Study shows adopted kids are stupid and their parents’ efforts are worthless (really??)

On behalf of my adopted child and all other adopted children, this Warrior Mama has a few things to say. I am extremely disappointed with a recent article from The Atlantic based on a study by the Institute for Family Studies that has gone viral in many of the adoption and parenting groups that I follow. Quite frankly, I am furious about both the article and the original study, its faulty research and assumptions, and the conclusions that this highly influential researcher has come to. I’m also alarmed that he is apparently someone whom policy-makers look to for guidance on government funding for children and families. The Atlantic article by Olga Khazan is here, and the original study by Nicholas Zill that it is based on is here. Zill’s original study gives some longitudinal data regarding the relative performance of adopted children in schools and how the educational and socio-economic status of their parents seems not to have much of a positive effect on their performance. The article circulating around the internet by Khazan has an extremely negative and inappropriate title:   “Adopted Kids do Worse in School, Despite Having Better Parents.” Ugh.  Nothing like setting kids and their families up for failure through low expectations.   And are we really “better” parents just because some of us have more educational or financial resources than other parents do? Not always. There are many great adoptive parents, but there are also many who struggle and feel unprepared for the task. There are quite a few adoptive parents who are not rich or highly educated. So making sweeping statements like this based on a small sample of kindergarten and first grade students is highly misleading. Most likely, Khazan chose this title because she knew that the controversy would stir up a debate, but I don’t like ugly stereotypes about my kid being spread around the Internet for the sake of getting more clicks and going viral. I encourage you to read both the article and research posts very carefully yourself, but here’s my summary: In a nutshell, Mr. Zill’s study (and Khazan’s subsequent article) conclude that adopted kids are born losers and are destined to be failures at school, no matter how hard their parents try to “fix” them.   So we might as well just give up now because they are damaged goods. In fact, instead of looking at the way we are parenting and educating these kids, we really should focus on beefing up family planning programs and just prevent these unwanted kids from being born in the first place. In fancy academic terms, here is how Mr. Zill expresses it: Because the educational attainments of adoptive parents are exceptionally high, the genetic endowment of most children available for adoption is likely to be less favorable to intellectual accomplishment than the endowments of their adoptive parents. No matter how much intellectual stimulation and encouragement the parents provide the child, they may not be able to overcome the limitations of the child’s genetic heritage… And  here is his statement about making sure they aren’t even born so we don’t have to deal with these problem children: The availability of the “adoption option” does not do away with the need for better prevention of unplanned and unwanted conceptions, so that fewer children are born into high-risk situations where they are likely to experience neglect or abuse and become in need of adoption. To be fair, Zill does give some credit to adoptive parents: Many adopted children do reasonably well in school and enjoy lives that are far better than they would have experienced had they not been adopted. And they do so at less cost and burden to the public than if the children were raised in foster homes or institutions. He also explains some important factors, such as attachment issues and early childhood trauma, that can have a lasting effect on children’s ability to learn at school. I would argue that trauma has a huge effect on ALL children’s ability to learn, and it would be interesting to compare this study to studies of children with high ACE scores (Adverse Childhood Experiences).    I have a feeling that we would see similar results, irrespective of whether they are adopted or biological children. I have many concerns with the dubious research in this study:

