A study conducted by four economists with the Centre for Economic Policy and Research has revealed that Caucasian, Hispanic and female babies are more likely to be adopted than are African-American or male infants.

A Jan. 25 article by Catherine Rampell of the New York Times provided the following details about the study, which involved the analysis of five years of data on more than 800 adoptable children:

The authors found that girls are consistently preferred to boys. For non-African-American babies, for example, the probability that a prospective adoptive parent expresses interest in such a baby is 11.5 percent if the baby is a girl and 7.9 percent if the baby is a boy.

Interestingly, in many cultures the preference for biological children runs in the opposite direction, with parents strongly preferring boys instead of girls. The authors suggest that this preference for girls in cases of adoptive children may be because adoptive parents "fear dysfunctional social behavior in adopted children and perceive girls as 'less risky' than boys in that respect."

Additionally, Caucasians and Hispanics are consistently preferred to African-Americans. The probability that a non-African-American baby will attract the interest of an adoptive parent is at least seven times as high as the corresponding probability for an African-American baby.

Labels: gender, research, race

Posted By: Aspen/CRC 0 Comments

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 0 Comments

Couples who adopt children spend more time and money on them than biological parents do, according to a new study published in the February 2007 issue of American Sociological Review.

Brian Powell, a sociologist at Indiana University, led a team of researchers who studied 13,000 families with children in first grade. Of that group, 161 were two-parent families had adopted children. They scored high on helping children with homework, being involved in their schools, taking children to religious and cultural activities, reading to them, talking over problems with them, and eating meals together.

At first, the researchers believed that adoptive parents spent more time and money on their children because they were older and wealthier than most biological parents included in their study. However, when they reanalyzed the data with the income levels as a factor, the adoptive parents still scored higher, especially compared to single parent and stepparent families.

Labels: research, parents

Posted By: Aspen Education Group 0 Comments

A new study done at Harvard University concluded that adopted preschoolers acquire their new second language in much the same way that infants learn their first one.

Dr. Jesse Snedeker and her colleagues followed children from China adopted by American families. The children were ages 2.5 years to 6 years. The researchers found that the adopted children went through the same stages of learning their new languages as infants. However, the adopted preschoolers went through the stages more quickly, which may mean that they will eventually catch up to their peer groups.

Internationally adopted children face a unique challenge in that they begin learning one language first, and then they move to new homes where they have to acquire new languages without any help from bilingual teachers.

This study appears in the January 2007 issue of Psychological Science.

Labels: international, research, education

Posted By: Aspen Education Group 0 Comments