• In adoptive families, open communication about the adoption is linked to children’s emotional well-being.
• Many people focus only on one person’s perspective of how open this communication is within a family. To better understand the nuances of family dynamics and design targeted support programs for adoptive families, it is important to consider the perspectives of different family members.
• In our work, using a multi-informant approach, we found that adoptive mothers and fathers generally felt more comfortable, satisfied, and free when discussing adoption than did their adolescent adoptees.
• Mothers’ and fathers’ communication openness about adoption each played distinct roles in children’s development.
• Enrichment programs for adoptive families should promote open, responsive, and empathic dialogue between parents and children. Such programs will be most effective in promoting adoptees’ well-being if they involve both adoptive parents and children, and consider all family members’ perspectives.

This blog is based on research originally published in Ranieri, S., Zambelli, M., Ferrari, L., Tagliabue, S., Rosnati, R., & Brodzinsky, D. (2025). Measuring communication openness within adoptive families: The psychometric properties of the multi-informant Adoption Communication Openness Scale. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 49(1), 89-99.

Talking about adoption: A challenging family task

Adoptive families often have an ongoing challenge and opportunity to work together to make sense of their histories and identities, both individual and shared. They must decide how to manage disclosing facts about the child’s origin, birth parents, and pre-adoption history.

Photo by Pavel Danilyukm on Pexels

What is adoption communication openness?

The concept of adoption communication openness captures the family culture around these types of conversations, extending beyond the parents’ initial decisions about sharing information. As the adoptee grows up, adoption communication evolves into how the family navigates the child’s questions and interest in learning more.

Open adoption communication involves not just providing children with age-appropriate information in response to their questions, but addressing their thoughts and feelings in an emotionally caring way. It also involves parents sharing their own thoughts and feelings about the child’s history and current adoption experiences in an empathic and supportive manner.

But just how satisfied are family members in their level of comfort and discussion? When it comes to family members’ feelings and thoughts about adoption, do they feel understood and accepted by each other?

Open adoption communication and emotional attunement

Adoption communication openness is a collaborative, enduring family task grounded in emotional attunement – where parents and adoptive children participate in a thoughtful give and take of honest reflection and consideration of each other’s feelings.

Conversations about adoption can be difficult for some family members, especially if they have complex feelings about the birth family, the circumstances surrounding the adoption, and any pre-adoption trauma the child might have experienced.

That said, when families embrace an open and empathic approach to discussions about adoption, they help adopted children connect with their past. Families engaged in these open discussions also provide youth a sense of self-continuity. This sense of selfhelps youth navigate typical developmental changes.  With this support, youth can create a coherent, well-integrated identity and adjust well to changes in their social and psychological experiences. A strong sense of self helps youth both during the growing-up years and as adoptees transition to adulthood.

Talking about adoption requires a family perspective

Because adoption communication is a joint endeavor, studying and working with adoptive families should involve a family-wide perspective.

In our research with Italian families, we approach adoption as a family transition that involves a pact among mothers, fathers, children, and the broader social context. (Italian law dictates that only heterosexual married couples can adopt children.) Based on this view, our studies integrate and compare perspectives of the children, mothers, and fathers in adoptive families.

This multi-informant approach moves beyond methods used in earlier studies on communication openness within adoptive families, which often relied on a single family member’s perception (typically the child’s). When we integrate different perspectives within adoptive families, a more complete picture of family relationships emerges.

Using the Adoption Communication Openness (ACO) Scale with Italian parents and children

As a part of our Group of European Adoption Researchers, we adapted a widely used, English-language self-report measure of communication openness in adoptive families –the Adoption Communication Openness (ACO) Scale, which we translated into Italian – to capture multiple perspectives:

• The child’s view of communication with their mother,
• The child’s view of communication with their father,
• The mother’s view of communication with their child, and
• The father’s view of communication with their child.

This multi-informant version of the ACO scale allows adopted children and their parents to express their own perceptions of openness in communication about adoption.

Valuable insights come from comparing parents’ and children’s perspectives

Generally speaking, evidence suggests that family members often have different perceptions of their relationships, with parents perceiving a more favorable picture than do their children. When we studied families’ adoption communication openness using our multi-informant approach, we found evidence of this generational discrepancy between parents and their adolescent children.

Our research studied 134 Italian families with adopted 13- to 17-year-olds. The children were adopted internationally from Asia (35%), Eastern Europe (35%), Latin America (24%), and Africa (6%). 

All parents were White, whereas most of the adolescents were of a different racial/ethnic background. In addition, most of the adoptees were in institutional care before adoption and consequently had one or more pre-placement experiences of trauma and deprivation.

Adoptees find it harder to talk about adoption

While adoptive mothers and fathers reported similar perceptions of adoption communication, their perceptions differed from those of their children. Parents were more comfortable, satisfied, and free in discussing adoption with their children than their children were in discussing adoption with them.

The adoptees reported more difficulties sharing their thoughts and feelings about their adoptive history with their parents and wanted more open communication than they believed existed in their family. These results illustrate the importance of gathering multiple perspectives on adoption communication openness within a relationship.

Exploring unique ways that adoption communication openness with mothers and fathers relates to children’s well-being

Among researchers and in pop culture, interest is growing in investigating the unique contributions of mothers and fathers in children’s development, in general, and the world of adoptive families is no exception.

Children’s psychological functioning was better when they experienced open communication with their fathers

In earlier work, we found strong support for unique effects of maternal and paternal relationships on children’s well-being. For instance, in previous research we studied patterns of adoption communication openness in 160 Italian families with international 15- to 24-year-old adoptees who were born in Latin America (75%), Eastern Europe (12%), Africa (8%), or Asia (5%).

Fathers’ adoption communication openness, as perceived by their children, was more crucial in promoting adoptees’ positive psychological functioning than mothers’ adoption communication openness, specifically in terms of self-acceptance, autonomy, personal growth, purpose in life, and positive relations with others.

Photo by RDNE Stock project on Pexels

Mothers’ and fathers’ openness to communication related differently to adolescents’ outcomes

In other research, we studied 105 Italian adopted 13- to 17-year-olds who had been internationally adopted from Eastern Europe (37%), Asia (35%), Latin America (23%), and Africa (5%), who completed the ACO self-report questionnaire. Adopted children’s perception of high levels of maternal and paternal adoption communication openness related differently to outcomes in adolescence.

Adolescents who felt freer to discuss adoption-related issues with their mothers were more likely to report that being adopted was important to their identity and to report greater satisfaction with both their present life and their future possibilities.

The pattern was somewhat different for relations between adolescents’ perception of their fathers’ openness to communication and adoptees’ well-being. Feeling comfortable discussing adoption with their father was directly and positively linked only with adolescents’ future life satisfaction.

Perceived paternal openness to adoption communication may help adolescents think about their future and feel comfortable with their ongoing projects and opportunities. These results highlight that nuances in family-related communication about adoption become clearer when gathering perspectives of openness among different family members.

Establishing the ACO scale as a strong measure capturing the perspectives of different family members

Given the importance of understanding adoption communication in adoptive families and how open communication relates to children’s well-being, it is essential for measurement tools to accurately and reliably capture each family member’s perception of this complex psychological construct. Therefore, we recently worked to verify that the multi-informant ACO scale is an accurate measure that reflects the different perspectives clearly.

The scale was administered to more than 300 Italian families with internationally adopted 12- to 18-year-olds (about half females and half males) and their 40- to 65-year-old parents. At the time of adoption, children ranged from two months old to about 16 years old; most (67%) came to Italy from Asia, Latin America, and Africa, with others (33%) coming from Eastern Europe.

