Relations between Children’s and Parents’ Behavior in Adoptive Families – A Longitudinal Analysis

Abstract

Despite decades of research on adopted children’s development, little research has examined the mutual relationship between children’s and parents’ post-adoption behavior. The current study used data from a longitudinal study to examine transactional processes between children’s psychosocial adjustment, parenting styles, and parenting stress in a sample of 67 adoptive families. Children’s early behavioral problems predicted later positive parenting, inconsistent parenting, and parenting stress. The findings underline the importance of pre-adoption training for adoptive parents, realistic information on adoptees’ adjustment problems, and continuous post-adoption support.

Keywords:

• Adopted children
• behavior problems
• parenting
• parenting stress

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank all adoptive families for their participation in the study. We also thank the adoption agencies for their support in recruitment of the adoptive families. We would like to thank Prof. Dr. Heinz Kindler for coordinating the project and Prof. Dr. Sabine Walper for advice and supervision. A special thank goes to Annabel Zwönitzer, Janin Zimmermann and Sabine Heene who were highly involved in Wave 1 of the survey.

Authors’ contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by Ina Bovenschen, Fabienne Hornfeck, and Selina Kappler. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Ina Bovenschen and Fabienne Hornfeck and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Ethics approval

The study was approved by the German Psychological Society (approval ID BovenschenIna2019-12-20VA).

Additional information

Funding

Wave 1 of the survey was part of a project funded by the Federal Ministry of Family Affairs.