(Posted 5-25-99)
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
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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