The study is supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the primary sponsor is the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). NICHD is an institute of the NIH with a special interest in young children.

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How will the study work?

Our study’s recruitment team is working with adoption agencies to recruit birth parents and adoptive families who have participated in a domestic adoption where the child was placed with the adoptive family shortly after birth. We are interested in talking with these families when their baby is an infant and at other critical periods of their child’s development, specifically during toddlerhood.

Birth and adoptive families are interviewed in person either in their home or another convenient location. We are interested in talking with birth families shortly after their child’s birth and about a year later. We are interested in talking with adoptive families when their child is 9, 16, and 27 months old.

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What do we hope to learn?

The information collected from birth parents, adoptive parents, and adoption agencies in Early Growth and Development Study can help answer questions about child development and about the adoption process. The primary areas that we are exploring include:

• The role of parenting and of heredity on child development
• The effects of the adoption process on the children, birth parents, and adoptive parents
• The effects of pregnancy-related events and experiences on birth parents and on children’s adjustment
• The characteristics of birth and adoptive parents who are involved in an adoption plan and how the adoption process may reflect and influence these characteristics.
  

The goal of our study is to use its results to assist families and children in reaching their fullest potential. We hope to develop programs that will assist parents in learning new strategies to enhance their child’s development. The best clues for these programs will come from families in our current study. We will learn how parents respond to their children in ways that are most effective in helping the children to achieve their best potential.

In addition, we hope to share our knowledge about the adoption process with the adoption community so that all members of the adoption triad; birth parents, adoptive families, and adopted children receive the best services and support possible. We also want to assist the adoption community in educating the general public more about adoption, especially in issues such as openness, birth father relationships, and transracial adoption.

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How many families will be studied?

Our study plans to interview 400 adoptive families and 400 birth families. We are working to recruit these families from three of our six sites: George Washington University in Washington, DC, at the Oregon Social Learning Center in Eugene, Oregon, and at the University of California in Davis, California.

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How can people become involved in the study?

Our study is recruiting participants directly through adoption agencies located near our three data collection sites. Our recruitment team has a carefully outlined plan for agency and participant recruitment. We appreciate the interest of all birth and adoptive parents. However, in order to maintain our detailed research design we are, unfortunately, unable to accept volunteers into our study.

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If you are interested in learning more about the Early Growth and Development Study, please feel free to e-mail us at earlydevelopment@oslc.org. Also, please check our site regularly for announcements and our newsletter that will be posted twice per year.

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