Sexual Minority and Heterosexual Parents Adopting Through the Child Welfare System: Challenges and Surprises During the Transition to Parenthood and Beyond

This session will address some of the unexpected challenges and surprises encountered by heterosexual, lesbian, gay, and bisexual individuals and couples who adopt through the child welfare system. Data will be presented regarding (a) the challenges that foster-to-adopt parents encounter post-placement, including: legal insecurity in their parental role, disorganization within social service systems, inadequate support services, and complex relationships with birth parents; (b) unmet expectations that foster-to-adopt parents often encounter with regard to the types of children that are placed in their home (e.g., in terms of age, race, gender, and special needs); and (c) the experiences of parents that have adopted via child welfare in terms of contact and openness with birth family members. Engaged and informal discussion of the implications of these findings for families and clinicians, as well as Q&A, will follow these brief research presentations

Adoptive gay father families: parent-child relationships and children's psychological adjustment

Findings are presented on a U.K. study of 41 gay father families, 40 lesbian mother families, and 49 heterosexual parent families with an adopted child aged 3–9 years. Standardized interview and observational and questionnaire measures of parental well-being, quality of parent–child relationships, child adjustment, and child sex-typed behavior were administered to parents, children, and teachers. The findings indicated more positive parental well-being and parenting in gay father families compared to heterosexual parent families. Child externalizing problems were greater among children in heterosexual families. Family process variables, particularly parenting stress, rather than family type were found to be predictive of child externalizing problems. The findings contribute to theoretical understanding of the role of parental gender and parental sexual orientation in child development

Childhood dental injuries: a resiliency model of adaptation

Background. There is a paucity of research examining how children and their families adapt to traumatic dental injuries. Aim. This study examined how clinical and psychosocial factors influence adaptation to this oral stressor using a theoretical framework of resiliency and adaptation. Design. Children with traumatised permanent teeth, who were attending a UK dental hospital, completed questionnaires at baseline and at a 6 month follow-up. Child questionnaires assessed coping styles, social support, and quality of life outcomes. Parents were also asked to complete questionnaires, which assessed previous stressors/ strains on the family, social support, healthcare satisfaction, and family impacts. Data related to the child’s dental injury were collected from clinical notes. Structural equation modelling and regression analyses were employed to analyse data. Results. One hundred and eight children and 113 parents participated at baseline. Children’s gender, coping style, social support, and family functioning significantly predicted children’s oral health related quality of life. Parents’ satisfaction with their children’s dental care significantly predicted parental quality of life outcomes. Children’s close friend support and healthcare satisfaction remained significant predictors of positive outcomes at follow-up. Conclusions. The findings revealed important psychosocial factors that influence child and family adaptation to childhood dental trauma

The transition into adoptive parenthood: adoption as a process of continued unsafe uncertainty when family scripts collide

Our prospective study investigated couples’ expectations of adoptive parenthood and explored how these changed with their actual experience of parenthood. Six heterosexual couples were interviewed just before placement began and six months after the children had arrived. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) was used to analyse both sets of interview data. Expectations of adoptive parenthood mostly transformed smoothly into adoption experience for couples but challenges were experienced when family scripts collided and a continued feeling of unsafe uncertainty then prevailed within these newly formed family systems. Family script collision seemed a particular problem for couples adopting sibling pairs. To further professional practice in working with families over the transition to adoptive parenting we suggest that professionals keep in mind a framework that includes: Internal and external world influences on family members, Intergenerational issues, Family scripts, and the Structural challenges of adoption (IIFS)

Law and Family Formation Among LGBQ-Parent Families

This article addresses how the law affects family formation among families with lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer (LGBQ) parents in the United States. Our discussion draws on a socio-legal approach to law that focuses not only on the law on the books (what we refer to as “legal barriers”) but also on issues like how the law is practiced, how people experience the law in everyday life, and how the law serves as an interpretive framework through which people understand themselves and their families (what we refer to as “social barriers”). In our review, we highlight how attorneys can play a role in valuing and advancing rights for LGBQ-parent families and LGBTQ prospective parents

Excess Mortality Rate During Adulthood Among Danish Adoptees

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Adoption studies have been used to disentangle the influence of genes from shared familial environment on various traits and disease risks. However, both the factors leading to adoption and living as an adoptee may bias the studies with regard to the relative influence of genes and environment compared to the general population. The aim was to investigate whether the cohort of domestic adoptees used for these studies in Denmark is similar to the general population with respect to all-cause mortality and cause-specific mortality rates. METHODS: 13,111 adoptees born in Denmark in 1917, or later, and adopted in 1924 to 1947 were compared to all Danes from the same birth cohorts using standardized mortality ratios (SMR). The 12,729 adoptees alive in 1970 were similarly compared to all Danes using SMR as well as cause-specific SMR. RESULTS: The excess in all-cause mortality before age 65 years in adoptees was estimated to be 1.30 (95% CI 1.26-1.35). Significant excess mortality before age 65 years was also observed for infections, vascular deaths, cancer, alcohol-related deaths and suicide. Analyses including deaths after age 65 generally showed slightly less excess in mortality, but the excess was significant for all-cause mortality, cancer, alcohol-related deaths and suicides. CONCLUSION: Adoptees have an increased all-cause mortality compared to the general population. All major specific causes of death contributed, and the highest excess is seen for alcohol-related deaths

Against all odds? Birth fathers and enduring thoughts of the child lost to adoption

This paper revisits a topic only briefly raised in earlier research, the idea that the grounds for fatherhood can be laid with little or no ‘hands-on’ experience of fathering and upon these grounds, an enduring sense of being a father of, and bond with, a child seen once or never, can develop. The paper explores the specific experiences of men whose children were adopted as babies drawing on the little research that exists on this population, work relating to expectant fathers, personal accounts, and other sources such as surveys of birth parents in the USA and Australia. The paper’s exploration and discussion of a manifestation of fatherhood that can hold in mind a ‘lost’ child, disrupts narratives of fathering that regard fathering as ‘doing’ and notions that once out of sight, a child is out of mind for a father. The paper suggests that, for the men in question, a diversity of feelings, but also behaviours, point to a form of continuing, lived fathering practices—that however, take place without the child in question. The conclusion debates the utility of the phrase “birth father„ as applied historically and in contemporary adoption processes