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At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1979

Intellectual resemblance among adoptive adoptive and biological relatives: the Texas adoption project.

Intellectual and personality measures were available from unwed mothers who gave their children up for adoption at birth. The same or similar measures have been obtained from 300 sets of adoptive parents and all of their adopted and natural children in the Texas Adoption Project. The sample characteristics are discussed in detail, and the basic findings for IQ are presented. Initial analyses of the data on IQ suggest moderate heritabilities. Emphasis is placed on the preliminary nature of these findings.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1979

Familial aggregation of blood pressure and weight in adoptive families. I. Comparisons of blood pressure and weight statistics among families with adopted, natural, or both natural and adopted children.

Tests of homogeneity of means, variances and correlations for systolic blood pressure (BP), diastolic BP and weight among subdivisions of a smple of adoptive families are presented. The means and variances of either type of BP, but not weight, were not significantly heterogeneous among families grouped according to the number of parents and children, natural and/or adopted, in the family unit. Estimates of correlation between family members wree not heterogeneous among subdivisions for each of the three variables. Our results indicate that these data are suitable for a genetic analysis of familial aggregation. Pooled correlations suggest that the degree of resemblance of BP and of weight between family members varies within and across generations. Correlations involving the adoptees were significantly different from zero only for diastolic BP.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1975

Adopted children in their adoptive families.

The adoptive process can produce unusual stresses on the child, and biologic and adoptive parents, from prenatal to postnatal life, and through the various phases of physical and pscyhological development. Because of the possibility of these children and their families falling into the "at risk" category with greater potential for psychological and social problems, the pediatrician is of primary importance in diagnosis and counseling. The pediatrician can be of major help in properly diagnosing emotional, behavioral and/or learning problems occurring in adopted children. There must be a thorough evaluation of the child and his family to understand and properly treat symptomatic behavior. The pediatrician can give advice regarding developmental milestones, and especially help the adoptive parents in appreciating their conscious and unconscious attitudes so as to enhance attachment behaviors. Pediatricians are the consultants to whom parents turn for advice regarding the timing of telling about adoption. This advice needs to be individualized according to the specific child's needs. Using a developmental conceptual framework, the pediatrician is in the best position to help the parents and their adopted children with their feelings about societal attitudes and how these can most appropriately be handled. Along this line, the pediatrician can give help and advice when and if the adoptee decides to search for his biologic parents. There is a need to clarify laws which seal the original birth certificate permitting those adoptees who wish to attain a knowledge of potentially related disease processes and an identity with his own genealogical past to do so. This would also allow the adoptee to offer his own children information about their own genetic pool and an awareness of adoption as one of the most valuable and historically significant child rearing practices.

Adoption↗
PubMed1976

Mental illness in the biological and adoptive families of adopted individuals who have become schizophrenic.

In a sample of 5483 adults who had been legally adopted early in life by persons not biologically related to them, 33 were identified, from mental hospital records for whom a diagnosis of definite schizophrenia (chronic, latent, or acute) could be agreed upon by four raters. An equal number of matched controls were selected from the sample of adopted individuals who had never been admitted to a mental hospital. Ninety percent of the living parents, siblings, and half-siblings, biological and adoptive, cooperated in an extensive psychiatric interview permitting a consensus diagnosis by three blind raters. Schizophrenia and uncertain schizophrenia were found to be significantly concentrated in the population genetically related to the schizophrenic adoptees. Their adoptive relatives did not differ from the control populations in the prevalence of schizophrenic illness.

Adoption↗
PubMed1977

Adoption in evolution: recent influences on adoption in Virginia.

Adoption is a relatively new and evolving institution. The characteristics of children available for adoption are changing. Some hard-to-place children will be helped by subsidized adoption. The concept of children as property of biologic parents continues to shadow efforts to terminate parental rights. Virginia law allows adoption against parental consent if such consent is withheld contrary to the child's welfare, but decisions continue to be based upon whether or not parental behavior has been sufficiently extreme to justify a finding of unfitness. New legislation is required to put the child's interests on a par with those of parents.

Adoption↗
PubMed1978

Adjustment of adopted children and demographic profile of adoptive parents.

Using 51 manifestations of childhood dysfunction as index of adjustment, the relationship was investigated of 9 demographic characteristics of applicants for adoption to the adjustment of children, when aged 7 to 7 1/2 years, whom they had adopted. 'Good adjustment' was associated with the father having at least completed high school, having a non-manual occupation and an above median income. There was a trend for it to be also associated with the mother having at least completed high school, being under 30 years of age, and with the couple's non-committal on (i.e., not outright rejection of) the possibility of adopting a hard to place child. The findings were discussed critically and it was concluded that the study demonstrated the feasibility of establishing objective empirical criteria for the selection of adoption applicants.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1992

Psychiatric disorders in adopted children: a profile from the Ontario Child Health Study.

