Parent perspectives on adoption preparation: Findings from the Modern Adoptive Families project

Lee, Bethany R.; Kobulsky, Julia M.; Brodzinsky, David M.; Barth, Richard P.

doi:10.1016/j.childyouth.2017.12.007

Cited by 32 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…Information about children's risks should be used in the recruitment and preparation of adoptive parents. Adoptive parents commonly report feeling ill-equipped for the realities of parenting an adopted child; they are likely to value specialist clinical information and opportunities to connect to others with relevant personal experiences as well as access to services and parenting tools and strategies (Lee et al, 2018). Providing prospective adopters with more information about the impact of risks factors on children may help build their empathy and increase their confidence in considering a child with special needs such as FASD (Edelstein et al, 2017).…”

Section: Implications For Policy and Practicementioning

confidence: 99%

“…A focus on a wide range of risk factors beyond age at placement is important, as the support needs of children placed as babies and toddlers can be overlooked (Meakings et al, 2018). Simplistic or deterministic predictions about children's development need to be avoided as sensitivity to risk varies and children's outcomes are diverse (Woolgar & Simmonds, 2019), but building a realistic understanding of potential challenges balanced with a sense of optimism is important (Lee et al, 2018).…”

Section: Implications For Policy and Practicementioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Exploring links between early adversities and later outcomes for children adopted from care: Implications for planning post adoption support

Neil

Morciano

Young

et al. 2020

Developmental Child Welfare

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This study explored how child maltreatment, alongside a range of other variables, predicted adverse outcomes for children adopted from the foster care system in England. The participants were 319 adoptive parents who completed an in-depth online survey about their most recently adopted child. The mean age of children at placement for adoption was 28 months (range 0–11 years) and their ages at the time of the survey ranged from 0 years to 17 years (mean = 7 years). Detailed information was collected about children’s backgrounds, including their experiences in the birth family and the care system before adoption. Adoptive parents also reported on how well children were getting on in a range of areas of functioning and how well they felt the adoption was going overall. Child maltreatment and child adverse outcomes were modeled as two factors in a latent factor structural equation model. The relationship between these two factors was explored alongside a range of covariates. Associated with worse outcomes for children were potentially heritable factors (parental learning disability), the pre-birth environment (exposure to drugs or alcohol in utero) and the period between birth and moving to the adoptive family (higher levels of maltreatment, spending more than a year in care, having two or more foster placements). The child’s distress on moving from the foster home to the adoptive family was also highly significant in linking to poorer outcomes, suggesting the detrimental effect of poorly managed transitions. Implications for child welfare practices before and after adoption are discussed.

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Section: Implications For Policy and Practicementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Implications For Policy and Practicementioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring links between early adversities and later outcomes for children adopted from care: Implications for planning post adoption support

Neil

Morciano

Young

et al. 2020

Developmental Child Welfare

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Some authors (42)(43)(44) have highlighted the need for parental preparation, in order to prepare them to be parents and also therapists for their child. Many studies have in the last few years underlined the usefulness of specific training on trauma for parents-both for welcoming the child (15,43,(45)(46)(47) and for coping with the risk of trauma transmission (16,19,20,48).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Impact of Children’s Pre-Adoptive Traumatic Experiences on Parents

2019

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For the last decade, children are adopted increasingly at an older age. Their pre-adoptive past can bare traumatic experiences consequent to abandonment, violence, or deprivation in birth family or orphanage. The objective of this study is to explore the impact of the child's traumatic past on parental representations and subsequent parent-child interactions. The study includes 41 French parents who adopted one or more children internationally. Each parent participated to a semi-structured interview, focused on the choice of country, the trip to the child's native country, the first interactions with the child, the knowledge of the child's pre-adoptive history. The interviews were analyzed according to a qualitative phenomenological method, the Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. Five themes emerged from this analysis: absence of affects in the narrative; denial of the significance of the child's traumatic experiences; perceptions of the uncanny concerning the child; parental worry about traumatic repetition for the child; specific structure of the narrative. These extracted themes reveal a low parental reflective function when the child's past is discussed. They highlight the impact of the child's traumatic past on parents. Exploring the impact of the child's traumatic experiences on adoptive parents enables professionals involved in adoption to provide an early support to these families and to do preventive work at the level of parental representations and family interactions.

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“…This model predicts that parents who have expectations reflecting the range of possible postadoption lived experience across the transition to parenthood will be more likely to seek out services if they are needed; these are the parents who had me s at the ready for their I s to draw on. Research indicates a variety of pre‐ and postadoption service utilization (Brodzinsky, ; Lee, Kobulsky, Brodzinsky, & Barth, ) and further indicates that such support is both desired and helpful (Barth, ; Hartinger‐Saunders, Trouteaud, & Matos Johnson, ). Parents who have expectations reflecting uniformly positive postadoption lived experiences across the transition to parenthood will likely be less equipped to identify and seek supports; these are the parents who did not have preexisting me s to inform their postadoption parenting behaviors.…”

Section: The Conceptual Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using Symbolic Interactionism to Model Transitions to Adoptive Parenthood

Hepp

Hrapczynski

Fortner‐Wood

2019

J of Family Theo & Revie

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This article focuses on symbolic interactionism and its utility when applied to adoptive families. We argue that Mead's (1934, 1956) theoretical concepts of self, generalized other, and shared meaning are underutilized tools for exploring prospective parents' decision of whether to adopt, the transition to adoptive parenthood, and subsequent family adjustment over time. We also advocate for the extension of salience to generalized other, in order to better understand and reflect prospective parents' perspectives of and experiences with adoption. We chose symbolic interactionism as a single theoretical framework to unify the extant adoption literature; in doing so, a conceptual model was developed to better illustrate the theoretical principles as they inform decision making and action taking across the transition to adoptive family life. The model posits six specific propositions that warrant further empirical exploration to test and refine its predictive utility.

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Parent perspectives on adoption preparation: Findings from the Modern Adoptive Families project

Cited by 32 publications

References 24 publications

Exploring links between early adversities and later outcomes for children adopted from care: Implications for planning post adoption support

Exploring links between early adversities and later outcomes for children adopted from care: Implications for planning post adoption support

The Impact of Children’s Pre-Adoptive Traumatic Experiences on Parents

Using Symbolic Interactionism to Model Transitions to Adoptive Parenthood

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