The authors of a report that has been billed as the most extensive national data ever collected on adopted children and their families in the United States have concluded that most adopted are doing pretty good.

A Nov. 30 article by Joseph Shapiro of NPR provided the following insights into the report:

The vast majority of adopted children are in good health and fare well on measures of social and emotional well being. Eighty-five percent of them are reported by their parents to be in excellent or very good health. And 88 percent of adopted children age 6 and older show positive social behaviors.

That's contrary to the "negative stories that capture media attention," about adoption, says the study's co-author, Sharon Vandivere, a researcher for Child Trends, a nonpartisan Washington research group.

Called "Adoption USA," the report was written by researchers at Child Trends and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. It was based on questions in the first-ever National Survey of Adoptive Parents, a federal survey of 2,000 families that had adopted children through foster care, private domestic adoption or international adoption.

Labels: research, welfare, health

Posted By: Aspen/CRC