Behavioral and Socioemotional Adjustment in International Adoptees: A Comparison Between Italian and Spanish Adoptive Parents’ Reports

ABSTRACT

Dominated by intracultural comparisons between adopted and nonadopted children, adoption research has until now paid little attention to cross-cultural differences in the adoptees’ behavioral and socioemotional adjustment. The present study is aimed at comparing children adopted in two different countries—Italy and Spain—and at verifying, through their parents’ perceptions, the extent to which cultural context may contribute to shaping children's emotional and behavioral problems. A sample of 207 international adoptees (127 Italian and 80 Spanish) aged between 6 and 14 years was studied. The children's adjustment was assessed using the Child Behavior Checklist, which was filled out by the adoptive parents. Results indicated the presence of more similarities than differences between Italian and Spanish subjects: children adopted both in Italy and Spain between 3 and 5 years old were more likely to exhibit behavior problems than were children who entered the adoptive family at any other age. Some differences related to the birth country also emerged.

KEYWORDS:

• Cross-cultural comparison
• internationally adopted children
• adjustment

Notes

1. The nine cultures compared were Australia, Germany, Israel, Jamaica, the Netherlands, Puerto Rico, Sweden, Thailand, and the United States.

2. Refers to Laws No. 476/1998 and No. 149/2001.

3. Refers to article 175 of Law No. 21/1987.

4. Italian families were contacted during a broader research conducted in Milan in 2003. The Spanish group was part of a larger sample collected during two different studies, one carried out in the Spanish communities of Andalusia, Madrid, and Valencia in 2002 and the other in Castille and Leon in 2003. In both groups (Italian and Spanish), families were not randomly selected. We would like to thank all adoptive families who participated and all agencies and adoption professionals who collaborated to this research project: CIAI, Conventino di Bergamo, AIBI, Rete e Speranza, Amici Trentini, Fondazione Nidoli, Istituto La Casa, AMI, and CIFA, in Italy and adoption professionals of the Spanish autonomous communities of Andalusia, Madrid, Valencia, and Castille and Leon, as well as those of the Ministry of Work and Social Matters. The research project received the approval of the Ethics Committee of the Psychology Department (Catholic University of Milan).

5. Official statistics about international adoptions in Italy are provided by the government adoption committee (see www.commissioneadozioni.it)

6. Preliminary analyses showed nonsignificant relations between the CBCL scores and those parents/family characteristics (age, total number of children, and family structure) for which Italian and Spanish samples were different.

7. For a better interpretation of this result, it is important to note that children placed at 3 to 5 years and children placed at ages younger than 3 were similar as far as their age at assessment was concerned [t (128) = .569, p = .571].