Foreign adoptees seem to adjust better.

Foreign adoptees seem to adjust better
Study's results counter long-held beliefs
Lindsey Tanner - Associated PressWednesday,
May 25, 2005

Chicago --- They are often born in poverty and civil strife, abandoned, put in an orphanage, and then suddenly uprooted and sent to live an ocean away with strangers from another culture.

And yet, children adopted from abroad seem to adjust remarkably well, according to a new study that challenges the widely held notion that these youngsters are badly damaged emotionally and prone to disruptive behavior.

The analysis of more than 50 years of international data found that youngsters adopted from abroad are only slightly more likely than nonadopted children to have behavioral problems such as aggressiveness and anxiety.

They seem to have fewer problems than children adopted within their own countries.

"The first years of life should not be considered as inevitable destiny. On the contrary, most children grab the new chance offered to them," said researchers Femmie Juffer and Marinus H. van IJzendoorn of Leiden University in the Netherlands.

The results are generally reassuring for international adoption --- an increasing phenomenon involving more than 40,000 children a year moving among more than 100 countries, the researchers said.

The study appears in today's Journal of the American Medical Association.

The authors pooled results from 137 studies on adoptions by parents living in the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Israel. The analysis involved studies on adoption between 1950 and 2005, involving more than 30,000 adoptees and more than 100,000 nonadopted children.

"Before adoption, most international adoptees experience insufficient medical care, malnutrition, maternal separation, and neglect and abuse in orphanages," the researchers said.

But, they found that these children do well and are largely able to catch up with their nonadopted counterparts.

Over the past half-century, adoption has evolved from being a "shameful secret" to being celebrated and often very visible, especially with the relatively recent phenomenon of white parents adopting Chinese children, according to editorial author Dr. Laurie C. Miller of Tufts-New England Medical Center. In the United States alone, parents have adopted more than 230,000 children from other countries since 1989, she said.

Behavior problems were relatively uncommon among all children studied, but internationally adopted children had a 20 percent higher chance of being disruptive than nonadopted children, and a 10 percent higher chance of being anxious or withdrawn.

They also were twice as likely as nonadopted children to receive mental health services.

Children adopted within their own countries had an 36 percent higher chance of being anxious or withdrawn than the international adoptees did, and a 50 percent higher chance of being aggressive or disruptive, the study found.

These children also were four times more likely than nonadopted children and twice as likely as internationally adopted children to receive mental health services.

Also, domestically adopted youngsters had a 60 percent higher chance of having behavior problems than nonadopted children.

Some of the results probably reflect the parents who adopt foreign children, said Dr. Gregory Plemmons of Vanderbilt University's clinic for international adoptees.

These parents often are high-achieving and financially well off, and tend to seek out services like counseling for their children, Plemmons said.

Also, children adopted domestically may suffer from the instability of living with different foster families before adoption, Plemmons said.