Studies of clinical populations suggest that adopted children are overrepresented among children using mental health facilities, whereas studies using non clinical populations of adopted children have reached mixed conclusions about whether or not there is an increased psychological risk associated with adoption. Data from the Ontario Child Health Study, a community survey of children aged four to 16 years, which included a subpopulation of adopted children, were used to: 1. profile the characteristics of adoptive families; 2. examine the strength of adoptive status as a marker for psychiatric and educational morbidity; and 3. determine the extent to which adoptive status has an independent relationship with psychiatric and educational morbidities. The findings were: 1. adoptive mothers were significantly older than non adoptive mothers, but otherwise adoptive families did not differ significantly from non adoptive families, 2. adoption in boys, but not in girls, was a significant marker for psychiatric disorder and poor school performance; adoption in adolescent girls was a significant marker for substance use; and 3. multivariate analyses demonstrated no independent effect of adoption on psychiatric disorder or poor school performance; for adolescents, adoptive status did have an independent relationship with substance use for girls. The implications of these findings will be discussed.

Achievement↗
PubMed1979

Does adoption affect subsequent fertility?

A hypothesis derived from the old wives' tale that adoption increases subsequent fertility was tested by analysis of follow-up data obtained from 895 couples who were "at risk" of pregnancy and of adoption after they had registered in the Stanford Infertility Clinic between 1963 and 1977. Of the 767 couples who did not adopt, 329 later conceived; of the 128 who did adopt, 41 later conceived. Simple comparison of the percentages or, indeed, of the life tables suggests reduced fertility after adoption. However, this is probably a spurious effect related to a number of factors which differ between two groups. These differences were controlled in the statistical analysis by methods which take into account the length of time each couple was at risk of either conception or adoption and the presence or absence of explanatory variables. The relative risk of conception estimated by the Cox model was not significantly different from 1 and the Mantel-Haenszel statistic (m = 0.208) indicates no significant difference in subsequent conception rates between adoptive and not-adoptive couples. The same methods were used to control for seven covariates, including age and duration of infertility, which could affect conception rates. In each instance, the estimate of relative risk of conception for adoptive versus not-adoptive couples was not significantly different from 1. Therefore, our data do not support the hypothesis that adoption affects subsequent fertility.

Adoption↗
PubMed1976

Nature-nurture and intelligence: the twin and adoption studies agree.

A large-scale adoption study is underway at the University of Texas where IQ test scores are available for over 1200 women who gave up their children for adoption immediately following delivery. The adopted children and their adoptive families are now being located and tested and, if current trends continue, complete data should eventually be available on over 400 families. About half of these families will contain two or more adopted children or both adopted and natural children. At present, data are available for 89 families. The results are consistent with twin data and support a genetic hypothesis. The biological mother-adopted child correlation is 0.37 whereas the adoptive mother-adopted child and adoptive father-adopted child correlations are only 0.22 and 0.04 respectively. There are 59 pairs of unrelated children reared together in this sample and the IQ correlation for these children is only 0.13.

Adoption↗
PubMed1975

[Adoption and its psychiatric aspects].

Adoption has changed in history, in different cultures, in law, in its goals, its functions, its modalities. The study of the adoptive condition is worthwhile for theoretical research (psychopathology, genetics, etc.) and for clinical practice (prevention, selection and motivation analysis of adopting parents). It is dangerous and too simple to explain pathology by adoption. However, there is a specific psychopathology of adoptees : 1. by maternal deprivation and abandonnement pathology (more frequent and more important), 2. by the adoptive situation condition itself. We review some hypotheses, particularly the concept of "Family romance". The adopted child undergoes more frequent examinations, both pediatric and psychiatric, than the ordinary child (this may be explained by parental anxiety and child acting out behavior). Certain American statistics on this appear to be significant. On the other hand, there is a silent pathology (the majority ?) : we found it frequently in the youngest children in France. We discuss the problem of psychiatric selection of adoptive parents and adoptive children, its legitimacy, its methodes ; psychopathology and motivations of the adoptive patents ; the problem of the revelation of adoption to the child ; the problem of sterility (it is often incompletely explored and treated). Adoption may not be the best solution for most of the abandonned children and sterile couples.

Adolescent↗