Analyzing family members’ responses on the ACO scale

Family members’ responses on the ACO were subjected to robust statistical methods to analyze the reliability and validity of the four versions of the scale: the child’s separate view of communication with their mother and father, the mother’s view of communication with their child, and the father’s view of communication with their child. Although a few items of the scale were discarded because they were judged to be of poor quality, the remainder were retained.

• The final version of the ACO scale, in all four variations, demonstrated acceptable reliability and validity as a measure of each family member’s perception of communication openness about adoption. Specifically, our evidence proved that:
  The ACO scale captures adolescents’ views of both their mothers and their fathers;
• The ACO scale captures the two different perspectives within the mother-child and father-child pairings;
• Results from the ACO scale were related in predictable ways to perceptions from family members’ reports on other family dynamics (e.g., higher levels of adoption communication openness were linked to greater frequencies of family members asking each other for help and greater parental knowledge of various aspects of their children’s lives, such as friends and activities); and
• Findings from the ACO scale were related in predictable ways to family members’ reports of the child’s emotional and behavioral health (e.g., family members who reported higher levels of adoption communication openness also reported fewer emotional and behavioral problems of the adolescents, such as problems with peer relationships and behaving inappropriately in various situations).

Benefits of using the ACO scale to evaluate different perspectives

This validated and reliable multi-informant tool allowed us to consider both similarities and differences in how each family member perceived communication openness. While these initial findings are based on Italian families with internationally adopted adolescents, researchers could adapt the multi-informant ACO scale for use in different cultural contexts, other types of adoption, and throughout the life cycle, broadening its applicability and impact.

Our tool will be helpful as researchers continue to explore the role of adoption communication openness in children’s development. Meanwhile, what do insights from our completed studies mean for today’s families?

Recommendations for adoptive families

Despite the recognition of adoption communication openness as a promising ingredient for supporting adoptees’ healthy development, few studies have explored how to facilitate such openness regarding adoption.

In our study of 134 Italian families – mothers, fathers, and their internationally adopted adolescents – we identified some components of the family context that can contribute to these supportive dynamics.

Having a shared family climate in which all members of the family experience high levels of closeness, trust, and open dialogue can help. In such an environment, sharing feelings and thoughts about adoption is enhanced, and adolescents report fewer emotional and behavioral difficulties.

Photo by Kindel Media on Pexels

Overall, our findings from more than a decade of scientific research have confirmed that communication openness is an important factor that relates to adoptive families’ internal dynamics and adopted adolescents’ healthy development.

When adoptees and their parents build bridges between the past and the present and foster open communication with each other, that dynamic can support adoptees’ positive feelings about their adoption and enable them to look forward confidently to the road ahead.

4 tips for talking about adoption

Our findings offer practical suggestions about adoption communication openness that may help adoptive parents, other caregivers, and the communities supporting them. We recommend that stakeholders:

1. Embrace a family perspective

Embrace a family perspective because adopted children and their parents may share similarities but also differ in their perceptions of adoption communication openness. Considering all individual perspectives provides a more comprehensive picture of family relationships and their associations with adoptees’ development.

This approach can also help “normalize” different perceptions, supporting the value of each person’s unique adoption experience, and promoting the co-construction of a positive family environment in which all family members feel understood, respected, and supported.

2. Make room for every perspective

Incorporate this family perspective into intervention efforts by ensuring that each individual’s voice is heard.

3. Understand how mothers and fathers support adopted children differently

Recognize that mothers and fathers play unique roles as “meaning makers” for their children. By helping children make sense of complex situations and giving value to their personal history, each parent can find ways to support adopted children’s process of connecting the past to the present and the future.

4. Encourage mutual trust and caring in your adoptive family

Promote a family climate that features mutual trust, aid, sharing, and general caring. This overall dynamic may foster an open, responsive, and empathic dialogue about adoption within the family context, as well as within the wider social context, that benefits adoptees’ development.

The post How to talk about adoption: Embracing multiple perspectives to support a child’s emotional well-being appeared first on Child and Family Blog.

• Adoptive families and adopted people are, first and foremost, families and people. Adoption adds a trait, but it is not a definition (and, of course, it is not a pathology). 

• Adoptive families and adopted people share the adoption aspect of their background but they are a group of families and individuals that is otherwise very diverse. It is inappropriate to draw conclusions about all adopted people or adoptive families. 

• Adoption occurs when children experience some type of adversity that makes it important for their caregiving situation to change. Thanks to adoption, the future is transformed but the past does not disappear. 

• Therefore, post-adoption experiences should promote recovery from any pre-adoption struggles, development, and a healthy adoptive identity. Adoptive parents’ lifelong commitment and stimulation are key ingredients in a positive post-adoption trajectory. 

This blog is based on research originally published in Román, M., Carrera, P., Palacios, J., & Moreno, C. (2025), Emotion understanding in internationally adopted children and children in residential care: Developmental periods and mediation by language. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 49(3), 252-262. 

Common assumptions about the struggles of adopted children

People sometimes make insensitive comments about adoption based on ignorance or misunderstandings about what adoption involves. Although common assumptions might apply to some adoptees, many are often inaccurate.

Photo by olia danilevich on Pexels

Even in the field of adoption research, comparisons between adopted and non-adopted people can lead to conclusions that inappropriately suggest that being adopted indicates a lifetime of troubles and being different (often in negative ways). 

In our work, we have addressed some of these assumptions by considering specific patterns and clarifying takeaway messages. With a deeper understanding of the data, we see that adoption can help children recover from difficult circumstances and transition onto a path of healthier development. 

Cautions about comparing adopted and non-adopted children  

Much research on adoption (including ours) has compared adopted and non-adopted people. Documented differences between these groups often suggest that adoption is inevitably related to challenges with social, emotional, or cognitive development. But the differences are not necessarily as meaningful as they might seem at first, and they might not even be due to adoption itself. 

The specificity of differences between adoptees and non-adoptees  

When differences are found between these two groups, they are often limited to a smaller set of adoptees experiencing substantially more difficulties. Most adoptees in these studies are more similar to than different from non-adoptees. 

The differences identified by the research tend to occur in certain areas, such as attention and hyperactivity problems, which are significant in terms of their impact on school performance and, sometimes, on relationships with others. Inevitably, in the development of personal identity, adoption adds a layer of complexity that may not appear in non-adopted individuals. 

The roles of adopted children’s difficult early childhood experiences and subsequent care 

Adoption is an intervention intended to help children who experience very challenging pre-adoption circumstances, including neglect, abuse, or institutional living.

Research on adopted individuals’ development often involves a comparison group of non-adopted people who are less likely to have had those challenging early childhood experiences, instead enjoying stable emotional bonds and healthy relationships with caregivers. It is not surprising, then, that more problems or difficulties are sometimes found in those with more negative early experiences. 

Research comparing adoptees and non-adoptees

We have been conducting research on adoption for more than three decades. One of our longest-running studies began more than 20 years ago and is still ongoing: the Longitudinal Adoption & Institutionalization Study conducted at the University of Seville, Spain (LAIS.US). 

Like much adoption research, our study compares a group of adoptees with a group of non-adoptees. The adopted group includes Russian children adopted into Spanish families at about three years old, in many cases following a period of living in poor conditions in large institutions in their homeland. The non-adopted group includes Spanish children who lived with their birth families and had no contact with the child protective system.

A third comparison group: Children in collective care

A unique addition is our third comparison group, Spanish children who experienced adverse circumstances in their birth family and were placed in small residential communities for protective care starting around age five years. Both the children adopted from Russia and this third group had difficult early childhood backgrounds and lived in improved circumstances through intervention. 

A key detail is that the third group was in collective care. Although the Spanish residential care communities were smaller and provided higher-quality support than the large Russian institutions, children in the third group did not experience the individualized and committed nurturing typically provided by an adoptive family.

