 7 in the Netherlands.
- Behavior problems assessed using the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL).
- Parental sensitive responsiveness and child adjustment (behavioral, socioemotional, academic) were evaluated.
Main Results:
- Adopted children, especially boys, exhibited higher rates of behavior problems compared to the normative population (30% clinical vs. 10%).
- Adopted children demonstrated positive adjustment, normal to above-average academic achievement, and high intelligence at school.
- Adopted girls showed superior ego-control, social competence, and peer popularity compared to non-adopted girls.
Conclusions:
- Multiple risk factors may contribute to behavior problems in adopted children.
- Maternal sensitive responsiveness may decrease during the transition to middle childhood.
- Adoptive parents provide significant cognitive stimulation, and adopted girls display strong social skills.
Abstract:
The present study (N = 159) provides evidence of an increased risk for behavior problems of infant-placed 7-year-old internationally, transracially adopted children in the Netherlands. However, parents reported more behavior problems for adopted boys than for adopted girls. Notably, about 30% of the adopted children were classified as clinical on the CBCL scale for total problems, which is a much larger percentage than the 10% found in the normative population. It was suggested that these results could be explained by the operation of multiple risk factors before and after adoption placement, e.g. the child's genetic disposition, pre-natal and pre-adoption care, or the child's cognitive understanding of adoption in middle childhood. Also, results suggest that maternal sensitive responsiveness in adoptive families declines in the transition from early to middle childhood. In contrast to the home setting, the adopted children showed favorable behavioral and socioemotional adjustment at school, while their academic achievement and intelligence were in the normal range or above average. In particular Korean children had high IQs: 31% of these children obtained an intelligence score above 120. It was suggested that adoptive parents seem to offer their children sufficient or even more than average cognitive stimulation. Furthermore, adopted girls scored higher in optimal ego-control, social competence, and peer group popularity than nonadopted girls from the general population: 30% of the adopted girls were rated as popular by their classmates, which compares favorably to the 13% found in the general school population.