Children adopted from abroad adapt well, study finds.

Byline: From Register-Guard and news service reports

CHICAGO - They are often born in poverty and civil strife, abandoned, put in an orphanage, and then suddenly uprooted and sent to live an ocean away with strangers from another culture.

And yet, children adopted from abroad seem to adjust remarkably well, according to a new study that challenges the widely held notion that these youngsters are badly damaged emotionally and prone to disruptive behavior.

The analysis of more than 50 years of international data found that youngsters adopted from abroad are only slightly more likely than nonadopted children to have behavioral problems such as aggressiveness and anxiety. And they actually seem to have fewer problems than children adopted within their own countries.

``The first years of life should not be considered as inevitable destiny. On the contrary, most children grab the new chance offered to them,'' said researchers Femmie Juffer and Marinus van IJzendoorn of Leiden University in the Netherlands.

The results are generally reassuring for international adoption - an increasing phenomenon involving more than 40,000 children a year moving among more than 100 countries, the researchers said.

``Our findings may help them fight the stereotype that is often associated with international adoption,'' the researchers said.

The study appears in today's Journal of the American Medical Association.

The research doesn't surprise, said Susan Cox, spokeswoman for Holt International, a Eugene-based adoption agency with 50 years experience uniting orphaned children from other countries with parents in the United States.

"Adoptive parents have to go through this home-study process which, from the very beginning, gives them an understanding of the issues," Cox said.

Holt got its start when a Lane County couple began adopting Korean orphans in the aftermath of the Korean War.

International adoptions often mean interracial adoptions, and there is no way to keep that a secret, Cox said. Fifty years ago, it was a controversial issue.

"One of the major concerns was how could children be transplanted from one country to another? It was something that had never been done before, and it ended secrecy in adoption," she said.

The authors pooled results from 137 studies on adoptions by parents living in the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Israel. The analysis involved studies on adoption between 1950 and 2005, involving more than 30,000 adoptees and more than 100,000 nonadopted children.

``Before adoption, most international adoptees experience insufficient medical care, malnutrition, maternal separation, and neglect and abuse in orphanages,'' the researchers said. But to their surprise, they found that these children are largely able to catch up with their nonadopted counterparts.

Behavior problems were relatively uncommon among all children studied, but internationally adopted children had a 20 percent higher chance of being disruptive than nonadopted children, and a 10 percent higher chance of being anxious or withdrawn. They also were twice as likely as nonadopted children to receive mental health services.

Children adopted within their own countries had a 36 percent higher chance of being anxious or withdrawn than the international adoptees did, and a 50 percent higher chance of being aggressive or disruptive, the study found.

These children also were four times more likely than nonadopted children and twice as likely as internationally adopted children to receive mental health services. Also, domestically adopted youngsters had a 60 percent higher chance of having behavior problems than nonadopted children.

Some of the results probably reflect the parents who adopt foreign children, said Dr. Gregory Plemmons of Vanderbilt University's clinic for international adoptees. These parents often are high-achieving and financially well-off, and tend to seek out services like counseling for their children, Plemmons said.

That jibes with Holt's experience, Cox said.

"Adoptive parents have a greater capacity to access support, and particularly with interracial adoptions, they know ahead of time that there are going to be issues," she said.

Reporter Susan Palmer contributed to this report.