Photo by Pavel Danilyuk on Pexels

Comparing children’s development over time 

We started our research when the children were on average six years old. Since then, we have been studying the children, families, and caregivers every three to four years. The children are now on average 21 years old. 

Adoption vs. collective care

Over time, children with backgrounds of early childhood adversity can catch up, in some ways, with children who have not experienced such difficulties. In fact, our results have shown the effectiveness of adoption, specifically, as a protective measure that promotes recovery processes: The adopted children have performed significantly better in many aspects than the children who also experienced early adversity but grew up in collective residential care. 

Impact on attachment disorders

For instance, symptoms of attachment disorders, such as emotional withdrawal or disinhibited social behavior, have decreased over time in the adopted children. By a few years after their adoption, their symptoms of attachment disorders were, on average, similar to levels in the group of non-adopted children who did not experience early adversity.

In contrast, children with prolonged stays in residential care showed an increase in attachment difficulties as they navigated life in their residential homes. 

Impact on development

Our study has also highlighted how different areas of development recover at different rates in the same individual. For example, for children with significant developmental delays at adoption, physical development tended to recover faster than emotional development, indicating the need these children have for continued positive emotional, cognitive, and social support. 

How adoption helps children catch up on specific skills: Understanding emotions 

In a recent article, we illustrate some of these ideas about how adoption can help children recover from early adversity. 

We analyzed children’s emotion understanding – a sociocognitive skill that enables individuals to comprehend emotions in themselves and others – in the three groups of children in our study. Since this skill has emotional and cognitive foundations in infancy and early childhood, we expected that the children with adverse early experiences would show more difficulties in this domain than the children in the community group. 

We also expected that the adopted children, once protected from the initial adversity by committed cognitive and emotional support from their adoptive family, would catch up to the children in the community group in abilities to understand emotions. In contrast, we expected the group of children growing up in the more negative circumstances of collective care to take longer to catch up. 

Our study results confirmed these hypotheses when the children were in middle childhood (between four and eight years old), with the adopted children catching up to their community peers more quickly by showing greater emotion understanding than their counterparts in the residential care group. There were two additional key insights. 

1. More complex aspects of emotion understanding take longer to develop and recover 

First, as a group, adopted children were similar to children in the community group in terms of simpler aspects of emotion understanding (e.g., recognizing how memories and beliefs can influence emotions), which typically develop before more complex skills.

However, the adopted children still lagged behind the children in the community group in more advanced aspects of emotion understanding involving skills such as:

• Emotion regulation: e.g. use of distraction to manage emotional states
• Mixed emotions: e.g. feeling both anxious and excited about a situation
• Moral emotions: e.g. positive emotions linked to actions considered morally correct

This finding indicates that recovery is not immediate and requires continued stimulation and commitment from the adopters, especially when it comes to more complex matters, such as, in this case, the more mature elements of emotion understanding.

Photo by Arina Krasnikova on Pexels

2. Differences in language development affect emotion understanding 

Second, adopted children’s remaining difficulties in emotion understanding were partially attributable to deficits in language skills that were necessary not only for this activity, but also, more broadly, for the development of social cognition.

However, the children adopted from Russia outperformed the Spanish children in residential care in their ability to understand and comprehend spoken language, even if the adoptees had to learn it at ages well beyond typical language acquisition periods. 

Our finding that difficulties in language competence were related to limitations in understanding more complex emotions illustrates the fact that the various developmental domains (e.g., physical growth, emotions, cognition, language, social skills) are interwoven and interdependent.

When a parent tells a story to a child sitting on their lap or converses with a teenager about the joys and difficulties of the day, they can simultaneously enrich language, strengthen security of attachment, and promote a better understanding of others and the world. 

Adoption as a lifelong commitment 

Adoption involves an adult committing to a child’s future without ignoring the child’s past. Integrating a child into family life, parents can embrace the child’s past and the potential impact early adversity may (or may not) have on their future development. 

By adopting a child who went through difficult circumstances, a family can provide individualized, continued support for the child’s development. Different types of families can respond to this challenge. 

With this committed care, adoptees can have a more positive life trajectory that is similar in many ways to that of non-adoptees. Families should keep in mind that along with these improvements, the traces of early adversity and the construction of a more complex identity inevitably contribute to the child’s history and personality. 

This work is part of the R+D+I Projects SEJ2006-12216, PSI2015–67757-R and PID2020-115836RB-I00 funded by MICIU/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and ERDF A way of making Europe. 

The post Do adopted children struggle more than other children? appeared first on Child and Family Blog.

• There are many types of adoption: domestic, international, open, closed, kinship, transracial, infant placement, late-placed. And there is tremendous range in the circumstances that precede and follow each adoption. Generalizing about adoption as a singular life experience that results in a generic outcome is inaccurate and oversimplified.
• The general perception of adoption overestimates deficits and pathology, while underestimating resilience.
• Children build resilience through relationships with supportive caregivers dedicated to their well-being.
• A strengths-based focus on adoption acknowledges humans’ capacity for adaptation after disruption, adversity, and loss.

At 23, Jordan Fisher decided he was ready to tell his adoption story on a big stage. Fisher was used to large stages: He had steadily built his career in musical theater with a recent Broadway debut in the hit, Hamilton. Now he was competing on Dancing with the Stars and he announced that his performance was inspired by the meaning of his adoption.

Fisher said this in an interview with People magazine at the time: “I’ve never had anything to hide or felt ashamed about my adoption. After almost 14 years in the industry … it just feels like the right time to share my story. My life could have been very different. It’s because of unrelenting, unconditional support and love I’m able to have the life that I have now and do everything I love to do.”

One family’s story highlights variability in adoption stories across families

Before exploring Fisher’s story, providing an accurate frame for its relevance is important. Adoption outcomes are individual, dynamic, and complex. Too often they are presented as oversimplified stories told about an adopted person rather than by an adopted person.

There is no typical adoption story. Some highlight gains, strengths, and satisfaction. Some feature more challenge, isolation, and pain. Most are kaleidoscopic, made up of some or all of these elements, and shifting in pattern and intensity over time.

Fisher’s reflections, as he chose to present them publicly, represent a strengths-based focus. Versions like this are underrepresented in research and in most popular portrayals of adoption — but they are more common than generally recognized.

This article is the first in a two-part series that uses Fisher’s comments about his adoption and what he learned growing up in his family to discuss how most adoptive families address the inherent complexity of adoption and thrive.

In Part 1, I tell Fisher’s story and explain the concept of resilience. In Part 2, I will focus on one idea Fisher highlighted – open communication – which research also identifies as an important factor in adopted children’s lives.

Photo by Pavel Danilyuk on Pexels

Jordan Fisher’s adoption story

Fisher was raised from birth by his maternal grandparents (whom he calls Mom and Dad) because, as he explained, his 16-year-old birth mother was in no position to be a parent when she gave birth to him.

Later, when his birth mother’s substance abuse interfered with her ability to care for his younger biological siblings, Jordan’s mother and father adopted their two younger grandchildren, too. At that point, Jordan went from being an “only” child in some ways to becoming a big brother.

This description of the members of the Fisher family can be confusing. Most adoptive families are more complex than most biologically related families. Figuring out who is related to whom and how can take some effort.

Grandparents can be mother and father, and a grandchild can also be a son. A birth mother might be part of the extended family but not considered Mom. Siblings may be related to one another through biology, adoption, or both. They also might not regard themselves as siblings if the families in which they live are estranged.

In the case of kinship adoption, all this can happen years before the adoption is legally formalized. Jordan’s adoption was finalized when he was 11. As he put it, “I think there’s something to be said about a document legally proving something you know to be fact already.”

