Commenter Melinda, who has our number, provided this link: Adoptees More Likely to be Troubled:
As the world’s most famous adoptive parents, the actors may be alarmed to hear that a new study shows being adopted approximately doubles the odds of an adolescent being diagnosed with a behavior or emotional problem. Furthermore, the findings open up the question of what’s behind that increased risk — adoptive parents or genetics?
Well, I give the writer an automatic point deduction for starting the article with Angelina Jolie. But it also seems like she uses “being adopted” as an ascribed status. Because I don’t think she’s talking about the actual act of adoption. My guess would be that it’s the separation from the first family that causes the problems.
Asking whether this is attributable to “adoptive parents or genetics” is kind of odd too:
The Minnesota psychologist and her colleagues found that disparity could be due as often to innate factors such as perinatal care or his birth parents’ genes. “The deleterious effects may quite possibly have come before the adoption ever took place,” Keyes, the study’s lead researcher, says.
Finally, I really, really disliked the way this is worded:
Another surprising conclusion that the Minnesota study produced was the fact that children adopted from within the U.S. are more prone to behavioral disorders than those adopted from overseas. Some 40,000 children worldwide annually emigrate from more than 100 countries through adoption, a trend increasing rapidly in the U.S. since the 1970s. But these foreign adoptees are far more likely to internalize their problems, suffering more commonly from depression or separation anxiety disorders. Domestic adoptees, on the other hand, tend to act out. While consistent with adolescents studied in both North America and Western Europe, Keyes says, this finding “goes against preconceived notions that kids from foreign cultures would have a harder time adapting to new families.”
Okay, I know that “behavioral disorders” refers to behavior related to conduct, i.e., “acting out.” But I really dislike the idea that a researcher and psychologist would imply that internalizing problems means that the adoptive child is having an easier time adapting.
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May 6, 2008 at 2:43 pm
Susan
(I really dislike the idea that a researcher and psychologist would imply that internalizing problems means that the adoptive child is having an easier time adapting.)
I took this to mean that a depressed child is easier for the PARENTS to deal with than an “acting-out” child, and thus, more desirable.
Ugh on all of it.
May 6, 2008 at 3:06 pm
resistance
Susan, that’s how I interpreted it too. I was really wondering if the majority of international adoptees studied were from Asian countries. My thought was perhaps the model minority stereotype exerted itself upon them.
May 6, 2008 at 8:02 pm
Kathy
I keep thinking about the recent occurance with white feminist bloggers who were unable to see the racism in the Marcotte book, even after it was pointed out to them. Well some of them did finally see it. Anyway, I kept thinking about the fact that these white bloggers are also very likely to be the adoptive parent raising children of color. So naturally, their children are not going to be able to act out. Who would listen?
If white feminist bloggers didn’t get it with WoC bloggers, how in the heck would they be able to advocate for their transracially adopted children?
Susan, yeah, I agree, and maybe it’s more of the same kind of advertising done for adoption agencies who specialize in internation adoption.
May 6, 2008 at 8:17 pm
Melinda
I noticed the weird contradiction too. Since when is internalizing problems considered a good thing? The article spells out “depression or separation anxiety disorders” and then calls it having an easy time adapting?
May 6, 2008 at 10:15 pm
resistance
By the way, I read in another article that the majority of the international adoptees in this study were from S. Korea.
May 17, 2008 at 2:46 pm
Emilia Liz
Actually, the finding that international adoptees have fewer problems than domestically adopted children appeared in a Dutch study done in 2005. Interestingly, speaking of Asian adoptees in particular, a study from Quebec, which didn’t get much attention in the English-speaking press, partly because it was in French, found that adoptees from Asian countries had fewer problems than those from other regions, especially Eastern Europe (probably due to a higher rate of fetal alcohol syndrome there).
By the way, this recent study did not find that internationally adopted children had more (or fewer) internalizing problems than their domestically adopted counterparts. Overall, though, the former were better adjusted.