Adoption: Biological and Social Processes Linked to Adaptation

Children join adoptive families through domestic adoption from the public child welfare system, infant adoption through private agencies, and international adoption. Each pathway presents distinctive developmental opportunities and challenges. Adopted children are at higher risk than the general pop...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Annual review of psychology 2014-01, Vol.65 (1), p.235-265
Main Authors: GROTEVANT, Harold D, McDERMOTT, Jennifer M
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adaptation
Adoption
Adoption - psychology
Biological and medical sciences
Child
Child development
Child Development - physiology
Child welfare
Cognition & reasoning
Cognition - physiology
Couple and family
Developmental psychology
Family - psychology
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Humans
Parenting - psychology
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Social psychology
Socialization
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Children join adoptive families through domestic adoption from the public child welfare system, infant adoption through private agencies, and international adoption. Each pathway presents distinctive developmental opportunities and challenges. Adopted children are at higher risk than the general population for problems with adaptation, especially externalizing, internalizing, and attention problems. This review moves beyond the field's emphasis on adoptee-nonadoptee differences to highlight biological and social processes that affect adaptation of adoptees across time. The experience of stress, whether prenatal, postnatal/preadoption, or during the adoption transition, can have significant impacts on the developing neuroendocrine system. These effects can contribute to problems with physical growth, brain development, and sleep, activating cascading effects on social, emotional, and cognitive development. Family processes involving contact between adoptive and birth family members, co-parenting in gay and lesbian adoptive families, and racial socialization in transracially adoptive families affect social development of adopted children into adulthood.
ISSN:0066-4308
1545-2085
DOI:10.1146/annurev-psych-010213-115020