Single Adoptive Parents and Their Adoptee Adolescents: Building Parenting Competencies and Secure Attachments

Abstract

Single adoptive parents and their adoptees who transition into adolescence are likely to face several challenges. This article reports the impact of a WhatsApp-based spiritual education lessons (SEL) intervention on bolstering parenting competencies and secure attachments of single adoptive parents-adoptee adolescent dyads (Npre-test = 86; Npost-test = 76). An active control group based experimental design was used with WhatsApp-based general posts as the control condition. Parenting competencies were assessed pre- and post-test by the Parenting Sense of Competence Scale (PSOC) and Me as a Parent Scale (MaaP) and adolescent attachment outcomes were assessed by the Friends and Family Interview (FFI). Results supported the intervention and the SEL posts had greater impact on mother-daughter dyads, middle class, ever-single adoptive parents, highly qualified, professionals-salaried, and whose intervention compliance was higher. Actor-partner interdependence models indicated that single adoptive parents’ and adoptee adolescents’ outcomes were mutually associated. Latent class analysis suggested an eight-latent-class model of participant clusters likely to gain more from the SEL intervention, which included: adoptee female adolescents-ever-single adoptive female parents, adoptee male adolescents-ever-single adoptive female parents, middle class, highly qualified, professional-salaried, and who complied with the intervention by reading posts and completing homework above the recommended threshold.