Creating grander families: older adults adopting younger kin and nonkin

The Gerontologist
James Hinterlong, Scott Ryan

Abstract

There is a dearth of research on older adoptive parents caring for minor children, despite a growing number of such adoptions finalized each year. This study offers a large-scale investigation of adoptive families headed by older parents. We describe these families and explore how preadoptive kinship between the adoptive parent and the child impacts adoption outcomes. We analyze data from kin (n = 98) and nonkin (n = 310) adoptive families headed by adults aged 60 years and older. We find that older kin adoptive families are smaller, report lower income, and include adoptive mothers with less formal education. Children in these families had less severe needs for special care at the time of placement. Although kin and nonkin older parents offer similar assessments of their parent-child relationships, kin adopters indicate a greater willingness to adopt the same child again and yet report less positive current family functioning. Multivariate regression analyses reveal that preadoptive kinship predicts more negative parental assessment of the adoption's impact on the family and less positive family functioning net of other parent, family, and child characteristics. Externalizing behavior by the child (e.g., delinquency or aggress...Continue Reading

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Citations

Nov 20, 2013·Western Journal of Nursing Research·Karen J FoliLaura P Sands
Sep 12, 2017·Journal of the American Psychiatric Nurses Association·Karen J FoliBrooke Wilkinson
Feb 4, 2014·The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews·Marc WinokurKeri E Batchelder

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