Biomedical subjects

H D Grotevant

Publications and source records attributed to H D Grotevant.

11 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2000

International adoption of institutionally reared children: research and policy.

This article summarizes the research on the developmental outcomes of postinstitutionalized children and discusses the implications for social policy. Postinstitutionalized children often reach their adoptive families with varying degrees of physical growth retardation, cognitive delays, and socioemotional problems. Many children demonstrate remarkable recovery following adoption. Unfortunately, some of the children continue to display significant problems that require professional intervention. It appears that the children's recovery may be influenced by their early experiences with their birth family and in institutional care, and there is suggestive evidence that postadoption experiences also play a role. These findings indicate that preadoption and postadoption services may support the outcome of postinstitutionalized children.

Adoption↗

PubMed2000

Adopted adolescents' overrepresentation in mental health counseling: adoptees' problems or parents' lower threshold for referral?

UNLABELLED: A larger proportion of adopted adolescents receive mental health counseling than do their nonadopted peers. Adoptees might have more problems that require counseling, or their adoptive parents might have a lower threshold for referral (or both). OBJECTIVE: To test the hypothesis that both the extent of adolescents' problems and their adoption status would predict whether adolescents received psychological counseling, after controlling for family demographic characteristics. METHOD: Two large data sets collected from 1994 through 1996 by the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) were used. In parallel analyses of the 2 data sets, hierarchical logistic regression models were implemented to assess the incremental effects of problem behaviors, family characteristics, and adoption status on adolescents receiving counseling. RESULTS: Selected adolescents' problems and family demographic characteristics were significant predictors for having received counseling, but, after controlling for these variables, adoptees were still about twice as likely as nonadoptees to have received counseling. CONCLUSIONS: Prevalence of problems, adoptive family characteristics, and adoption status must all be taken into account to understand why adoptees are more likely to receive counseling. Clinicians should be sensitive to issues that are especially salient in adoptive families.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1996

Openness in adoption and the level of child participation.

There is great controversy regarding the impact of openness in adoption, especially the impact of such an arrangement on adopted children. Three indicators of the level of child participation in the openness arrangement were examined: (a) level of openness reported by adoptive parents, (b) level of information adopted children reported having about their birthparents, and (c) whether adoptive parents have withheld any pertinent information gained through communication with the birthmother from the adopted child. 171 children (90 males, 81 females; mean age = 7.99) wee studied to assess how that participation influenced their conceptual understanding of what adoption means, general self-worth, satisfaction with level of openness, and curiosity about birthparents. Overall it does not appear that providing information about a child's birthparents will confuse the child about the meaning of adoption or lower the child's self-esteem, but neither will it move them to levels of understanding that are beyond their cognitive capabilities to reach.

Adaptation, Psychological↗

PubMed1994

Adoptive family system dynamics: variations by level of openness in the adoption.

This study examines the consequences of variations in levels of openness in adoption, especially focusing on the dynamics of the adoptive family system from the perspective of the adoptive parents. Participants included the father, mother, and at least one adopted child in 190 adoptive families, and 169 birthmothers, drawn from adoption agencies across the United States. Families included 62 confidential, 17 time-limited mediated, 52 ongoing mediated, and 59 fully disclosed adoptions. When compared to parents in confidential adoptions, those in open adoptions generally demonstrated higher levels of acknowledgment of the adoption, empathy toward the birthparents and their child, a stronger sense of permanence in the relationship with their child as projected into the future, and less fear that the birthmother might try to reclaim her child. Despite these mean differences, variations within all levels of openness were present, and results are discussed in terms of the ongoing process involved in building a family through adoption.

Adaptation, Psychological↗

PubMed1988

Emotionally disturbed, adopted adolescents: early patterns of family adaptation.

This article focuses on the development of compatibility or goodness-of-fit within adoptive families and on the possible contribution of such problems to emotional disturbance of adolescents. Subjects included 50 adopted adolescents in residential treatment (mean age = 14.96) and their families, and 50 nonadopted adolescents in treatment (mean age = 14.90) and their families. The child, both parents, and the child's caseworker were interviewed. Three distinctive interactional patterns presenting adaptational challenges are discussed: the family's adaptation to the child's hyperactivity, the family's adaptation to the child's avoidance of contact and cuddling from early infancy, and perceived incompatibility between the child's personality and the parents' style. Results are discussed in terms of behavioral and attributional contributions of both the child and parents to the development of compatibility. Implications for clinicians are discussed.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1987

Family interaction coding systems: a descriptive review.

