B19 wrote:
I can understand why you might think that, but a mass of evidence contradicts your assumption.
It's all out there if you want to find it, and it's easy to find.
I went on a google hunt for studies that would address spongy's assumption that adoptive parents are less likely to be abusive than biological parents because they have sought out the child.
I couldn't find any evidence (let alone masses) to contradict spongy's assumption but also no studies to support it. The studies turned up by my google search for rates of abuse of adopted children all addressed abuse prior to adoption. Apparently, the longer a child is in the foster care system, the more likely they are to be abused prior to adoption, if they ever get adopted. That doesn't speak well of the foster care system and in fact makes a case for getting kids adopted as fast as possible so they spend as little time as possible in the foster care system. I am not posting those links because this thread is about adoption, not fostering.
As far as abuse after adoption, I couldn't find studies. It was all magazine articles about specific cases. Many were heart warming first person accounts of adults recalling their adoptive parents in a positive light. Mothers Day and Fathers Day tend to bring about those sort of articles and then they go into the google store house.
There were some negative articles too about post-adoption abuse, usually about specific horrific cases.
There's this:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lisa-belk ... 81617.htmlIt is a grim article about adopted children who were "punished to death" by religious parents when they wouldn't toe the line.
Quote:
(magazine article)
Much attention has been paid to the religious pieces of a this tale. Less noted is that each of these children joined these families through adoption. Sean was born in the US, as were his five adopted siblings. Hana was from Ethiopia, as was her adopted brother (their parents had six biological children as well), and Lydia was from Liberia (there were two other adopted siblings among the family's nine children.)
Is this merely grisly coincidence? Or is there something about the adoption dynamic that makes violent abuse more likely?
One possibility is that adoptive children -- particularly those who spend their earliest years in an orphanage or shuttling from one foster caregiver to the next -- are more likely to suffer reactive attachment disorder, which are essentially the inability not only to bond, but to feel. The effects are not just psychological, but also physical, with evidence these children can have elevated levels of the hormone cortisol, which increases their tolerance for pain. Some speculate that spanking a child with Reactive Attachment Disorder can spiral out of control quickly, because it takes abusive levels of pain before the child actually feels it and responds.
Here you have a perfect storm of possible Reactive Attachment Disorder (a perilous side effect of staying too long in an orphanage prior to adoption) and parents who favor harsh punitive discipline. What I am getting from this story (and others like it that I didn't link) is not that adoption is a bad thing but rather that orphanages are a bad thing (because staying in them too long can cause Reactive Attachment Disorder) and harsh punitive discipline is a bad thing. If those kids had been adopted into a mellower family that didn't use harsh punitive discipline, they would be alive and possibly writing Mothers/Fathers Day odes to adoptive parents someday in the future. This can be screened for by asking prospective parents what they would do in a particular misbehaviour situation.
Quote:
(B19)
Adoption is a second or third best choice (IVF) for the adopters (usually). They wanted their own children, not adoptive substitutes - with rare exceptions.
Adoption began in the states to fill labour shortages - the terrible "orphan trains" - to use child labour free of charge. Then it became a means of social control and punishment of women who had children without marriage. And now it is used to solve the adult problem of infertility, though the romanticisation pretends that it is solely about the child's needs being filled by selfless parents. That is simply not reality, and it is not good for the mental health of the adopted child.]
I am certainly not in favor of using children as work slaves or to punish unmarried women who give birth. But using it to solve the problem of infertility actually seems like a good thing, better even than doing it to fulfill the child's needs. This from the linked article by somebody anonymous who knew the parents.
Quote:
(magazine article)
Initially, I think their intentions for adopting were "good" (although I am uncomfortable with the idea of adopting children solely because you are religiously motivated to "rescue" them). I don't think they adopted Hana and her brother so that they could have some children to torture and abuse. However,I believe they made a huge assumption that these kids would respond to their methods just like their own biological children did. They expected Hana and her little brother to assimilate into their family, and most likely ignored their culture, how they had grown up (customs, beliefs, etc), and most importantly, the trauma that Hana and her brother had gone through in their childhoods. These kids just weren't acting like their biological children. Instead of taking a step back and getting professional help, they decided that they would continue to follow the Pearl method, but continued to up the ante, because these kids were NOT succumbing to being "broken".
What I get from that is that adopting the child to fulfill the child's needs[which they assume to be 'rescue'] rather than to fulfill parental need to have a child to love can backfire horribly. If the prospective parent deeply feels that a child "needs" to be rescued and brought into a particular religion or way of life or just plain "needs" the family, that can backfire if the parent misreads what the child needs or is too bent on being "selfless". That theoretical selflessness could translate to abuse (did, in this case). The infertile couple who are rattling around feeling empty with just the two of them and want a child to raise up and give their lives meaning and company seem a less risky bet. They aren't rescuing the child. They are rescuing themselves and are more likely to have a mellower approach .
Last edited by Janissy on 07 May 2014, 4:25 pm, edited 3 times in total.
07 May 2014, 3:09 pm