What can be learned from the Fisher family’s experience?

The way Fisher told his adoption story and his reflections on how those experiences shaped him shed light on the realities and challenges of adoption. Adoption extends the concept of family beyond traditional biological connections.

Understanding how a family comes together, how family members are interconnected, how people make it work, and how they define themselves as family requires being able to ask questions. The complexity underlying adoption offers opportunities to build resilience when family members take time to talk through the many aspects involved.

Fisher’s family and their belief in communication provided a healthy foundation

Several years after the People article appeared, Fisher was a guest on Drew Barrymore’s talk show. After an open and lively conversation about his current life she asked him, “How do you think you became you?”

“My parents. I’m adopted,” Fisher replied. “My parents are incredible. They have had things happen to them that they have had to navigate that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy, yet have shown me nothing but patience, kindness, and love.” Fisher acknowledged that his mother and father had faced challenges in building their family.

He then described what he learned from them about communicating, telling Barrymore: it “gave me the opportunity to grow up, as a kid, with a voice. And debate when I felt that was something I needed to do. If I had a point that I wanted to make, I was never silenced. I was just taught to respectfully allow my voice to be heard.”

With self-assurance and candor, Fisher presented a multifaceted account of family and adoption over time that acknowledged both ups and downs and put communication and self-expression at the center. Among his observations:

• It was hard work at times for his parents.
• Despite this, they provided a secure, loving, and nurturing home.
• He was encouraged to express his opinions and listen to those of others.
• The stability in his life allowed him to thrive.

The contrast to public attitudes

Fisher’s experience differs in a key way from the way adopted individuals are usually viewed. A long-running survey of public attitudes about adoption by the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption has consistently shown that adoptees are primarily perceived as having problems with “trust and bonding” and “behavior and self-control.”

Fisher’s autobiographical account challenges that heavily deficit-based characterization and his experience is more typical of adoption outcomes than many people realize. His comments suggest that a focus on resilience, strength, and what nurtures them will provide a more accurate picture of adoptees and adoptive families.

How risk and resilience are related in adopted children

Resilience science is a field of study that has grown more sophisticated over the last 60 years in understanding how some people at high risk due to adversity, trauma, and loss end up thriving. As a group, adopted children are at greater risk for a variety of adjustment difficulties and learning challenges than are their non-adopted peers, yet many of them do not develop the significant and lasting problems their adoption-related life circumstances would predict. The plasticity of childhood, combined with the intervention of adoption, which usually stabilizes a child’s life, often leads to impressive catch-up and recovery.

Photo from iStock

Systematic reviews of studies on adoptees have confirmed that while difficulties and differences in mental health and adjustment do exist when adopted children are compared to their non-adopted peers, those differences are not always large enough to be clinically meaningful. Although a subset of adopted children suffer significant difficulties, most adopted children do not. Because studies that fail to find significant differences between adopted and non-adopted groups are less likely to be published, differences may be overrepresented and similarities underrepresented.

The science of resilience sheds light on positive outcomes in adoption

Ann Masten is a developmental psychologist and leader in resilience science. In her book, Ordinary Magic, she explains what it takes for children to rebound after disruption, adversity, and trauma.

According to Masten, two of the standard ingredients for resilience in children are:

• Having a family that is deeply committed to the well-being of its children and
• A close relationship between the child and at least one caring and competent adult.

Adoption is an intervention designed to provide a committed family to a child whose circumstances by birth might not have offered that. Adoptive parents must earn legal approval to become parents by demonstrating commitment in a way that conception and pregnancy do not require.

Fisher credited his parents’ steadfast commitment to him with making him the person he became, noting that this happened long before the finalization of his adoption. Research on adoption has shown that stability and a family climate that is emotionally supportive and values education are family factors key to helping adopted children thrive.

Fisher highlighted permission and encouragement around communication as key to his upbringing. He felt that from an early age, he was invited to express himself even when talking was difficult, like at times of conflict and tension.

Masten pointed out that she and her fellow researchers were surprised to find that it is the ordinary rather than the extraordinary features of family life that equip children to thrive, even after life-changing challenges.

Direct and effective dialogue teaches a child to articulate their feelings and practice sharing them. This helps others understand them. Just as importantly, the child learns more about their own experience by putting it into words.

Talking among family members may not sound like anything other than a routine and practical feature of family life. But it ties in with Masten’s title, Ordinary Magic: In adoptive families, open dialogue about adoption is a particularly important skill with far-reaching functions.

Masten pointed out that she and her fellow researchers were surprised to find that it is the ordinary rather than the extraordinary features of family life that equip children to thrive, even after life-changing challenges. Fisher focused on communication, and Part 2 of this blog post will explain how adoption research has shown its power in promoting resilience in adoption.

Even a resilient life contains periodic struggle

On Barrymore’s show, Fisher also shared his recent struggles with anxiety, depression, and an eating disorder. All these challenges had improved with treatment before he chose to go public with them. His candor on this topic illustrated that:

• Some painful early experiences eventually surfaced, requiring work in therapy as an adult.
• He was open to working with a therapist, likely influenced by the communication skills and trust built in his family.
• He was not afraid of the vulnerability involved in sharing these challenges publicly.

Is Fisher typical or extraordinary?

Jordan Fisher may be a superstar on the stage but he is not unique when it comes to adoption. His impressive talent, professional success, and relatability combined to create a win on Dancing with the Stars. The show’s format also gave him the opportunity to address what adoption has meant to him, as gymnast Simone Biles did when she was a contestant.

One could argue cynically that Fisher and Biles chose to speak about adoption because doing so elicited sympathy from the public. However, both Fisher and Biles have taken risks around self-disclosure at times when there was no incentive to do so.

Both have also turned to resources and relationships outside their family, like therapy, when faced with challenges to their mental health, a choice that reflects trust and courage. Their willingness to share the ups and downs of their journeys also speaks volumes about a commitment to giving back and normalizing struggle.

One could argue cynically that Fisher and Biles chose to speak about adoption because doing so elicited sympathy from the public. However, both Fisher and Biles have taken risks around self-disclosure at times when there was no incentive to do so.

Masten has observed that the public can be dismissive of celebrity voices that counter prevailing societal assumptions as if they are exceptions to the rule. In the case of adoption, this might be expressed as: Sure it turned out well for him because he had phenomenal talent (or a remarkable family, or wealth, or some other privilege), but most adoptees don’t. Masten reminds us that the human capacity for adaptation, even after disruption, adversity, and loss, is not unusual.

Most adopted children integrate their adoption story into a positive identity. Adult adoptees report life satisfaction comparable to that of non-adoptees, with ratings in the moderately high range. Because of their more complicated history and family structure and often, persistent societal stereotyping, most have navigated a more complex journey through childhood and adolescence.

Photo by Pavel Danilyuk on Pexels

Some adoptees feel troubled and scarred by this journey. Others take it in stride with less distress. All these experiences are valid and deserve respectful consideration. Feelings may shift across development or as a result of heartfelt conversations within or outside of one’s family. Many adopted people find that gathering with fellow adoptees provides validation, perspective, and shared purpose. Adoption is a multifaceted experience with both challenges and creative potential.

Coming Next: The role of communicative openness

In Part 2 of this series, I will explain the type of family communication around adoption that reduces confusion and helplessness and promotes resilience.

The post Building resilience in adoption: How challenges are converted to strengths appeared first on Child and Family Blog.

• The vast majority of adopted children are well-adjusted. Multiple studies over the past 25 years have found that as many as 9 out of 10 adopted children experience only minor difficulties in their adjustment compared to their peers who were not adopted.
• For the small percentage of adopted children who have significant emotional or behavioral problems, this is more often due to pre-adoption circumstances than to adoption itself.
• Adopted children are not destined to have adjustment problems. While they may experience turbulence and questioning at certain ages, this should not be confused with lasting disturbance.

