Adoptive Parents May Make Better Parents Than Biological Parents

Associated Press (AP) writer David Crary published an article on a new study funded by the National Science Foundation, the Spencer Foundation and the American Education Research Association.

The study starts out with the provocative statement by the authors of the study that: "Adoptive families provide a critical case for evaluating the importance of the oft-assumed biological ties between parents and children."

The AP article makes the case that 'adoptive parents invest more time and financial resources in their children than biological parents.' The article draws this conclusion from the 22 page study.

The study published in the American Sociological Review, according to the article, found that couples who adopt spend more money on their children and invest more time on activities with them.

The article quotes Indiana University sociologist Brian Powell as attributing the disparity in spending to the fact that parents of adoptive children "invest more is that they really want children and they go to extraordinary means to have them."

Researchers identified 161 families out of 13,000 households with first graders whose data was examined that were headed by two adoptive parents.

The study looked at how adoptive parents rated on criteria such as helping with homework, parental involvement in school, exposure to cultural activities and family attendance at religious services.

The two questions asked in the study of data on these parents were:

1. How do resources allocations to children in two-adoptive-parent families compare to those in two-biological-parent families and other alternatively structured families?
2. How does the inclusion of sociodemographic factors alter the relationship between adoptive family structure and the allocation of resources to children?

In lay terms I understand the first question to ask is there a difference between family structures in how resources (time, money) are allocated to children.

If the study answer was no, the second question would not be meaningful.