Born, again

About time I republished a link to the Born Magazine project on
international adoption. This article on Yahoo! is as good an excuse as easy.

Everything is
Illuminated (reminder: move the mouse to different locations and the
way the story is told changes. Interactive, yo.)

Yahoo article

Study: Kids Adopted From Abroad Adapt Well

By LINDSEY TANNER, AP Medical Writer 1 hour, 50 minutes ago

CHICAGO - The scenario is increasingly common ? eager parents adopt children
born in hardship an ocean away, hoping to create a cohesive family against
seemingly daunting odds.

And yet, children adopted from abroad seem to adjust remarkably well,
according to a new study that challenges the widely held notion that these
youngsters are badly damaged emotionally and prone to disruptive behavior.

The analysis of more than 50 years of international data found youngsters
adopted from abroad are only slightly more likely than nonadopted children
to have behavioral problems such as aggressiveness and anxiety. And they
actually seem to have fewer problems than children adopted within their own
countries.

"The first years of life should not be considered as inevitable destiny. On
the contrary, most children grab the new chance offered to them," said
researchers Femmie Juffer and Marinus H. van IJzendoorn of Leiden University
in the Netherlands.

The results are generally reassuring for international adoption ? a growing
trend involving more than 40,000 children a year moving among more than 100
countries, the researchers said.

"Our findings may help them fight the stereotype that is often associated
with international adoption," the researchers said.

The study appears in Wednesday's
Journal of the American Medical Association.

The authors pooled results from 137 studies on adoptions by parents living
in the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Israel.

The analysis involved studies on adoption between 1950 and 2005, involving
more than 30,000 adoptees and more than 100,000 nonadopted children.

During that time, adoption has evolved from being a "shameful secret" to
being celebrated and often very visible, especially with the relatively
recent phenomenon of white parents adopting Chinese children, according to a
JAMA editorial by Dr. Laurie C. Miller of Tufts-New England Medical Center.
In the United States alone, parents have adopted more than 230,000 children
from other countries since 1989, she said.

Miller said sensationalized stories about severely disturbed children
adopted from abroad have been widespread in the media, which may have skewed
perceptions of these children.

In the study, behavior problems were relatively uncommon in all groups
studied, but adopted children in general had more of them than nonadopted
youngsters, regardless of where the adoption took place. That is not
surprising, since both groups often suffer deprivation and come from broken
families.

Internationally adopted children had a 20 percent higher chance of being
disruptive than nonadopted children, and a 10 percent higher chance of being
anxious or withdrawn. They also were twice as likely as nonadopted children
to receive mental health services ? results that the authors said were much
better than expected given these children's often troubled early start in
life.

The results might reflect the parents who adopt foreign children, said Dr.
Gregory Plemmons of Vanderbilt University's clinic for international
adoptees. These parents often are high-achieving and financially well-off,
and tend to seek out services like counseling for their children, Plemmons
said.

Children adopted within their own countries had an 36 percent higher chance
of being anxious or withdrawn than the international adoptees did, and a 50
percent higher chance of being aggressive or disruptive, the study found.

These children were four times more likely than nonadopted children and
twice as likely as internationally adopted children to receive mental health
services. Also, domestically adopted youngsters had a 60 percent higher
chance of having behavior problems than nonadopted children.

Plemmons theorized that children adopted domestically might suffer from the
instability of living with different foster families before getting adopted.