Adopted children do as well as or better than their non-adopted counterparts, according to a 1994 study by the Search Institute, a Minneapolis-based public policy research organization specializing in questions of concern to states and cities.1) This study concludes that:
Teens who were adopted at birth are more likely than children born into intact families to live with two parents in a middle-class family.
2)
Adopted children score higher than their middle-class counterparts on indicators of
school performance, social competency, optimism, and volunteerism.
3)
Adopted adolescents generally are less depressed than children of
single parents and less involved in alcohol abuse, vandalism, group fighting, police trouble, weapon use, and theft.
4)
Adopted adolescents score higher than children of single parents on self-esteem, confidence in their own judgment, self-directedness, positive view of others, and feelings of security within their families.
5)
On
health measures, adopted children and children of intact families share similarly high scores, and both those groups score significantly higher than children raised by single parents.
6)
Adopted children do well at
school. In 1981, only 7 percent of children adopted in infancy repeated a grade, while 12 percent of children living with both biological parents repeated a grade.
7)
Compared with the general child population, children placed with adoptive couples are better off economically. Their parents are better educated and older than the parents of other children.
8)
Adoptive parents are less likely to divorce.
9)
Virtually all of these findings have been replicated by Nicholas Zill, Vice President and Director of Child and Family Studies at Westat Research Corporation of Maryland, in his analysis of data from the federal government's 1988 National Health Interview Survey on Child Health.10) Results from the survey were compared across four groups: adopted children, children of unmarried mothers being raised by the mother, children of intact families, and children being raised by their grandparents. The data indicated that adopted children:
Enjoy a quality of home environment superior to all the other groups;
11)
Have superior access to health care compared to all the other groups;
12)
Enjoy
health similar to that of children of intact families and superior to that of the other two groups; and
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When compared with those adopted later, born outside of marriage and raised by the single mother, or raised in an intact family, children who are adopted in infancy:
Repeat grades less often than any other group;
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Have better health status than all other groups;
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Have fewer behavior problems than all other groups, except children raised in intact families.