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Recently, citizens of Sweden have adopted children from approximately 55 different countries.
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Research on International Adoptees' Decisions to Search for Their First/Birth Families |
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Tieman, W., van der Ende, J., & Berhults, F. C. (2008). Young adult international adoptees’ search for birth parents. Journal of Family Psychology, 22, 678-687.
Background
Most research on the decision by adult adoptees to search for their birth/first families has studied domestic adoptees. There has been little research with international adoptees. There is reason to believe that the experience for international adoptees has unique aspects. In addition to varying laws about access to records in an adoptee’s country of origin, there may be other roadblocks to searching such as language barriers and cultural differences. Also, the experience of being raised in a family that was formed through international adoption (and especially transracial adoption) may influence an adoptee’s decision to search or not. Past research on adoptees’ decisions to search for their birth/first families has also been limited by the fact that most studies overrepresent adoptees who have chosen to search. It is with this background in mind that these researchers conducted a study with a large group of international adoptees who were followed over approximately 15 years, beginning in late childhood/early adolescence.
Method
The study began in the Netherlands in 1986 with 2,148 families with internationally adopted children. Children were 10-15 years old at the time of the first survey. They were surveyed again in 1989-1990 and a third time between 1999-2002. At the time of the third survey 1,417 adoptees continued their participation. This article reports some of the findings from the third survey. At the time of the third survey the adoptees were between the ages of 24-30 years. The majority (92%) of them had been adopted transracially.
The survey assessed numerous aspects of the adoptees’ experiences:
- Current family status
- Educational and professional level
- School achievement in childhood
- How interested they were in searching when they were adolescents
- Physical, intellectual and psychological similarity to their adoptive parents
- Characteristics of the adoptive family
- Adverse experiences prior to the adoption (e.g., neglect, abuse, multiple placements)
- Adoption dynamics (e.g., positive feelings about adoption, preoccupation with adoption, negative experiences with adoption, and parental openness about adoption)
- Psychiatric disorders
- Problem behaviors in childhood, adolescence and adulthood
Main Findings
Based on their answers about searching, the adoptees were divided into four groups:
1. Adoptees who were not interested in finding their first/birth families and who had not searched (36.4%)
2. Adoptees who were interested in finding their first/birth families but who had not searched (31.9%)
3. Adoptees who were interested in finding their first/birth families and who had searched for them but the search was either not successful or was ongoing (17.6%)
4. Adoptees who were reunited in some way with their first/birth families (13.9%)
Using the other information they had collected from the surveys, the researchers then analyzed to see if adoptees who want to search and those who actually do search different from those who do not want to search. There were a number of differences found. However, it is important to note that some of these differences, although statistically significant, actually had very small effects. Therefore, caution should be used when interpreting what the findings might mean for adoptees, adoptive families, post-adoption support, and public policy.
The results of this study indicate that:
- Women are no more likely than men to do a search, but they are more interested in searching
- The older adoptees were at the time of their adoption, the more interest they had in searching
- Interest in their families of origin tended to be consistent over time.
- Searchers expressed more problems with how they were dissimilar from their adoptive families than non-searchers. Physical differences were generally not important to them, but intellectual and psychological differences were.
- Searchers showed more problem behaviors in both adolescence and adulthood than nonsearchers. However, reunited adoptees showed fewer problem behaviors than those who were searching and had not yet succeeded in making contact. (Note: the size of these effects is small)
Implications
This study provided rich details about many factors that can influence an adoptee’s decision to search. Synthesizing the many results is challenging. In their attempt to interpret the meaning of the results, the authors make two statements that particularly worthy of consideration:
“The fact that some adoptees do not search for their birth parents does not mean that they have no wish to do so; instead, it may indicate that other factors may restrict the possibility of a successful reunion.” (page 683)
“When earlier results are combined with our own, it is possible neither to urge adoptees to search for their biological parents, nor to dissuade them from doing so. If an adoptee feels the desire to search and has the opportunity to do so, such a search might be important...However, if they have no desire to search for their birth parents...they should not be forced. Nonsearchers in our sample were generally well-adjusted, so searching does not seem to be a necessary developmental task." (page 685)
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© 2010 Informed Adoption Advocates
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