1. STUDY OVERVIEW

Who participated in the study?

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518 parents who adopted their child from other countries participated in this study.

  • Most parent participants were female (94.4%).
  • The average age of the parent participants was 52.9 year-old.
  • Most parent participants reported their ethnicity as White (91.9%).

 

273 children who were internationally adopted participated in this study.

  • More girls (69.6%) than boys participated in the study.
  • The child participants were identified as middle school (37.4%), high school (40.3%), and high school graduate or higher (14.3%) students.

The age of children when adopted

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Approximately half of the parents (56.4%) reported that their child was one year old or younger when adopted. Also, 26% of the parents reported that their child was adopted when he/she was between one and three years old. Lastly, 17.5% of the parents indicated that their child was 3 years old or older when adopted.

Challenges

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We asked parents about some of the challenges their internationally adopted children experienced.

  • 48.5% of parents reported that their children experienced physical or emotional adversity prior to being internationally adopted.
  • 31.5% of parents reported that their children have a learning disability.
  • 24.5% of parents reported that their children currently receive Special Education Services.

 

Compared to other students, parents believe their internationally adopted child experiences difficulty with …

As the figure illustrates, the majority of parents believed that their internationally adopted child experience almost no difficulty with behavior problems compared to other students the child’s age. However, there was more variation in reports about their child feeling anxious or depressed.