Empowering Adoptive Families
A study about adoptive families in the UK and in Portugal
ABOUT THE STUDY
This research study is about child and adolescent well-being in adoptive families, with the main purpose of evaluating how adoption, children's preadoptive experiences, parenting behaviour, and childrearing practices can best promote child and adolescent well-being.
Every child, parent, and family has a unique experience and story to tell about themselves and about how they come to be a family. For the most part, research has focused on traditional views of families, in which different-sex couples with children are privileged. However, there is a growing diversity of family arrangmentS among which families created through adoption are the basis for this study. Adoption presents a unique set of challenges, difficulties, and also opportunities for both children and parents, to write their own family story.
Within adoption, there is also a rich diversity of family arrangements that can inform psychology and developmental scholars about what is most important for their well-being. In this study, we want to take an approach that is both developed and informed by research (through questionnaires and standardized psychological measures) and constructed by parents' experiences and stories. We value your own input on our study, and in the questionnaire you will have opportunities to tell us, in your own words, what is most important for YOUR family.
We are interested in hearing from ALL KINDS of adoptive families:
- Single adopters
- Couples who adopted jointly
- Adopters whose relationship status has changed since the adoption
- Gay, lesbian, and bisexual adoptive parents
- Transgender adoptive parents
- Heterosexual adoptive parents
- Adoptive parents who might be part of a different family structure
- None or all of the above, whether or not the arrangements are recognized by the adoption agency.
We appreciate your participation in this study, and your perspective of the questionnaire!
Please complete the questionnaire, and do let us know what you think.
Pedro Alexandre Costa, Fiona Tasker & Isabel Leal.
January, 2016.
Our Survey Aims
bit.ly/1OJmDSv
Our aim is to look into the factors both pre-adoption and in adoptive parenting to find out what helps school aged children to be happy and have good relationships in different types of adoptive families in different countries (the UK and Portugal).
Our aim is to be inclusive across gender and sexual minority groups of all adoptive parents with children aged between 5-18 years old who have been in their adoptive family for over a year. We want to include single adopters as well as couples who have jointly adopted a child or children.
To be a success the survey questions need to be answered by as many adoptive parents as possible to have varied responses from different families (but we need just one parent from each family to complete the survey please). We can then look at the pattern of responses given to different questions depending upon pre-adoption and family characteristics to look at statistical trends in the data to build up a broad picture of factors that support adopted children and their new families.
Please help us by completing the survey and help us to reach as many families as possible by telling friends who have adopted children about our survey!
bit.ly/1OJmDSv
Thank you!