Childhood Study Findings on Adoptive Parents

Today's Washington post has an interesting story about the finidngs of a long-range childhood study. The study is not about adoption, but researchers found that the kids in the sample who happened to be adopted had "better" parents (judged by various measures they identified, not my own claim!) on average than non-adopted children.

According to the article, adoptive parents face an uphill battle being recognized as valid parents (don't I know it) and thus overcompensate by being more involved with their kids etc. (what I said earlier about the measures in the study).

The one area in which adoptive parents did less well than other parents was in...drumroll...making connections with other parents. Go figure. When you're battling the assumption that you aren't a "real" parent and playground chitchat so often turns to "so, can her real mom take her back?" and other insidious queries, you may just give up reaching out to those other parents.

And here I thought it was just me. I'm pretty introverted and it's not been easy for me to cultivate mom friends and peer friends for Nat. But I have done it! I have! See? I have my very own mom friend, cultivated all by my own self and not drawing on Cole's colleagues or prior friendships. (Hi Donita!) In the mom's group I joined, there are a few other potential friends as well, but right now, I'm proud of myself for scoring the one. I'll keep at it.

Meanwhile, since when did the Family Research Council and Focus on the Family gain enough mainstream credibility to be regularly called upon to provide the odd anti-gay quote? "Gay" is not a public debate or controversy, Washington Post! We can't change it no matter how many polls you put up! There are not two sides to gay! We just, you know, exist. And we have kids. Sorry to be cliche, but we're here, we're queer, get used to it.

And for the record, same-sex families do not necessarily deprive children of a certain gender parent "by design." Often enough, same-sex families give children more than just two parents in a range of genders. I know one little girl who has two moms and two dads. But I digress. You'll see what I'm on about if you read the article. Check it out, it's brief.

Update
I've been reading around others' blogging about this article and I wanted to say that I don't think there needs to be a conflict between supporting same-sex families and questioning this study. The thing is, in spite of the take the Post took on the study, it isn't about same-sex parents in fact, I don't think any of the sample are queer families. It's not a study about adoption, either. As I originally mentioned, I understand it to be a study on childhood and they just found these things about the children in the study who happend to be adopted.

I also want to clarify something I just alluded to above, that the study's judgement of "better" isn't necessarily one I share. In particular, I find completely implausible (and even offensive) the equation of money spent with good parenting. But I did think the speculation about adoptive parents feeling the need to "compensate" for anti-adoption attitudes was interesting. I don't generally feel like I need to compensate for anything, personally, but I can certainly see how that could be the case. And that's where the extrapolation to same-sex parents was coming from, the idea that anti-gay family public sentiment might lead to a similar "compensation" dynamic. But again, the study wasn't about that. So I don't see a conflict here between questioning the validity of the study's findings and supporting same sex (or even adoptive) families.

Comments

[PhoenixRising]

On the connections issue, you go girl. We have a double burden that didn't really become noticable to me until my kid started school: in addition to the challenges presented by parents who birthed their kids questioning my parental status, I have to filter all prospects for connecting through the lens of whether their anti- gay views are so deeply hidden, they don't even realize they think we're not a family...until they've said something mildly regrettable to highly offensive.

I didn't have the whole 'howdja get that kid, and is she yours' exposure as much because my child's racial mix and my age tend to create the expectation that I grew her myself. So that's another place that the lesbian thing becomes an issue, especially with women my age and younger who assume that, as one co-worker told me to my face, I got with one of their men to have a pretty baby. When it turns out I'm not even straight, that's a bit of a conversation stopper.

I've found that the greatest barrier to connections with other parents who are not themselves either queer or adoptive is really the fact that most people don't want to embarrass themselves by saying something ignorant, so they say nothing at all. If I want to forge a connection, I have to do a LOT of the work. But that's a good thing for us as parents, because in some ways it's a slice of the experience I expect my child will have as a person of color whose contacts are with a majority white world.

[donita]

I feel so privileged to be in your blog post. But, most importantly, I am lucky to know you, Nat and Cole. I do not judge you (as we spoke about last night) for who you are and what you do as a parent, etc. You are a loving mother to your beautiful child (and Nat adores you for that)...THAT'S what counts.

[cloudscome]

I don't know, those researchers seem pretty dim to me. They are going into it with some pretty obvious narrow thinking, aren't they? In that article they show some really stupid assumptions. It makes me just want to shrug and say "whatever..." Is it just me?

[Robin Reagler]

Happy Birthday, Sha!

[luolin]

This all reminds me of an article Getupgrrl cited once that was about (I think) parents of children conceived with donor eggs or sperm (though it might possibly have been art ART in general-I can't remember the details). I don't know what their criteria were, but the parents in the study did more (of whatever) than the control group, and there was similar speculation about the reasons, either that it was because they had tried so hard to have very wanted kids (speculation I've also heard specifically about gay adoptive parents), or that they had to prove themselves.