Adoptive Gay Father Families: A Longitudinal Study of Children's Adjustment at Early Adolescence.

Anja L Mcconnachie,Nadia Ayed,Michael E Lamb,Vasanti Jadva,Sarah Foley,Susan Golombok,Fiona Tasker

doi:10.1111/cdev.13442

Abstract

Findings are presented from the second phase of a UK longitudinal study of 33 gay father, 35 lesbian mother, and 43 heterosexual parent families when their adopted children reached early adolescence. Participants predominantly lived in urban/suburban areas and were mostly white and well-educated. Standardized interviews, observations, and questionnaires of parental mental health, parent-child relationships, and adolescent adjustment were administered to parents, children, and teachers between 2016 and 2018. There were few differences between family types. However, adjustment problems had increased in all family types, with better parenting quality and parental mental health associated with fewer adjustment problems. The findings contribute to adoption policy and practice, and to theoretical understanding of the role of parental gender in child development.

Highlights

Findings are presented from the second phase of a UK longitudinal study of 33 gay father, 35 lesbian mother, and 43 heterosexual parent families when their adopted children reached early adolescence
Multilevel modeling (MLM) was used to test the two research questions relating to differences between family types and factors predicting child adjustment, and a repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to address the question of whether child adjustment problems increased over time
Multilevel modeling allows for inclusion of multiple reports on the same outcomes and produces less biased standard errors for testing regression coefficients and is seen as useful for examining data collected from indistinguishable dyads, such as same-sex parents (Smith, Sayer, & Goldberg, 2013)

Summary

Introduction

Findings are presented from the second phase of a UK longitudinal study of 33 gay father, 35 lesbian mother, and 43 heterosexual parent families when their adopted children reached early adolescence. Children adopted from the child welfare system are more often in the clinical range for externalizing and internalizing problems than their privately adopted peers (Simmel, 2007). This is perhaps unsurprising, given the adverse early experiences that the majority of these children have endured. Studies of adopted children have demonstrated a link between family process variables, such as parental mental health and parenting quality, and children’s psychological adjustment (Selwyn, Wijedasa, & Meakings, 2014). The limited research examining the relative influence of pre and postadoption risk factors on children’s adjustment has found that adjustment is more strongly associated with postadoption factors, such as the adoptive family’s ability to cope with challenges, than with preadoption factors, such as maltreatment (Ji, Brooks, Barth, & Kim, 2010)

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