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Why do lower-class children adopted into higher-class families behave more like lower-class children than higher-class children? This seems to only a "paradox"

by hugh4 11y ago

Why do lower-class children adopted into higher-class families behave more like lower-class children than higher-class children? This seems to only a "paradox" if you believe in some kind of all-nurture no-nature blank-slate theory of human nature.

cjensen 11y ago
When you look for stuff which correlates with the outcome of a child growing up, almost nothing correlates except parenting quality. For example, single parenting and divorced parents correlate with lower outcomes [1]. Parental class or wealth do not correlate except in regards to how people of different classes or wealth situations raise children differently, or have more discretionary time available to spend on their children. This paradox flies in the face of the conventional interpretation of the data. This really calls for follow-up studies which look more carefully for causes -- for example, as vessenes points out, children who are available for adoption may have, on average, challenges that differ from the norm. [1] I am not judging. Instead, consider that a single programmer will generally, but not always, be less effective than a pair of programmers.
- vessenes 11y ago
  If you posit that institutionalization is not good for children, something that I think is probably uncontroversial (but come on HN, give me your best shot), you have a bunch of interesting externalities from the adoption system, especially the international adoption system. In particular, kids in most Geneva convention countries need to 'time out' of their domestic processes, so they are institutionalized longer, sometimes years longer than a local adoption would have been. They are also very often 'damaged goods' depending on the country of origin -- babies with unproblematic histories get adopted quickly some places. For whatever reason, upper-middle-class adoptive families seem to me to trend international (and we did that in our case); the gap there might be exaggerated even further over a lower income family doing a local adoption. The article and / or studies cited could be living with these sorts of correlative issues unless very carefully considered and designed around; nothing in the article made me think that level of detailed consideration had been accomplished by the author, though.

by hugh4 11y ago

cjensen 11y ago

When you look for stuff which correlates with the outcome of a child growing up, almost nothing correlates except parenting quality. For example, single parenting and divorced parents correlate with lower outcomes [1]. Parental class or wealth do not correlate except in regards to how people of different classes or wealth situations raise children differently, or have more discretionary time available to spend on their children. This paradox flies in the face of the conventional interpretation of the data. This really calls for follow-up studies which look more carefully for causes -- for example, as vessenes points out, children who are available for adoption may have, on average, challenges that differ from the norm. [1] I am not judging. Instead, consider that a single programmer will generally, but not always, be less effective than a pair of programmers.

vessenes 11y ago
If you posit that institutionalization is not good for children, something that I think is probably uncontroversial (but come on HN, give me your best shot), you have a bunch of interesting externalities from the adoption system, especially the international adoption system. In particular, kids in most Geneva convention countries need to 'time out' of their domestic processes, so they are institutionalized longer, sometimes years longer than a local adoption would have been. They are also very often 'damaged goods' depending on the country of origin -- babies with unproblematic histories get adopted quickly some places. For whatever reason, upper-middle-class adoptive families seem to me to trend international (and we did that in our case); the gap there might be exaggerated even further over a lower income family doing a local adoption. The article and / or studies cited could be living with these sorts of correlative issues unless very carefully considered and designed around; nothing in the article made me think that level of detailed consideration had been accomplished by the author, though.