The romantic relationships of those who have experienced adoption or foster care: A meta-analysis

Abstract

The present study provides a meta-analytic review of romantic relationships of adoptees and those who have experienced foster care. Specifically, involvement in romantic relationships and quality of romantic relationships were examined. The meta-analysis included studies examining adopted and biologically-reared samples (11 studies, 18 effect sizes), as well as studies examining foster and biologically-reared samples (7 studies, 11 effect sizes). Additionally, the current meta-analysis includes prevalence rates of involvement in romantic relationships for adopted (5 studies, 5 effect sizes) and foster (14 studies, 17 effect sizes) samples. Results indicate that adopted and foster samples are largely similar to biologically-reared samples in their involvement in and quality of romantic relationships. These findings represent the current state of the literature on romantic relationships of adoptees and individuals who experienced foster care. Furthermore, our findings provide important directions for future research.