We asked parents about their child’s attitudes toward school learning in general. In particular, we assessed parents’ perceptions of their child’s competence, intrinsic value, utility value, and attainment value. Competence beliefs refer to parents’ perceptions about how well their child does in school. Intrinsic value indicates perceived enjoyment of engaging with learning. Utility value refers to perceived usefulness of learning in his or her life. Attainment value refers to perceived importance of performing well in school for his or her identity.
As the figure illustrates, parents who internationally adopted a female child reported higher levels of competence, intrinsic value, utility value, and attainment value than parents who adopted a male child.
When we examined parents’ perceptions about thier child’s attitude toward learning by the age of adoption, parents who adopted a child older than three years old reported significantly lower perceptions of their child’s competence, intrinsic value, utility value, and attainment value, compared to parents who adopted (a) a child younger than one year old or (b) between one and three years old.