Contact Between Birth and Adoptive Families During the First Year Post-Placement: Perspectives of Lesbian, Gay, and Heterosexual Parents

Despite growing visibility of lesbian- and gay-parent adoption, only one qualitative study has examined birth family contact among adoptive families with lesbian and gay parents (Goldberg, Kinkler, Richardson, & Downing, 2011). We studied adoptive parents’ (34 lesbian, 32 gay, and 37 heterosexual; N = 103 families) perspectives of birth family contact across the first year post-placement. Using questionnaire and interview data, we found few differences in openness dynamics by parental sexual orientation. Most reported some birth mother contact, most had legally finalized their adoption, and few described plans to withhold information from children. We discuss implications for clinical practice, policy, and research

The indirect link between perceived parenting and adolescent future orientation : A multiple-step model

Contains fulltext : 64507.pdf (publisher's version ) (Closed access)The indirect links between perceived mothers' and fathers' autonomous-accepting parenting and future orientation were examined in a mediational model consisting of five steps: perceived mothers' and fathers' autonomous-accepting parenting, self-evaluation, and the motivational, cognitive representation, and behavioural components of future orientation. Empirical estimates were carried out by LISREL on data collected from 458 (224 girls) Israeli Jewish adolescents (11th graders) regarding two prospective life domains: career and family. These estimates showed a good fit between the theoretical model and four domain-by-gender estimates (girls' and boys' career, and girls' and boys' family). Similar to recent findings, only few gender differences were found; particularly, girls scored higher on the motivational component applied to career (counter-hypothesis) and on all three components applied to prospective family. Discussion highlighted the pivotal functions of self-evaluation in linking between perceived parenting and the motivational component, and of the motivational component in linking between self-evaluation and the cognitive and behavioural components

Adoptive family life and adoption support: policy ambivalence and the development of effective services

Adoption policy and practice in England is being `modernized¿ in order to increase the number of permanent placements for children in public care. Success depends on improving adoption services as well as reforming the adoption process itself. To this end the Adoption and Children Act 2002 places new duties on local authorities to ensure greater consistency and quality of service in adoption support as well as in care planning. Questions now arise locally about what priority and focus to give to adoption support. Yet service development is inhibited by the ambivalence of New Labour about exactly what it is that adoption support is supposed to be supporting and how. Funds are limited and service re-organization is always difficult to achieve. However, mixed policy messages result largely from the ambiguous social role and expectations of adoptive family life and kinship. In law adoption replicates the autonomous normative birth family whilst in policy it provides reparative parenting for particularly vulnerable children. A lack of clarity about the claims for support of those affected by adoption results. This paper argues a fresh case for the distinctive claims of adoptive family life for support. It suggests how new thinking about adoptive family life and kinship might stimulate local service collaboration and effective adoption support