Lessons from conversations about adoption

When someone I have just met asks what I do, I tell them I am a clinical psychologist. A common response is, “Oh, that must be interesting.” The next question is usually, “Do you have a specialty?” I reply that I work primarily with children and families and specialize in adoption.

What typically follows is a solemn look and in a lowered voice, “Oh, that must be hard!” This is often followed by a story of someone they know (or have heard about) who had a hard time with adoption.

People are usually surprised at what I say next: “Actually, my work is not as hard as you might think.” I add, “You probably don’t know that the vast majority of adopted kids are doing far better than people expect.”

Now either puzzlement or disbelief cross their face. But more often than not, I also see a flicker of curiosity. And many say something like, “I didn’t know that. That’s interesting.”

I assure them that they’re not alone in not knowing: “Most people don’t.”

The negative stereotypes and inaccurate assumptions that exist about adoption color perceptions of adopted children.

The public expects adopted children to be troubled

The Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption has surveyed public attitudes toward adoption since 1997. Dave Thomas, the founder of Wendy’s, was adopted, and he was very invested in promoting adoption for children in need of stable and loving families.

The surveys consistently show that while support for adoption is high, there is a persistent expectation that adopted children have emotional and behavioral difficulties.

This is not a surprise to most adopted children and teenagers. They often encounter comments and opinions that convey doubt that they could be healthy and thriving. As one ten-year-old adopted boy said, “It is not adoption that is a problem. It is what everyone thinks about it.”

I agree with him. I have been working with adoptive families and closely following adoption research for 40 years. I have also done some of that research.

The negative stereotypes of adopted children

The negative stereotypes and inaccurate assumptions about adoption color perceptions of adopted children. They can have an unfortunate impact on children, their adoptive families, and their birth families (or first families, as some prefer to say). While family ties of adopted children and youth are more complex than those of children and youth raised by two biological parents, they are navigated successfully far more often than not.

Factors that contribute to negative misperceptions of adoption

What we have learned about what it takes for adopted children to thrive during childhood has changed dramatically over the 40 years since I worked with my first adoptive family. It changed as developmental researchers took a different approach to learning about adoption in the 1980s.

Until that time, most professional writing about adoption focused on adopted people who were struggling or in distress, people who had gone into therapy or returned to their adoption agency to address their questions and difficulties. Many of those patients were adults. Some struggled with aspects of their adoption while growing up. For some, their therapist may have suggested that adoption was a source of trauma. In those days, professionals, not just the public, assumed that adoption was always a liability.

Photo: RDNE Stock project. Pexels.

The societal beliefs around adoption

Another feature of that era was secrecy and shame about adoption. Societal beliefs made it more likely that adoption would be a difficult and isolating experience growing up. Adoptive parents were routinely advised to either not tell their children they were adopted or wait until their children were “old enough to understand.” Given that telling is difficult and these instructions were vague, adoptive parents often postponed communicating this information. For those children and youth who were told, some were warned not to share the information with others for fear of stereotyping and stigma.

Sometimes people discovered they were adopted on their own, which left them feeling understandably betrayed and confused. Experiences like these were among the retrospective accounts of adoption gathered in treatment settings. They shaped mental health providers’ understanding of adoption.

Because adoption is a theme that intrigues people almost universally, it has also been the subject of movies, television shows, books, and magazine articles. These portrayals, typically fictionalized and dramatized for entertainment value, also influenced public views of adoption.

Developmental psychology’s shift to a scientific approach to study adoption

In the 1980s, some developmental psychologists began to wonder whether the research on adoption represented too narrow a slice of the adoption experience to provide a thorough understanding. When one is focused on adoption, it is easy to overlook the reality that the lives of most children include challenges as well as opportunities, losses as well as enrichment.

Three questions guided a new, more scientific approach to learning about adoption:

• What can be learned from the experiences of all the adopted children who never entered into treatment?
• What might be learned from adoptive families directly about how their children did during childhood?
• How are children and youth who joined their families through adoption doing compared to non-adopted kids growing up in the same or similar communities?

In this new work, adoptive and non-adoptive families completed the same questionnaires and interviews for direct comparison. This work:

• Provided a broader picture of the adoption experience by recruiting community-based (versus clinical) samples;
• Looked at adoption in real time, rather than in hindsight;
• Relied on information provided by members of adoptive families (mostly parents), rather than professional sources (e.g., therapists), and
• Put adoption into the context of other life experiences, rather than singling it out.

While adoption is complex, it does not predestine a young person to have emotional or behavioral problems.

Looking at adoption through this new lens, what did the research show?

The picture that emerged from this new research was quite different from what many mental health providers had described in their accounts of treatment with adoptees. In these community-based research studies, the vast majority of adopted children functioned in the typical range. Differences between the groups of adopted and non-adopted children were not large.

Findings from this new approach broadened our understanding of adoption. It did not look as problematic as many had believed. This led to some heated disagreements, even between experts, over which picture of adoption really captured the truth.

In the late 1990s, Jeffrey Haugaard, a professor of psychology at Cornell University, reviewed adoption research to address this controversy. Haugaard concluded that being adopted did not in and of itself create adjustment difficulties. As others have, he found small differences in adjustment between adopted children and their non-adopted peers. This did not mean that there were no adopted children with significant struggles – in fact, a very small group had more extreme difficulties. But this group was estimated to be as small as 1 in 10 adopted children, with 9 out of 10 adjusting well and functioning typically.

Haugaard concluded, “There may be a risk of increased behavior or adjustment problems for some adopted children, or for adopted children at certain ages, but this risk is neither high nor widespread.”

Research has continued to confirm that most adopted children are well-adjusted

In the 25 years since Haugaard did his work, research has become more sophisticated. Only 2% of U.S. children under age 18 are adopted, and small study samples can lead to less reliable findings. Two approaches have helped researchers address this problem: 1) using data from national samples that include information about family background, and 2) meta-analysis, which combines results from several studies to expand the sample size and form more robust conclusions.

In an example of the first approach, a large national study of adolescent health and well-being in the United States compared three groups of teenagers who varied in their family makeup. Results showed little difference between adopted teenagers who were living with two adoptive parents and teenagers living with two biological parents. Interestingly, teens whose parents had divorced (and were living with only one biological parent in either step- or single-parent households) had far greater adjustment problems than the other two groups.

Photo: Pavel Danilyuk. Pexels.

These findings are a powerful reminder that while adoption is complex, it does not predestine a young person to have emotional or behavioral problems. Even during adolescence, which most people assume will be the most turbulent time, adopted teenagers have not stood out as a subset with greater difficulties. Children may face other challenges and adjustments as they grow up, such as parents’ divorce, that create greater disruption.

In an example of the second approach, a meta-analysis of adoption outcomes based on 85 studies from around the world confirmed what Haugaard speculated 18 years earlier. The meta-analysis concluded that “most adoptees could be expected to be in the normal range of psychological function and should not be pathologized.” Other large and comprehensive studies have also arrived at conclusions that normalize, more than pathologize, adoption.

How to eliminate false perceptions of adoption through research and accurate messaging

Our understanding of adoption has grown and diversified as researchers have studied different questions and used more rigorous methods. We now have more accurate and generalizable answers, and we know that adopted children are not as troubled as many people expect them to be.

If adopted children and teenagers are not that different from their non-adopted peers, why does adoption get singled out as a source of turbulence during childhood and adolescence? An astute commentary about how adoption is depicted in popular culture made this point: “Negative attitudes and misgivings toward adoption are so ingrained in pop culture that they’re almost invisible.”