Summaries and critique of 13 coding systems used in the observation of family interaction are presented. Each system is first described in terms of its theoretical origins and key constructs. Comparative analyses are presented for physical descriptions of the codes, administrative procedures, reliability, validity, and clinical and research utility. Recommendations for further development of family interaction coding systems are presented.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1985

Patterns of interaction in family relationships and the development of identity exploration in adolescence.

The purpose of this research was to develop a model of individuation in family relationships that focuses on communication processes, and to assess the links between them and adolescent identity exploration. Expressions of the 4 dimensions of the model--self-assertion, separateness, permeability, and mutuality--were predicted to be positively associated with identity exploration in adolescents. A sample of 84 Caucasian, middle-class, 2-parent families, each including an adolescent and 1 or 2 siblings, was observed in a Family Interaction Task designed to elicit the expression and coordination of a variety of points of view. Multiple regression analyses revealed differentiated results concerning father-son, father-daughter, mother-son, mother-daughter, and marital relationships as well as both positive and negative contributions of communication variables to identity exploration when verbal ability and sociability were controlled. Results are discussed in terms of recent formulations of the progressive redefinition of the parent-child relationship during adolescence.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1979

Environmental influences on vocational interest development in adolescents from adoptive and biological families.

Family influences on vocational interest development were studied by hypothesizing that parents with similar interests are more likely to have adolescents who also develop those interests than are parents whose interests are very divergent. In order to unconfound genetic and environmental influences, the 844 parents and adolescent children in 114 biologically related and 101 adoptive families completed the Strong-Campbell Interest Inventory. Parent-child interest difference scores were regressed on parent-parent difference scores (PPDIF), a dummy variable for family type, and the interaction between family type and PPDIF. For all parent-child pairs except mother-son, greater PPDIF scores predicted greater parent-child difference scores (indicating influence of family environment), and there was no family type X PPDIF interaction (indicating that the environmental influence was operating in both biological and adoptive families). Evidence of genetic variance in interest sytyes was also confirmed.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1977

Patterns of interest similarity in adoptive and biological families.

Twin studies have indicated that genetic differences among individuals also contribute to interest and personality differences among them. In this study, 114 biologically related families and 100 adoptive families were administered the Strong-Campbell Interest Inventory. The protocols of parents and their adolescent children (total N = 870) were scored on the six scales of Holland's model of interest styles (Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, Conventional). Biological parent--child correlations ranged from -.13 to +.40, with 15 of the 24 scale correlations achieving significance; only 2 of the adoptive parent--child correlations were significant (range from -.15 to +.25). Biologically related pairs were also significantly more correlated than adoptive pairs for interest profiles. Same-sex biological siblings were more similar to each other than either opposite-sex siblings pairs or parent--child pairs. Pairs of unrelated children in the adoptive families were not too similar either on Holland's scales or the profile analysis.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1977

Intellectual development in family constellations with adopted and natural children: a test of the Zajonc and Markus model.

A confluence model was developed by Zajonc and Markus to account for the effects of birth order, child spacing, and family size on intellectual development. the fit of the model was tested on a sample of families with biological and adopted children. Although the model fits population data very well, it fails to account for intellectual patterns within families for whom both parent and child IQ data are available. The discrepancy is discussed in terms of sources of variance within and between families that are undetected in average values for a population.

Adoption↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Comparisons of adopted and nonadopted adolescents in a large, nationally representative sample.

There are conflicting findings about whether adopted children have more psychological and behavioral problems than nonadoptees. Research results are discrepant partly because many previous studies were based on small clinical samples or on samples biased by self-selection. A nationally representative school survey (Add Health) was used to compare adopted (n = 1,587) and nonadopted adolescents (total N = 87,165) across a wide variety of measures. Standardized mean differences show that adopted adolescents are at higher risk in all of the domains examined, including school achievement and problems, substance use, psychological well-being, physical health, fighting, and lying to parents. Demographic and background variable breakdowns show that the effect sizes for differences between adopted and nonadopted adolescents were larger for males, younger or older adolescents, Hispanics or Asians, and adolescents living in group homes or with parents of low education. Distributional analyses revealed approximately a 1:1 ratio of adopted to nonadopted adolescents in the middle ranges of the outcome variables but a ratio of 3:1 or greater near the tails of the distributions. These data clearly show that more adopted adolescents have problems of various kinds than their nonadopted peers; effect sizes were small to moderate based on mean differences, but comparisons of distributions suggest much larger proportions of adopted than nonadopted adolescents at the extremes of salient outcome variables.

Adolescent↗