1. Teacher Reports  The sample of students studied was based on subjective teacher reports, not data collected at school enrollment. The study even admits that no school data is collected specifically about adoption status.  So.. how did the teachers know who was and was not adopted?  Did they only report those adopted kids who were more “obvious” – i.e. those whose race was different from that of their parents?   And if only transracial adoptions were in the sample study, were cultural considerations and the added stress of adopted children often being of a minority race in a white family and dominantly white school taken into account?  Or, perhaps the teachers only reported adopted students who were “problem” students because they had frequent conversations with those parents and the topic of adoption happened to come up?
2. Two-parent families only The study was based on only two-parent adoptive families, and didn’t include any adoptive families  with single adoptive parents.  So that means there may have been adoptive families not included in the data.  Even if there were only a few single adoptive parents, those students should have been included in the comparison instead of lumped under the category “other.”
3. Kindergarten and first graders only  The study was based on a group of kindergarten and first grade students, which means that no children adopted at older ages were included.  We also don’t know if these children were recently adopted or adopted at birth.
4. Domestic?  International?  Both?  There was no mention of whether the children were adopted from within the U.S. or from other countries.  Students whose first language is not English obviously are going to have some delays in developing cognitive academic language, regardless of whether adopted or not.  This was not mentioned as a possible factor in their academic success.
5. Inconclusive data Some of the data shows that there was no significant difference between the adopted group and all of the biological children as a group.  To make them seem more disadvantaged and therefore give more credence to his theory, the researcher compared the data of adopted children to the group with both birth parents (which did not include all of the biological children).  In his words: Their average raw score was about the same [my emphasis] as that for all U.S. kindergartners, that is, at the 50th percentile. However, they did less well than children with both birth parents, whose average math skills were at the 59th percentile. 

Conclusions and assumptions: Even more than the faulty research, what concerns me the most about this research are the conclusions and assumptions that Zill makes. He basically blames the genetic makeup of adopted children as the main factor affecting their alleged predisposition for failure in school, with the possibility of attachment and trauma being additional factors. This makes it seem as though somehow there is something DEFECTIVE in adopted kids – that because of bad genes, they are incapable of achieving the levels of education that their adoptive parents have achieved. Not only is this untrue, but it’s also a HUGE insult to birth parents, some of whom are highly intelligent people who placed their children for adoption because of difficult circumstances, not because they themselves were or believed their children to be sub-par. Once again, we are perpetuating the stereotype that adopted kids are bad, unwanted, and undesirable. And apparently, we should stop trying so hard to educate them and just accept that they will always achieve at lower levels than their non-adopted peers. I vehemently disagree.   I think there is MUCH that can be done to help adopted kids overcome the negative effects of trauma and attachment difficulties.  Nature or nurture, there is always hope.   This study and the article about the study send a message that it is hopeless. Instead of throwing our hands up in the air and blaming the kids for being the problem, perhaps we should look at what we are actually doing to support these kids. Maybe they aren’t doing well in school because there is something wrong with what the school is doing, not the kids themselves.   Trauma-informed education is a very new field of study, and it wasn’t widely practiced in the years that the data was collected for this research. We adoptive parents also need to examine what we are doing at home as well. Are we using consistently using connected parenting techniques to help our children overcome trauma and attachment issues?   Or are we falling back on old paradigms of behaviorist, punitive discipline at home? Kids who feel stress at home are going to carry that stress into school.  So it’s essential for adoptive parents to get the appropriate training and support to provide healing, therapeutic parenting that helps set kids up for social, emotional, and academic success.  In my experience talking to other adoptive families, many of them believe that they have not received adequate training and support to assist them with the complexities of post-adoption parenting. My personal experience with parenting an adopted child is that the underlying trauma is often so pervasive that his competence cannot be measured with any validity by her performance on academic tests. Her teachers have told me that he is very intelligent, but at times, his anxiety prevents him from doing his best. Over time, he has learned coping skills that have helped him to be more and more successful, but this would not show up in a study like the one by Zill. I have confidence that within a few years of continued mental health and instructional support, he will be excelling and on par with her peers in every way.  Unfortunately, other parents may read this study and others like it and conclude that it’s simply not worth the time and effort to invest in our kids. Instead of emphasizing that adopted kids are born losers, I’d like to see more research done on the adopted kids who are successful.   We should be looking at what factors have contributed to their ability to overcome challenges in order to do well in school. Let’s look at what we can do to solve problems, not contribute to the problem by perpetuating false assumptions based on weak research. Our kids deserve it, and they are counting on us! ———————– Want information on how to become a Trauma-Informed Specialist, Educational Trainer, or Parent Coach?  Check out our Trauma-Informed Specialist Certification Program.