Photo: Gabe Pierce. Unsplash.

Along even starker lines, the author of a column published in The Atlantic recounted how the phrase “You’re adopted” as an insult has “enjoyed continued popularity online as a retort or rejection.” The sometimes-subtle and sometimes-blatant derogatory representations of adoption contribute to stubborn and inaccurate assumptions that adoption is associated with disruption.

With the prevalence of negative representations of adoption, the psychological principle of confirmation bias becomes relevant to understanding how inaccurate assumptions about adopted children’s adjustment and well-being persist. Confirmation bias predicts that individuals are more likely to remember stories that confirm what they already believe to be true.

In this case, the belief so frequently reinforced is that adopted children as a group are more troubled or have more problems than their peers who are not adopted. I believe this is why the conversations I described earlier unfolded as they did. This is why remembering, and sharing, the evidence that 9 out of 10 adopted children experience positive outcomes is so important.

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Many want schools to challenge prejudice against new family forms and want parents to provide more information about donors, half-siblings, and surrogates, according to a new book, We Are Family.

People concerned about children growing up in new forms of families (e.g., LBGTQ families, families created by donor eggs) have worried unnecessarily. In the face of dire warnings about such families, studies consistently show that their children turn out just as well as – and sometimes better than – kids from traditional families with two heterosexual parents. Findings have been remarkably similar, whether studies have focused on families with lesbian mothers, gay fathers, transgender parents, or single mothers by choice. Findings on families created by donations of eggs, sperm, or embryos, as well as by surrogacy, reflect the same pattern.

In studies of all these new forms of family, we, along with other research teams, have found that the quality of family relationships matters for children’s welfare far more than the number, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, or biological relatedness of the parents.

It has taken nearly 50 years of studies, many following children across decades, to establish the empirical evidence. And there has been plenty of heartache along the way, starting with lesbian mothers who lost custody of their children back in the 1970s. In the half century since then, public and expert fears about new forms of family have underpinned various legal barriers to parenthood, discriminatory practices, and widespread stigmatization.

“My brother and I knew people in our school that had gay and lesbian parents and that did get bullied quite a lot, and that scared us from telling people.”

More new forms of family coming

However, even though research on children’s outcomes is clear, the story does not end there, for two reasons. First, the diversity of new family forms seems likely only to expand as science advances and people seek new paths to parenthood. Artificial wombs, eggs, and sperm are just over the horizon. At the University of Cambridge Centre for Family Research, we are already examining children’s outcomes in co-parenting families in which couples are not romantically involved, children are parented by single fathers by choice, and transgender people give birth after they have transitioned.

These developments pose fresh challenges to what has long been seen as the norm for children to flourish. Let’s hope people avoid repeating over-hasty judgments. We should await the evidence and be calmed by encouraging outcomes from other new forms of family.

Children are asking for change

Second, and perhaps more important, there is much more to say about children in these new forms of family, beyond simply logging their long-term outcomes. What is it like for them to grow up in such families? We should listen to their voices, and hear their thoughts and feelings. To that end, our team has conducted many studies gathering children’s stories.

Through our work, we have found that schools, parents, and the wider society still have much to learn about supporting children in non-traditional families through their experiences, which can be upsetting. The distress is not related to the type of family children have, but because of stigmatization, inadequate communication, and lack of understanding, mainly from those on the periphery of home.

So, for example, many children with LGBTQ parents have been stigmatized in school, by society, and sometimes by wider family. When we interviewed children of lesbian mothers born in the mid-1960s when they were young adults, almost half reported being teased or bullied as teenagers.

Stigmatization burdens children

“I wasn’t allowed to go to my friend’s house anymore,” said Anna. “Her mum and dad forbade me from going anywhere near, and that hurt me because she had been my best friend for a long, long time. I lost that friend. And then, of course, there was a chain reaction. Everybody found out. They said, ‘Don’t go near her, she’ll turn out like her mum.’”

John was bullied when schoolmates found out about his lesbian mom. “School was one big nightmare really, because I got picked on so much,” he explained. “I had cigarettes stubbed out on the back of my neck, and high-heeled shoes thrown at me, and a bit of hair cut off, and my head chucked down the loo, and that sort of thing.”

Children have felt the need to clam up about their families because of widespread prejudice. Stacey explained: “My brother and I knew some people in our school that had gay and lesbian parents and that did get bullied quite a lot, and that scared us from telling people. So, we never told anyone. It was hard keeping secrets.”

“Schools, parents, and wider society still have a lot to learn about supporting children through their experiences.”

Effective school challenges to prejudice

Schools must create a positive, supportive environment for such children. It pays off. Carol, 14, highlighted helpful action by her school: “Basically, they spread the word how it’s not very good to say, ‘Oh this is so gay’ or ‘that’s so gay,’ even though it’s used as a different meaning. They tell them that’s wrong and why you shouldn’t say that.” Mike, 17, recalled how a new English teacher, who was gay, made a difference: “He has one of the Stonewall ‘Some People Are Gay, Get Over It’ posters in his classroom. Just seeing the poster in his room is really cool.” As part of our research project, the UK campaign for equality of LGBTQ people, Stonewall, published 10 recommendations from children on how schools can support them and their same-sex parents.

Children of transgender parents have been bullied and teased in similar ways, and inclusive attitudes by schools can help them. Wendy explained: “I put my hand up and said, ‘I don’t have a dad because my dad’s transgender,’ and I got an award for it ‘cos it was actually really brave of me to say.”

Tell children what’s happening

Parents also should consider being more open about what is happening in their families. “It would have helped if he had explained things a bit better,” said Henry, 18, reflecting on when his father transitioned to being a woman. “It wasn’t so much him wearing dresses, but more him being a bit manic and doing strange things.” Chris, 18, advised other children in a similar situation: “Try to get them to communicate with you as much as possible because it’s worse if things are happening and you don’t know why.”

Children tend to accept, in a matter of fact way, their father’s or mother’s change of gender if it happened while they were little or a long time ago. “Chloe’s always been Chloe,” said Susanna, 14, who was a toddler when her father transitioned. “I don’t remember when it actually happened, so it’s basically been for as long as I remember.”

Experiencing transition can worry them

 But some children find it difficult when they experience a parent’s transition. They can have fears of loss, which typically pass, but which can be very real during gender transition. Jade, who was six when her father transitioned, was upset about losing her dad: “When she transitioned, I felt like there was a hole in my heart because I missed my dad and every time somebody talked about their dad, I got really upset.” But she grew more accepting. At age nine, Jade reflected: “When she transitioned, it made her a lot happier ‘cos, when she was a boy, she was really unhappy. Ever since she’s transitioned, she’s come home from work, hugged us, and been really happy. It’s changed a lot since she transitioned.”

Another upset can be rejection of parents by their wider family, so children lose contact with some relatives. Theresa, whose father transitioned when she was six, explained: “People on my mum’s side of the family really struggle with it. Her parents and brothers, and basically everyone over there, cut us off. It made me sad and kind of angry because it’s really no reason to be horrible.”

“When children found out later, as teenagers or adults, they felt more negatively about how they were conceived and their relationship with their parents.”

Children should not have to explain their families

Children may also feel responsible for explaining to the outside world issues such as gender transition. “My problem,” explained Susanna, “has been having to explain to other people constantly because no one really understands.” Josh reported: “Sometimes, random people ask me questions and I have to explain to them. That gets tiring for me.”

Our research has highlighted issues for children born through assisted reproductive technologies, such as egg, sperm, and embryo donation, or surrogacy. Some children as young as two or three years might ask of a single mother by choice: “Do I have a daddy? Where is he?” Some – but by no means all – especially as they get into their teens, are eager to fill a gap in knowledge about themselves by finding out more about their donor, surrogate, and any half-siblings born to the same donor or surrogate.

“It’s important to me now . . . I’m always thinking about what she looks like,” explained Sarah, 14, who was born through egg donation. Alex, 14, conceived by sperm donation, said: “I would like to know who he is . . . quite a lot . . . Recently a lot more than I used to.”

Tell children early about their origins

We have found that it is generally better to start talking to children early about how they were conceived and born. Children who find out later, as teenagers or adults, tend to feel more negatively about how they were conceived and in their relationships with their parents than children who have had the conversation about their beginnings early. Many parents hold off telling their children, fearing that the children will love them less. However, these fears are unfounded because children who are told early tend to be very accepting, often not particularly interested, and unshocked by learning more as they grow older.

The risks of not disclosing this information to children have grown with the advent of ancestry sites offering DNA tests, which can suddenly lead unsuspecting children to discover half-siblings and relatives of whom they had no inkling. Children may find their identities destabilized, and learning about their beginnings in this way can undermine their trust in their parents.

The story of new forms of family is largely good news, of children flourishing, much as we might expect them to do in traditional families, and sometimes doing even better. The composition of their family does not upset them. It is other factors, such as people’s reactions to their family or the lack of information about their origins, that cause them distress. The solutions lie in better understanding, greater societal acceptance of diverse families, swift challenges to prejudice, and openness within families about where their much-wanted children came from.

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This research on gay fathers contradicts beliefs that fathers have less innate caring ability than mothers and challenges the historical emphasis on mothers.

Researchers at Cambridge University in the UK have found that 10- to 14-year-old adopted children of gay fathers showed higher levels of “secure autonomous attachment” than did adopted children of heterosexual parents. Children who score highly on secure autonomous attachment are able to cope on their own at times, and have positive coping mechanisms, when upset, such as turning to others for support.

Secondly, adopted children of gay fathers also showed lower levels of “insecure preoccupied attachment” than children adopted by either lesbian or heterosexual couples. Children who score highly on insecure preoccupied attachment are typically over-dependent on parents for support and show high levels of anger towards them.

Finally, children of gay fathers showed lower levels of “disorientated-disorganised attachment” – contradictory or incompatible coping strategies – than children of heterosexual couples.

But before rushing to the conclusion that gay fathers are innately better parents, as opposed to equally good parents, the researchers point out other possible explanations.

For example, gay fathers, who are still leading a social change and forging a new way in the world, are on average more motivated and well-adjusted than heterosexual parents. Indeed, in this research, gay fathers rated lower in depression and parenting stress than heterosexual adoptive parents.

Or perhaps the adoption screening process for adoption by gay men is more stringent, meaning gay fathers have to demonstrate stronger motivation and competence than do other adoptive parents. Alternatively, adoption agencies might be placing children with fewer behaviour problems with gay fathers, though there is little evidence of this. Indeed, on average, gay fathers in the sample adopted older children, and older children are more likely to show behaviour problems.

Another possibility difference between gay fathers and heterosexual parents is that they are unlikely to have been through the distressing process of attempting and failing fertility treatment. This traumatic experience can harm parental wellbeing.

Beliefs about mothers’ innate caring abilities, and the historical emphasis on mothers as “primary” attachment figures, might raise questions about attachment patterns in families with two gay fathers. However, the evidence from this research contradicts such ideas.

This is good news for the adoption system. The researchers conclude, “Given the number of children waiting to be adopted and the scarcity of suitable adoptive parents, it is important that potential adopters are not discriminated against based on their gender or sexual orientation.”

The study took place in two phases, once when the children were four to eight years old and again six years later, when the children were 10 to 14 years old. In the second phase, the children were interviewed using the “Friends and Family Interview”. The interviewers focused on how the children discussed the relationship with their parents, assessing this against various measures of secure and insecure attachment. On three out of four measures, secure autonomous attachment, insecure preoccupied attachment, and disorientated-disorganised attachment, they found statistical differences between adopted children of gay fathers, lesbian mothers and heterosexual parents. There were no differences on the final measure of attachment, “insecure dismissing”, when children portray themselves as strong, and minimize negative experiences and their need for support from others.

Earlier research has established that children do equally well when raised by lesbian mothers as they do when raised by heterosexual parents. In later research, this finding was found to apply to gay fathers, who were more responsive and warm towards their children and spent more time with them, on average, than fathers in heterosexual couples.

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Gender nonconforming youth are more likely to experience rejection and verbal, physical and sexual abuse from both parents and peers.

Gender nonconforming children, particularly boys, experience victimization. They are more likely to be rejected and verbally abused by their parents, and they suffer higher levels of both depression and PTSD. Men who identify as both gay and “effeminate” report more sexual abuse in childhood. This may be related to the general low value given to “feminine” behaviors and characteristics. Possibly as a result, boys are less likely to be gender nonconforming than girls. 

Gender identity and child development

Children learn gender labels when very young, at 18 to 21 months, shaped by parental behavior and expectations. For example, parents give girl and boy toddlers different toys, and they often expect boys to be better at crawling than girls. At two years, children can already feel atypical if they are not like others of their own gender.

Researchers at Yale and Harvard universities in the USA reviewed how victimization of gender nonconforming children influences their development. They present a “social cognitive” approach which proposes that gender identity develops through direct influences, such as verbal messages about how boys and girls should behave, and indirect influences, such as parents modelling gender specific behavior. A child is an interactive agent in this process of development. The process is influenced by culture: for example, non-Western or more religious men are likely to be less accepting of gender nonconforming individuals.

Two types of socialisation have been studied: in the home and among peers.  

Gender socialisation at home

At home, gender socialisation takes place through things like clothing, how parents praise their boys and girls and how parents use gender specific pronouns. Experimental studies have shown that adults interacting with infants introduced as a girl were more likely to give ‘feminine’ toys to the child, such as dolls and domestic items. If the infant is introduced as a boy, however, they are more likely to introduce ‘masculine’ toys, such as tools and cars, and they encourage more physical activity. Parents support things like exploration, rough-and-tumble play and dressing up differently in boys and girls, despite a lack of evidence that boys and girls are different in any domain typically associated with gender, such as crawling ability. 

Parents tend to associate gender nonconformity in children with homosexuality and often discourage gender nonconforming behavior. Discouragement of nonconformity in children as young as four years includes telling them to change their behavior, punishing or restricting their nonconforming activities and sending them to counseling. Such children are also at greater risk of physical, psychological and sexual abuse in the home, and of PTSD later in life.

These problems affect sexual and gender minority youth in particular—individuals who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, or another orientation that is not heterosexual, as well as those who identify as transgender, agender, gender fluid, or another category that is not cisgender. Transgender youth are particularly exposed to negativity from their parents. 

Gender socialisation among peers

When young children play among peers, their play becomes more gendered. For example, girls are less likely to play with toy cars when they are not alone. Preschool and middle-school children are more likely to befriend same-sex children with similar levels of gender-typed behaviors. Peer popularity of children is strongly related to gender conformity across childhood: there are strong social rewards for conforming. 

The process of gender socialisation is visible in trends across childhood. Over time, children’s attitudes about the other gender become more similar to their friends’ attitudes. Children’s identification with their own gender grows; at the same time, peer harassment and victimization of nonconforming children increase. As a result, gender nonconforming behavior falls over the school years.

This process is linked to children’s cognitive development: they are increasingly able to make social comparisons between boys and girls, to develop a sense of self around gender and to imagine what others are thinking about them.  

Gender nonconforming youth are more likely to experience rejection and verbal, physical and sexual abuse from peers. They are more likely to experience low self-worth, but only when they do not feel accepted by their peers. If they do feel accepted, no increased risk of low self-worth is present.

Child development risks from negative responses to gender nonconforming children 

Gender nonconforming children are more likely to suffer depression and to have suicidal thoughts. They are also at greater risk of bullying others and becomingaggressive.  The authors of the review describe the process according to “minority stress theory”, which encompasses both actual discrimination and the internalized response to it on the part of the victim. Such responses may include internalized homophobia, chronic vigilance about rejection and concealment of sexual orientation. 

What can be done?

Family acceptance of gender nonconforming children is important. For example, a father’s acceptance of nonconforming behavior in his son protects the child from psychological distress. (No such link occurs between fathers and daughters.)

The researchers make recommendations to parents about how to support sexual and gender minority children – talking about gender nonconformity, respecting it, ensuring other family and community members do the same, finding adult role models, and welcoming the child’s friends. 

Action in schools to support gender nonconforming children is particularly important given the long span of strong peer influence on child development. Again, the researchers direct their recommendations to the particular case of sexual and gender minority children. They recommend that schools explicitly address sexual orientation and gender and negative reactions to gender nonconformity. Teachers need training, and gender nonconforming students need support groups. The topic should be on the school curriculum, they write, and sexual orientation should be an explicit part of anti-bullying strategies.

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Less parental leave for same-sex male parents excludes them from benefits that support child development.

A study of parental leave entitlements has found that in the great majority of OECD countries, same-sex male parents are entitled to substantially less paid leave than different-sex parents and same-sex female parents. The study looked at the 33 OECD countries that offer paid parental leave. (The remaining OECD country, the United States, does not.)

The authors of the research suggest that the reasons behind their finding include a greater attribution of the caring role to women, and they recommend removing gendered and heteronormative language from parental leave regulations.

Only in four out of the 33 countries do all couples get the same paid parental leave: Iceland, Sweden, New Zealand and Australia. At the other extreme, in three countries—Israel, Switzerland and Turkey—same-sex male parents get nothing at all. In these three countries, same-sex female parents and different-sex parents get 14-17 weeks of paid parental leave. In 16 countries (Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Netherlands, Norway, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland and the UK), same-sex female parents get the same amount of leave as different-sex parents, but same-sex male parents don’t. On average, same-sex male parents get 22 fewer weeks of paid parental leave than different-six parents, ranging from two weeks less in the UK to over a year less in Hungary, Japan and South Korea.

Discrepancies in paid parental leave exist also between same-sex female parents and different-sex parents, but to a lesser extent. Same-sex female parents get the same paid parental leave as different-sex parents in 19 countries, though in two of these (Slovakia and Austria) that can only happen if one mother takes 100% of the parental leave and the other none, because no sharing with a second mother is allowed. In one country, Switzerland, the difference is absent because no partner of any gender gets any parental leave. In 14 countries, leave designed specifically for fathers is not available to same-sex female parents.

There are also differences in parental leave entitlements for adoptive parents of different gender orientations. Nine countries do not allow same-sex parent adoption at all (Chile, Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Poland, Slovakia, South Korea, Switzerland and Turkey), and two countries do not provide leave for adoption (Greece and Switzerland). Most of the rest, 20 in total, provide the same parental leave benefit for all adoptive couples, irrespective of gender combination. In two countries (Mexico and Portugal), different-sex adoptive parents get more parental leave than same-sex female parents, who, in turn, get considerably more than same-sex male parents.

The authors highlight three factors that drive these discriminatory parental leave entitlements.

The first is the greater attribution of caring to women then to men, which disadvantages same-sex male parents. Whilst some difference in parental leave entitlements between mothers and fathers is biologically based – the need for recovery from the birth and for the establishment of breastfeeding – the disparities are often more substantial than biology alone would justify. And any parental leave reserved for biological mothers means that same-sex male parents get less time to care for their babies. This can be substantially less: in seven countries, this difference in availability of parental leave is six months long or greater (Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, South Korea).

The second factor works the other way: parental leave entitlements specifically designed to facilitate fathers taking leave in different-sex relationships are not always equally accessible for same-sex female couples

A third factor in discrimination is the wider inequality in marriage and adoption rights for same-sex parents.

The study authors recommend removing from parental leave legislation gendered and heteronormative language that designates women as primary caregivers and assumes that every family has one mother and one father.

The researchers refer to the Yogyakarta Principles, which outline human rights for LBGT people. Principle 24 relates to family benefits and states that “no family may be subjected to discrimination on the basis of the sexual orientation or gender identity of any of its members, including with regard to family-related social welfare and other public benefits.”

Since shared parental leave-taking has been found to be linked to a higher rate of breastfeeding, improved child development, improved parent mental health and better protection from wage or job loss, the inequalities in the legislation expose same-sex parents more to risks than different-sex parents face.

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But when the distress of the bisexual parents was controlled for, there was no residual difference between the children of these and other parents, both lesbian/gay and heterosexual.

A study has found that bisexual parents experience substantially greater stress than lesbian/gay and heterosexual parents, and that children in these families display more emotional and mental health difficulties. Indeed, 20% of bisexual parents in a sample of over 1,000 exceeded the threshold score for a diagnosable psychiatric disorder. When the distress of these bisexual parents was controlled for, however, there was no residual difference between the children of these and other parents, whether lesbian/gay or heterosexual. This suggests that it is not the sexual orientation of bisexual parents per se that predicts more child difficulties, but rather the increased stigma these parents face, which could be mitigated by more support and acceptance.

Earlier research also finds that bisexual parents experience greater difficulties, possibly because of the discrimination that bisexual people face. They also receive less partner support: they are more likely to be single parents – 61% in this study, compared to 47% of lesbian/gay parents and 29% of heterosexual parents.

The study also showed no differences on average in difficulties experienced by children of lesbian/gay parents and heterosexual parents. Based on the fact that the sexual orientation of parents per se does not predict greater difficulty experienced by children, the researchers conclude, “Our results provide further reassurance that …. concerns about children being raised in same-gender partnered households appear unwarranted.”

The researchers analysed data collected in 2013-15 in a ‘National Health Interview Study’, involving 21,103 parents of 4- to 17-year-olds in the USA. In this sample, 0.7% of children were living with at least one gay/lesbian parent and 0.6% with at least one bisexual parent. The sample revealed some diversity not detected in studies that specifically select families for study. For example, 11% of children with one lesbian/gay parent lived in a household where parents were of different genders.

Each parent in this study was asked about sexual orientation, about their experience of psychological distress and about the well-being of their child, using a ‘Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire’. The questionnaire asked about the child’s behavior, anxiety, unhappiness, peer friendships and concentration. (The researchers admit that measuring the child’s experience via asking the parent is not wholly reliable. This method also misses whether the child is aware of the parent’s sexuality, which may make a difference to the child.)

The results back up earlier research that finds no differences on average between children raised in LGB-headed families and heterosexual families in terms of psychosocial adjustment, peer relations, romantic relationships, sexual behavior, school outcomes, substance abuse, delinquency and experience of victimization. Indeed, young adults from lesbian-headed families have been found to report better mental health on average than their peers in heterosexual families.

The research does not say that the experience of children by LGB, heterosexual and bisexual parents is the same, however. Other research shows these children are likely to be exposed to more stigma than children of heterosexual parents, but also that the nontraditional family structure can be a source of strength, pride and positive coping strategies. But this study adds to the evidence that the sexual orientation of parents per se is not significant for child development outcomes.

In the USA about 6 million children have an LGB parent, and 220,000 children under 18 in are being raised by same-gender parents. More than a third of Americans, however, do not believe that LGB individuals should have the right to adopt a child.

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